I’ve had an occasion to ascend to the top of the Carillon, and see his magnificent vista. Richmond’s leafiness is best appreciated from here.

Don’t know if you noticed, but about halfway up the tower is an apartment where the park keeper once lived. Can you imagine? What a place to take a date. I think it’s all crowded now by cell phone and electronic communications relay equipment.

The Carillon was designed by Ralph Adams Cram, the same architect who envisioned the University of Richmond campus — and Princeton.

http://www.vahistorical.org/onthisday/3228.htm

The General Assembly moved in 1924 to erect a memorial to Virginians who fought in World War I. A competition for designs caused, of course, a controversy. The original winners were Marcellus Wright and Paul Cret. They designed a kind of stark, Deco Heroic columned Hall of Honor with a brazier for a flame of memorial and a tomb for an unknown soldier.

A movement sprung up to halt this construction and finally the money was pulled and work already completed was ripped down. A proposed reflection pond was never installed, which is the reason there’s that long, rectangular swale at the front of the park.

(You can see the architectural rendering of his proposed monument at the Library of Virginia’s Never Built Virginia exhibit: http://www.lva.virginia.gov/whoweare/exhibits/neverbuilt/)

The lower chambers of the Carillon contained a short-lived World War I museum.