New name for Lee Bridge withdrawn
Jeremy M. Lazarus | 11/3/2022, 6 p.m.
For now, the name of slavery-defending Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee will remain on the Route 1 bridge over the James River in Richmond.
Plans to rename the span the Belvidere Bridge were scotched Wednesday when the sponsor of the renaming resolution, 5th District City Councilwoman Stephanie A. Lynch, withdrew it. Council was poised to vote on her proposal Monday, Nov. 14.
Ms. Lynch did not publicly comment, but her decision followed a report in the Oct. 20 edition of the Free Press on the name. The news story noted that Belvidere was the name of a long-gone Richmond plantation that operated with enslaved people.
The original owner, William Byrd III, son of Richmond’s founder, named as Belvidere the plantation home he built in the 1750s overlooking the James in what is now Oregon Hill. The name means “beautiful view” in Italian.
Ms. Lynch has been pushing to rename the bridge for the past two years, but has seen little progress and offered Belvidere as a way to break the impasse.
