The Shockoe Institute, a new organization created to elevate the story of Richmond’s role in the American slave trade, will open its new center in Main Street Station early next year.

At a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday morning, local government and institute officials celebrated the upcoming opening by signing a construction beam and inviting guests to demo an augmented reality exhibit that could be part of the center.

While city leaders have supported the idea of a national slavery museum in the Shockoe area for more than three decades, the institute’s 12,000-square-foot center will not be a museum with historical artifacts and artwork. Instead, it will be “a place of learning, reflection and action,” said Marlon Buckner, CEO and President of the Shockoe Institute.

“Our visitors are going to have the experience to understand the evolution of our history and slavery’s role in it, and in particular, Richmond’s role in the domestic slave trade,” he said. “But we’re also going to give visitors the opportunity in our lab to extend their learning journey and to participate in a whole array of programs and services and creative activities that are designed to enrich their experience while they are here.”

The Shockoe Institute is part of a larger plan to transform 10 acres in the Shockoe Valley into a historical site commemorating the neighborhood’s legacy as an epicenter of the slave trade in the antebellum South. (In the decades prior to the Civil War, Richmond was second to New Orleans in the amount of humans traded as property.)

Richmond Mayor Danny Avula noted that the ceremony was being held on the 160th anniversary of Union forces marching into the city, ending the “scourge of racial slavery.”

Avula said the city’s past efforts to acknowledge and correct historical injustices inspired him to stay in the community after completing medical school about 25 years ago. “And so now to see that come together in something like the Shockoe Institute … I couldn’t be prouder to have this in our city,” he said.

The effort to commemorate the city’s legacy in the slave trade previously manifested at the Shockoe Bottom African Burial and Lumpkin’s Slave Jail in the early 2000s.

Those sites remain largely undeveloped, however, with only a few historical interpretive markers and open green spaces next to surface parking lots behind the train station, along the East Broad Street and Interstate 95 corridors.

At Thursday’s ceremony, representatives from technology companies ARtGlass and Snap Inc. showed how augmented-reality glasses could be used to let visitors see what Lumpkin’s Jail looked like in the 1800s.

Lexi Cleveland, executive vice president of Richmond-based ARtGlass, said the AR demo shown Thursday will be shared at exhibitions in Charlottesville, Alexandria and other locations over the next few months as part of a tour promoting the Shockoe Institute.

Cleveland, a Richmond native, said it feels special to be involved in the project after so many years of discussion and planning around a museum in Shockoe Bottom. “There’s like actual momentum – things are happening and it’s really exciting,” she said.

Plans for slave museum still in development

The SmithGroup, an architectural firm that designed plans for the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, submitted a feasibility study in 2021 for a national slavery museum in Richmond. Those plans envisioned a four-story, 100,000-square-foot building featuring interpretive galleries, a genealogical center, classrooms and exhibits with artifacts from Lumpkins Jail.

At the time, the city allocated $1.3 million to create a foundation to shepherd the museum project, which was estimated to cost upward of $200 million. The Shockoe master plan says Virginia, the city and the Mellon Foundation have committed about $40 million to the project.

The Shockoe Institute helped the city score a $11 million Mellon grant in 2022 to build the center and support the project. A new master plan for the Shockoe historical campus by the local architectural firm Baskervill is under review by the city.

The master plan calls for an “archaeological pavilion” at the Lumpkin’s site and memorials commemorating the enslaved workers bought and sold in the area and people interred in the 18th century African burial ground. An “iconic” pedestrian bridge over Broad Street, commercial development along the thoroughfare and the museum are also included in the plans.

At Thursday’s event, officials demurred on questions about the master plan and the timing of the next phases for the museum and the larger Shockoe project, which is slated for completion in 2037 to coincide with Richmond’s tricentennial.

Former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, who advocated for the museum during his administration, was in attendance at Thursday’s ceremony and was one of about a dozen dignitaries who signed the beam.

“The project has an entire vision and this is a part of it,” Stoney said. “But what I’m more excited for is what can happen right here today.”

Cleveland, the ARtGlass executive involved in the project, said she’s also optimistic. “I think every component is important, and this is really important as the first step to let people know this is real, you need to support this and have hope this is actually happening.”