Richmond

The Atlas

Living in Richmond you develop a directional theory of dinner. North is 17th Avenue's noise and its reservations, south is the Loop's counters and its grocery run, and your house sits ten flat minutes from both, on a street where the loudest event is a framing crew building somebody's next house. You end up defending the calm like it was your idea.

Grounds

A level grid west of Crowchild Trail that rises toward its southern edge, high enough there that the odd corner catches downtown over the rooftops. No landmark and no strip of its own. The geography's whole argument is ten flat minutes on foot in either direction to somewhere loud. Twenty-Sixth Avenue's cycle route runs along the southern side and connects the community to the rest of the inner southwest without a hill in it, which is the closest thing Richmond has to a landmark and it is a painted line. Richmond Green sits nearby with open fields and playgrounds when the community's own small parks are not enough. What the grid lacks in incident it makes up in position, and the position is the entire product, which we state plainly because nothing on the street will. Every neighbouring community has a landmark, a strip or a river. Richmond has the distance to all of them, measured in flat minutes, and prices itself on that.

The land was part of the Nimmons family's 3-D Bar Ranch, the same holding that was subdivided to make Bankview, and the community came into the city in two pieces, first in 1907 and then in 1910. It then did very little for forty years. The bulk of what stands here was built in the 1950s, plain and small on regular lots, which is the stock the current rebuild has been steadily consuming since the early two thousands. Richmond and Knob Hill share an association and a history and appear together on the civic paperwork. Almost nobody uses both names in the same sentence, and the signs and the conversation have settled on Richmond alone. So have we.

Homes

Infill semis and townhomes at density, original bungalows thinning year by year, new detached builds on the corners. Richmond has been one of the inner southwest's steadiest rebuild markets for two decades, and the streets read as the timeline of that work, every vintage of infill present and datable by its cladding. That timeline is useful to a buyer, because it shows what the builders learned, and we read it cladding by cladding. The early pairs are narrow and dark at the back. The recent ones handle light properly and put the kitchen where a family actually stands. The surviving bungalows are the land play. A buyer who wants a yard more than a floor plan can still find one here, though the window is closing block by block and the price already reflects what a builder would pay. Townhome rows have arrived along the edges where the zoning allows them, which broadens the entry point without changing the interior streets at all.

Everyday

The school and community hall sit inside the grid and the association runs skating and a summer camp out of them. There is no commercial street inside the boundary and there never has been, so every errand here starts with a walk out of it. The daily list splits by direction, north to 17th for dinner, south to the Loop for groceries and coffee, with the 26th Avenue route running flat between them for the bikes and the school run. Westbrook's station waits across the community's western side when the day goes downtown. Richmond Green covers the bigger open space, with fields, playgrounds and room for the sort of afternoon a small park cannot hold, and the golf course beside it for anyone who wants one. This is a community that borrows almost everything and owns its streets, which sounds like a criticism and is the reason people move here, and the reason it belongs on the list of a household that read the map wrong the first time. Nobody is driving through Richmond to get anywhere, so the streets belong to the households on them. Summer runs on the back lanes and the bike route. Winter runs on the rink and the two ten-minute walks, which get no shorter and no less useful when it snows.

Edges

Seventeenth Avenue north, 19th and 20th Street east, 33rd Avenue south, 25A Street west. Four roads, and the community's whole character comes from sitting inside them rather than on any of them. South, Marda Loop supplies the main street. West, Killarney and Glengarry continues the same grid with a pool in it. The wider map sits on the full neighbourhoods index.

The Richmond Edit

Where to start. Hours move, so check before you go.

Richmond Green
The community's big green, mid-remake. New courts and a playground are on the City's build schedule.

The 26th Avenue route
The flat ride that connects the whole inner southwest without a hill in it.

The walk south to the Loop
Ten minutes, ending in coffee. The neighbourhood's standard opening move.

The walk north to 17th
Ten minutes the other way, ending in dinner.

We keep the listings on the neighbourhood page, updated as the market moves. Start with Richmond homes for sale.