A short walk southeast from the Court End District, a very different neighborhood allows a glimpse of another side of the Richmond story. Split down the middle by the raised I-95 freeway, the increasingly gentrified (and regularly flooded) riverfront warehouse district of Shockoe Bottom still holds a few palpable reminders of Richmond's industrial past among the restaurants and nightclubs on its cobblestone streets. From Shockoe Slip , a prettified old wharf area rebuilt in the 1890s after being destroyed in the Civil War, Cary Street runs east along the waterfront, lined by a wall of brick warehouses known as Tobacco Row .

Nearby, Richmond's oldest building, an appropriately gloomy two hundred-and-fifty-year-old stone house at 1914 E Main St, serves as the Edgar Allan Poe Museum (Tues-Sat 10am-4pm, Mon & Sun noon-5pm; $6). Poe spent much of his life in Richmond and considered it his hometown; he wrote the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym while working on the Richmond-based magazine Southern Literary Messenger . The museum displays Poe memorabilia plus a model of Richmond as it was in his day.

Church Hill , a few blocks northeast, is one of Richmond's oldest surviving residential districts, its decorative eighteenth-century houses, adorned with cast-iron porches and rambling magnolia-filled front gardens, looking out over the James River. Capping the hill at the heart of the neighborhood, St John's Church at 2401 E Broad St (Mon-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 1-4pm, last tour 3.30pm; $3), which dates back to 1741, is best known as the place where, during a 1775 debate on whether the Virginia colony should raise a militia against the British, Patrick Henry made the impassioned plea: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, to be purchased at the price of chains of slavery? I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." His speech is re-enacted by an actor every Sunday between Memorial and Labor days at 2pm, after the religious services.

Shockoe Bottom and Church Hill

• Shockoe Bottom and Church Hill

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