The green space in the 800 block of Green Street was originally part of the large estate of Dr. Nathaniel Terry Green. Dr. Green was a native of Halifax County, born on the 10th of March 1800, the seventh of eight children born to Captain Berryman Green and Nancy Terry Green. He married Anne Colquehoun in 1818, and the couple had ten children. Dr. Green came to Danville at an early age and studied medicine under the elder Dr. Paxton and taught school under Levi Holbrook at the Danville Male Academy. He later went to Philadelphia to obtain a formal medical training and returned to Danville to practice medicine with Dr. Patton.

The seat of the Green estate, Dr. Green’s family home, was located on the block of Jefferson Avenue between Colquehoun and Lee Streets, later addressed as 653 Jefferson Avenue (Street). When he prepared his will in March of 1860, he left his house and 20 acres of land to his living, unmarried daughters, Maria, Julia, and Sarah. Dr. Green died just months before the opening of the Civil War and could not have imagined what secession and hardship was in store for his family or his estate.

According to Karen Lynn Byrne in her master’s thesis on Danville’s Civil War Prisons, which she wrote in 1993 for Virginia Polytechnic Institute,  by 1863 this “unique” and “exceedingly attractive city” “presented an appearance of general desolation. ”The price of food had skyrocketed. Butter, which had sold for 20¢ before the war rose to $3.00 per pound by 1863. Potatoes went from $1.37 a bushel to $6.00. And those were the prices for items that could be got. Coffee disappeared, and flour became so scarce it was auctioned off by the ounce.

As we discussed in a previous article on Danville’s Civil War Prisons, Danville’s native population during this time dwindled, refugees—mostly women and children—from the embattled regions of Virginia, from the coast and the environs to the North, flooded into the town, swelling the population to 6,000. The lack of housing reached a crisis level when hotels and boarding houses ceased to have vacancies. Local families opened their homes to strangers so that, “every house was filled to the limit of its capacity.” These new inhabitants did not add to the labor force, and instead placed an additional burden upon the city’s waning resources.

That strain would only be made greater when, in May of 1862, the Confederacy established a military hospital in Danville on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Loyal Street. Whether that hospital occupied a building that was standing already (that of the Danville Female Academy, perhaps) or on an empty lot nearby, it is difficult to say. Regardless, the resources such a facility required for the treatment of its sick and injured (both Confederate and Union alike) were difficult, if not impossible, to come by, and these wounded soldiers arrived in Danville more to suffer and die than to recuperate. These deaths required burial, and with the arrival of Union prisoners in 1863 and, with them, the disease and illness they brought, the city was soon desperate for green space on which to bury these men. What other purpose the city had for wishing to purchase 35 acres of the Green estate is open to speculation. The Green home site became Green Hill and Freedman’s Cemeteries, but a portion of that property was also set aside as permanent green space.

On the Beers map of 1877, that green space is identified as the “Grove” but soon became known as Green Street Park.

Since its establishment, Green Street Park has vacillated between a garden of recreation and community harmony and one of violence and desolation. We know little about it between the years of the city’s acquisition and the turn of the 20th century. The Park’s earliest recorded episode of violence, however, occurred in July of 1907 when an altercation occurred between two gentlemen, George D. Gravely a driver for Star Laundry Company and Samuel G. Smith who worked as a butcher for Walters & Moorman. The two men were neighbors on Paxton Street. The butcher’s shop was located in the five forks area, and as Mr. Gravely passed it on the way to the park, he saw the oldest son of Mr. Smith sitting on the shop steps waiting for the store to open. As he passed by, Mr. Gravely said the young man threw a rock at him. He asked where the young man’s father was and was told that the senior Mr. Smith was sitting in the park before the start of his work day, and so Mr. Gravely headed in that direction. The altercation happened, according to witnesses, near the corner of Colquehoun and Jefferson Streets when Mr. Gravely approached Mr. Smith and told him that something must be done about his children’s propensity to throw rocks at him. Smith said he didn’t see what he could do about it, and Mr. Gravely accused Smith of being the instigator, supplying rocks to his children for the purpose of throwing them at Mr. Gravely. Smith called Gravely a liar, and Gravely through a fist, fracturing Smith’s jaw. Another fist struck him in the eye and knocked him to the ground. Gravely, for a moment, had him pinned, and Smith told him to get off of him. Gravely raised himself, and in so doing, pulled a gun from his pocket and shot Smith twice in the head. One struck, but not fatally, entering through the top of his head and planting itself in his throat. Smith lived, but by the time of the trial in September, he had lost considerable weight and appeared quite frail The September trial resulted in a hung jury, and the charges were retried in December. Gravely was found guilty of felonious assault and sentenced to thirteen months in the state penitentiary. By October he was released, having served a reduced sentence for good behavior, and upon returning home was charged with a civil suit by Mr. Smith. Smith won and was warded $650 in damages. Mr. Smith survived his wounds and died in 1940 at the age of 82.

In 1911, the park experienced its first period of endangerment (one of many that would occur over the ensuing years) when the school board proposed building a new school to replace the Loyal Street school. The new school, along with a playground, would be built on the park grounds. The motion met with considerable opposition. At the next city council meeting, the neighborhood (those living on the streets surrounding the park) turned out in numbers to protest the idea. It was ultimately abandoned, but by 1915, the city was threatening once again to use the park as a school site, this time for a new high school.

An editorial of the period read, “Our city, perhaps, has never done very much for Green Street Park, not even conferring a fitting name upon our only real “square”. But then Nature has done done so much that perhaps the greatest thing the city could do for it was to let it alone. IN its unadorned and unspoiled beauty, despite a few ancient assaults with its splendid surviving grove of Druidical oaks, it is, by Nature, the finest public reservation in the city of Danville; and any visiting metropolitan park commissioner would undoubtedly so pronounce it. Let us hope and pray that some angel with a flaming sword will guard this garden of our artistic innocency from the lasidious approach and specious pledging  of all the utlitarians once before cast out!”

Around 1920, lights were installed in the park with the idea that the adult residents of an evening might enjoy the evening air after their children had been put to bed. When walkways were at last installed, they caused quite a controversy. Nowhere else in the whole of the United States, editorials of the time said, had brick walkways been used in parks. Many thought the idea ridiculous and something that could only take away from the pristine and untouched beauty of the park in all its wildness.

Little else in the way of development had taken place up to this point. By July of that year, playground equipment was being installed a neighborhood recreation organization was planning recreational training courses to be held in the park so that others, having received said training, could educate and encourage others in their recreational pursuits. In 1922, a wading pool was installed.

Two years later, neighbors were complaining of noise at night when young men with no respect for the peaceful quiet of the night or of their neighbor’s rest invaded the park to play on the equipment and in so doing made all sorts of noise. The solution, or so it was proposed, was to remove the playground altogether. Once again, petitions were signed and neighbors protested. The city, instead, installed a regular patrol to keep the peace. The effort was successful, and the playground was saved.

Sometime in the 1920s, it was proposed that a fire station might be erected in the park. The city attorney at the time advised the city council that the terms of the purchase of the property stated that the land could only be used for recreation.

In the 1930s, Memorial Day celebrations included the encampment of National Guard who spent the night before the holiday billeted in the park. In the morning, they marched to the cemetery and there conducted services. The park was also a place where disgruntled mill workers met to plan their strikes and to set up demonstrations.

Throughout the 1940s, the park was a haven of bustling activity where people met to enjoy team sports such as baseball, volleyball, tennis, and badminton or “areal tennis”. The baseball teams, called “twilight teams”, held evening games and competed with other neighborhoods. There was even a community singing program and supervised play times for children whose parents worked or desired a break, or who wished to gather and meet with other mothers. After the games, the community would sometimes show movies on a large screen, proving the park’s  value as a community gathering place.

In 1955, the school board was once again requesting the acquisition of Green Street Park for the construction of a primary school building. The city council met in February of that year and flatly denied the proposal, but when the city met again in April, the resolution passed in a 5-4 vote. A week later, a second vote was held, and it, too, passed. The request was made as a result of the closure of Robert E. Lee School but passed only on the condition that no other solution could be found. The neighborhood was once more up in arms and appeared at the third meeting to protest loudly the proposal. Eventually it was remembered that terms of the purchase of the land stipulated that it could only be used for recreation. The city sought to change the terms, but eventually abandoned the idea.

***This story is developing. Watch your inbox for the October 2024 edition of the Gazette for the full story.