RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens is the starting point for the UCI elite men’s and women’s team training and trials. The grounds here have been connected to bicycles for more than 120 years.
Executive Director Shane Tippett describes the 19th-century businessman and philanthropist’s earliest efforts.
“Because there were a number of his contemporaries who were involved with the cycling craze, he bought ten-acres on this side of Lakeside lake and constructed the Lakeside Wheel Club in 1894-1895 as a club house or a cycling club.”
That cycling club is still on the grounds, known to visitors these days as the historic Bloemendaal House. Ginter spent his cigarette fortune developing communities and amenities like the Wheel Club to bring people to the North Side.
“They could ride this sidewalk underneath the club house, store their bikes and then go upstairs and enjoy refreshments,” Tippett gives 8News Anchor Amy Lacey a tour outside the Lakeside Wheel Club, present-day Bloemendaal House. “They cycled a number of miles on a 30-pound bicycle wearing woolen clothes so this was probably a good place to take a break, get some water, rest. This was a place to gather steam so you could cycle back into town.”
It was a different time, but signs remain of those early days of bicycles and the Club. The library on the grounds includes a silver loving cup resident Albert S. Tanner won for a bicycle race.
Now excitement is growing about UCI and the man whose efforts undoubtedly paved the way for it.
Tippett says about Ginter, “The idea that the world that he traveled in would come to us bringing a bicycling craze that’s lasted another century, I think that would please him mightily.”
The Lakeside Wheel Club, present-day Bloemendaal House, will be open for self-guided tours from 5 to 7 p.m. nightly during the UCI Road World Championships, September 21 to 25.
Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens will also offer a Themed Walk for UCI Worlds Week: From Bicycle Club to Botanical Garden, September 22 to 24.
