A home in Church Hill puts Richmond’s East End streets and parks around your daily trips. The Fan places older town-house blocks west of VCU’s Monroe Park campus, with Pulse service along Broad Street. This guide follows the trips and services that shape everyday life in these two parts of Richmond.
Start with the trip you make most often
For VCU’s Monroe Park campus, the Fan’s eastern side and the Broad-and-Shafer VCU & VUU Pulse station are useful anchors. Allison Street serves the Fan and Sauer Center farther west; Science Museum station also serves parts of the neighborhood. A home deeper into the residential blocks adds a walk to these Broad Street stops. The GRTC station directory identifies the destinations and connecting routes.
Church Hill uses a different transit pattern. Route 12 connects Church Hill, Fairfield Court, Shockoe Bottom and downtown, with a Pulse connection at Shockoe Bottom. A trip toward the Fan can therefore involve the local bus, a transfer and the walk from a Broad Street station. A downtown destination served by Route 12 may need fewer steps.
Pulse currently requires no fare. GRTC lists ten-minute service during weekday peaks and fifteen to thirty minutes at other times, with possible temporary changes during its fleet transition. Those are Pulse frequencies, not a promise of the same wait on Route 12.
Grocery trips point toward different streets
From the Fan, the supermarket options discussed here sit along its northern side: Whole Foods at 2024 West Broad Street lists 8 a.m.–9 p.m. daily, while Kroger at 901 North Lombardy Street lists 7 a.m.–11 p.m. daily. A Broad Street transit trip can serve the Sauer Center grocery area as well as a commute.
Around Church Hill, The Market at 25th at 1330 North 25th Street is north of the historic core; Farm Fresh at 2320 East Main Street is south in Shockoe Bottom. They are different approaches from a home near East Broad Street. Route 12 names Farm Fresh among its destinations. These locations help establish a realistic shopping trip instead of treating the whole East End as one compact shopping area.
Fan street parking needs an address-level answer
The city’s Fan permit page lists eligible addresses by block and street side in two zones divided at Lombardy Street. North Lombardy is a neutral parking zone for holders of either permit. Being advertised as “in the Fan” does not by itself establish that a rental qualifies.
For a home without an included parking space, establish its permit eligibility before relying on resident street parking. Annual permits expire June 30. Temporary courtesy permits and annual visitor passes have different conditions; the city limits annual visitor passes to resident property owners who hold an annual permit. Renters should not assume that guest parking works the same way as their own resident decal.
Two older residential settings
Church Hill’s Saint John’s Church Historic District records gradual residential development through the nineteenth century, with buildings of different dates and styles. The Fan’s historic-register profile describes blocks of town houses from around the turn of the twentieth century, with similar heights and setbacks but varied porches and rooflines.
Photo: MonkeyBBGB / Wikimedia Commons · CC0. June 2, 2023. Photographer reports slight digital alteration to reflect the original scene. Resized and converted to WebP; display layouts may crop the image.
Choose outdoor space by the entrance you would use
Near Church Hill, Chimborazo Park at 3201 East Broad Street provides a larger park setting. Its lower eastern terrace has separate large- and small-dog areas. The playground and community garden are a separate site at 29th and East Grace streets, so a home near one entrance is not necessarily equally close to the other.
In the Fan, Scuffletown Park is a smaller garden inside a residential block, reached through the alley by 404 Strawberry Street. It has benches, picnic tables and resident-tended planting areas, with city-listed sunrise-to-sunset hours. It serves a sitting-outdoors break within the blocks; Chimborazo offers a different scale of outing.
For the street-level details and dated photographs, open the Church Hill profile and Fan profile. The Richmond city page adds housing figures, citywide research and the neighborhood map.