The beautiful stone arch in Hayes Arboretum on the west side of the park and visible from Elks Country Club Road is one of those little mysteries around Richmond.
The arch originally covered the door facing 8th Street on the old Garfield School. This view is looking toward the southeast.
This school burned down in 1924, but how did this fragment get to the Arboretum?
According to an article in the Graphic from 1963, a man named John Harrington purchased the arch. “They were tearing it down, and I was thinking of going into the nursery business. I owned some ground — part of the Hayes estate now — and so I bought the archway and had it moved out there to be the entranceway for the nursery. But I never went ahead with the nursery, and I sold the property soon after that,” he said.
The Graphic article continues, “In the moving process, the entranceway was taken completely apart and each block numbered. Then the loads of blocks were carted to the present site, mortared and fitted together again.”
— Sue King