Opposites attract on Cabell, one of city’s most historic streets

If you drive down Cabell Street from one end to the other, you will travel exactly a mile.

Along the way, you will cross over asphalt and brick, past small bungalows and broad-shouldered mansions and vacant lots, and through three centuries of history. It is arguably the most interesting mile in the city of Lynchburg.

Like Rivermont Avenue, its iconic larger neighbor, Cabell Street is a thoroughfare of contrasts. Within its 11 blocks, it shelters wealthy and poor, newcomers and natives, transient renters and resourceful urban pioneers. It also serves as the spine and nerve center of Daniel’s Hill, a National Historic Register neighborhood bordered on the east by the James River and on the west by Blackwater Creek.

Unlike Rivermont, however, Cabell Street has become a road to nowhere. The street was pinched off at its lower end when the Williams Viaduct was torn down in the 1980s, turning a popular shortcut to Madison Heights into a dead end.

Map: A Walk Down Cabell Street

Photos and audio slideshows tell the stories of the people and places of Cabell Street

Last year, the closing of the D Street bridge to vehicular traffic eliminated the only alternative route for drivers. This fall, when that bridge is demolished, even pedestrians will be forced to travel the length of the street to get out.

Curiously, this latest logistical development appears to have simultaneously united and divided the diverse citizenry of Daniel’s Hill.

When the D Street bridge was open, that was the route taken by residents of lower Cabell to reach Rivermont. Above the intersection with F Street — generally considered the dividing line between what had essentially become two Cabell Streets — the exit route led to the upper end of the street where it connects with Rivermont.

“Now, everybody has to leave the same way,” said Mary Brown, who has worked for 30 years at the Daniel’s Hill Center. “That means the people in the big houses get to see part of the real world.”

A world that includes those who loiter, gamble, sell drugs and sometimes engage in gunplay around the intersection of Rivermont and Cabell. To the chagrin of Cabell residents like Mike Bedsworth, co-owner of the Carriage House bed & breakfast and president of the recently formed Daniel’s Hill Historic Society, that gritty tableau creates a false — and, in Bedsworth’s case, damaging — first impression.

Visitors to Carriage Hill never used to see Cabell Street at its funkiest, because they came in through D Street and were greeted by the palatial Point of Honor. Now, they find the first block a bit off-putting, despite a small garden planted by local community activist Delia Hooks.

“I’ve had people call from their car phones to cancel their reservations,” Bedsworth said, “telling us that they just don’t feel comfortable in ‘a neighborhood like this.’”

This is nothing new, said Cynthia McDaniel, who helped conduct a tour of historic Cabell Street homes last year.

“When I was growing up in Dearington, I wasn’t allowed to come over here,” she said, “It was supposed to be too dangerous.”

She didn’t believe that, and neither does Grace Fletcher, who lives near the top of the street.

“I don’t see this neighborhood as dangerous,” she said. “You’ve just got some kids who can be an aggravation. Like, they’ll walk in the middle of the street and be real slow getting out of your way.”

Crime statistics tend to bear that out. Apart from the Rivermont/Cabell corner, there appears to be no more violent behavior than anywhere else in and around downtown. And the farther down Cabell you travel, the more placid it appears.

“We can’t help feeling mistreated,” Cabell resident Olivia Bowles said at one Daniel’s Hill Neighborhood Watch meeting. “People think we’re all drug-infested, and we’re not. You’ll have to excuse us for having a bit of an attitude.”

“We’ve never had any trouble where we are,” said Bedsworth, who moved here from Springfield with his wife Kathy in 2003.

To those who love it, Cabell Street is a genteel throwback, a time machine. As the numbers on the blocks go down, the age of the houses goes up. This was one of the early frontiers for Lynchburg expansion, and Point of Honor dates back to 1815. Its first owner, George Cabell, was the personal physician to Patrick Henry, who died under his care.

For decades, Cabell (who made most of his money from raising tobacco, not practicing medicine) gazed down from his hill in splendid isolation. Then, in 1857, William Daniel Jr. raised up the Rivermont house on what is now F Street between Cabell and Norwood.

Gradually, some of the city’s other captains of industry left downtown proper for Daniel’s Hill. By the turn of the 20th century, a decade after the Rivermont Bridge was built, Cabell Street had become Lynchburg’s version of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Many of those mansions remain today, although most were converted to apartments during the street’s down cycle.

Mary Brown concedes that the street once had problems. One of her most painful memories is the drive-by shooting of a former recreation center problem child “who had grown into a fine young man” before being killed by a teenager from New York City who had been turned away from the victim’s graduation party.

“I went over to comfort his father, and I started crying, and he had to comfort me,” she said. “For the most part, though, these are great kids who come here.”

Maintaining peace and security along the entire length of Cabell remains a common goal of residents of both the upper and lower sections. On some other issues, however, there is less unanimity.

Take, for example, the matter of Greater Lynchburg Transit Company’s service. When the D Street Bridge was deemed unsafe for bus traffic last year, GLTC stopped its regular Cabell route.

“That’s been hard on a lot of folks,” said Becky Poe, a former City Council candidate who has helped rehabilitate several houses on Cabell and its side streets, “especially when they’ve got to carry heavy bags of groceries for a couple of blocks.”

Two public meetings on this issue have been held over the past year and a half — both at Mount Carmel Baptist Church, the unofficial capitol of upper Cabell, where longtime pastor Johnny Ford gets involved with his congregation’s civic as well as spiritual needs.

City and GLTC officials argued that the Cabell Street buses were underused, and that the company could dispatch a small bus to the home of residents who requested it in advance. Money to restore the regular route wasn’t forthcoming.

“I don’t know,” Ford said. “It just seems that we don’t get as much attention over here on Daniel’s Hill as the rest of the city.”

Or, as Grace Fletcher put it: “Whenever we hear the street sweeper go by, we know there’s something going on at Point of Honor. We know it isn’t for us.”

Mike Bedsworth took a different view, at least regarding the bus controversy.

“This might be controversial,” he said, “but I really think the weight of those buses had a lot to do with damaging the bridge in the first place. I don’t think they’re good for the street.”

Other residents complained that the buses were damaging the freshly uncovered brick portion of lower Cabell.

As always on Cabell Street, it depends on where you live.