At Humphrey Calder Community Center on North Thompson Street in Richmond, supervisor Marlon Christian stays busy. Christian’s been with the city for 28 years, blending his love for young people with his appreciation for community building, parks and recreation.
He’s eager to show off the recently remodeled gym.
“We just had it redone maybe about six weeks ago. The City of Richmond put in the money for it. It’s a very expensive floor,“ Christian said. “A very nice floor.”
No one uses it much during the afternoon, but he said it’ll be buzzing by evening.
“On Mondays, we have wheelchair rugby,” he said. “Tuesday night, we have badminton. Wednesday night, we have more advanced badminton. So, the gym is in use every day almost, in the evenings.”
Down the hall in a multipurpose room, a woodworking class is underway, serving people with special needs.
Outside the building, there are more basketball courts, a soccer field, a playground and Humphrey Calder Community Garden; Interstate 195 whirs in the background.
“At one point, we had a honey bee box,” he said. “I think this is awesome.”
Christian says every so often, someone asks him: Who was Humphrey Calder, the building’s namesake?
“When I researched, there wasn’t a lot of information. It was just a small article,” he said. “And even with me working for the city as long as I have, a lot of the other buildings, we understood who was responsible for the name.”
But Christian said he didn’t know anything about this building.
“Wilford Cutshaw had been the long-time city engineer who had really overseen the growth and the development of Richmond’s parks in the late 1800s,” said Christina Vida, a curator at The Valentine Museum. “He passed away in 1907, and then just a few years later — in 1914 — is when Humphrey Calder was named the first superintendent of Richmond City Parks.”
At the turn of the 20th century, many cities in the South were wrapping up their post-Civil War rebuilding campaigns. But by the early part of the century, they began thinking about not just what they needed from their new cities, but what they wanted, Vida said.
Calder emphasized the importance of maintaining and beautifying parks, including Byrd Park and Shields Lake. He advocated for accessible green spaces for the community, even allowing children to play on the grass, which was uncommon at the time. “Keep off the grass” signs were removed from parks in 1921.
“You actually see him at various points throughout his career working with the newspaper to tell people in Richmond, hey, please don’t cut branches off the trees,” Vida said. “‘Please leave the flowers. It’s not the children doing this, it’s the adults. Can you guys please keep our city looking nice?’”
But Calder also emphasized that public spaces should be used. In one instance, a soccer association wanted to relocate all of its games to Byrd Park.
“And he says, ‘I would welcome them with open arms, because in my youth I was a soccer player too,’” Vida said. “So, you really kind of get this picture in reading about him that he was a man of the people and he just loved to have people use these spaces that he and his crew were caretaking for.”
Calder, whose authority extended to cemeteries and playgrounds as well, was ubiquitous.
He was quoted in numerous news articles, once for saving the lives of a group that’d fallen through the ice on Shields Lake. He lived nearby and was able to respond quickly.
In another article — published August 7, 1916, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch — he voiced support for public displays of affection in city parks, at a time when officials were contemplating their legality.
“If they choose to sit under an electric light with their arms around each other, alright. Every nice girl has a right to be courted under respectable circumstances,” Calder wrote. “And I reckon a park bench under one of these trees is as respectable as most other places, if not more so.”
A follow up Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial, headlined “Lovers Welcomed to the Parks,” stood with Calder in his support of public courtship.
Calder was a regular at Richmond City Council meetings, advocating for funding to add new parks and playgrounds. He was known for being “chippy” with the city council and the mayor when fighting to be included in the budget, Vida said.
Calder was also a man of his time, Vida said: “These are racially segregated spaces, so for the most part, all of these quotes that we’re talking about are for white Richmond residents.”
It wasn’t until the 1930s that Richmond built its first public space for Black families, partially funded by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs. It was Brook Field Park, where Arthur Ashe learned to play tennis. It closed in the early 1960s; the property is now home to Richmond’s main post office.
“He was not pushing for new parks to be built in Richmond’s Black communities,” Vida said. “But you do still get the sense that he was truly taking care of the spaces that he was responsible for and doing his best to make sure that these spaces were going to be passed on to the next generation in good condition.”
Calder was Richmond’s superintendent of parks until his death in 1930. A year later, Richmond City Council voted to name the new park along what’s now the Beltline Expressway after him: Humphrey Calder Playground.
