History
The area where Grandin Village is presently located traces its origin to 1906 with the establishment of the Virginia Heights Land Corporation. This land corporation was responsible for the initial development of Virginia Heights after the opening of the Memorial Bridge, which serves as a connection into downtown Roanoke.
The development at the T intersection at Grandin and Memorial would see its initial development with the construction of the original Virginia Heights Elementary School in 1907. By 1911, the Roanoke Street Railway Company would complete a streetcar line between Raleigh Court/Virginia Heights and downtown. With this streetcar extension, development of the commercial establishments of the present-day Grandin Village would accelerate.
In 1919, Virginia Heights was annexed into the city of Roanoke, and during the period stretching between 1917 and 1945, the majority of the structures still in place within the current district were constructed. During this period, the Grandin Village would emerge as a major retail and service area serving the residents of southwest Roanoke.
On July 31, 1948, streetcar service to the area was abandoned, which also marked the end of streetcar transit altogether within the city of Roanoke. The demise of the streetcar transitioned the area into the automobile era, whereby much of the post-1950s development within the district was designed to accommodate the automobile. After a period of decline in the mid-20th century, the district has since rebounded and has become a local retail and dining destination.
Read more about this topic: Grandin Theater
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)