When life gives you litter, you plant a flower bed. That’s Grace Dean’s motto, at least.
Dean, 81, has lived in her Diamond Hill neighborhood home for about 50 years. Shortly after she moved in, she noticed people were throwing trash in her yard — tossing it as they drove or walked by.
“People did not take care of the neighborhood anymore,” she said. “They just let it go.”
Dean’s solution was to show that she cared. And she hoped that would rub off on her neighbors.
“I put a flower bed out there, and it did stop people from throwing the trash,” she said. “I was amazed.”
Today, Lynchburg staff and Diamond Hill leaders are adopting Dean’s strategy in an ongoing effort to revitalize the neighborhood.
Diamond Hill is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, contributing to Lynchburg’s “City of Seven Hills” nickname. It occupies a half-square mile tucked between downtown, the Lynchburg Expressway, 12th Street and Kemper Street. Over the years, the neighborhood of about 2,000 residents has experienced disinvestment and accumulated concerns regarding safety, housing and infrastructure.
In 2024, the city council adopted a Diamond Hill plan that envisions a sustainable future for the neighborhood. Since then, various projects have been checked off the list, including a 12th Street mural completed this month. Residents contributed ideas for the artwork’s design and helped paint it, Dean said, and its vibrant colors and many faces reflect the spirit of Diamond Hill.
Dean said initiatives like the mural made her optimistic that “maybe soon the neighborhood begins to feel like a neighborhood again,” even though there’s still much work to be done.
“At least the city is letting us know, ‘We haven’t forgotten about Diamond Hill,’” she said.
A closer look at the Diamond Hill plan
The Diamond Hill Neighborhood Plan takes a look at the trends of the area and the needs of the people who call it home.
About 42% of Diamond Hill households make less than $35,000 a year, compared to about 30% of all Lynchburg households, according to the neighborhood plan. About 65% of Diamond Hill residents are Black, compared to about 28% of Lynchburg residents.
“In recent years, the neighborhood has experienced a period of disinvestment. Recognizing a rising tide of housing cases and safety concerns, city staff initiated” the process that would lead to the revitalization efforts, according to the plan.
City staff spent about a year and a half gathering input from residents through workshops and engagement opportunities before the plan was adopted in 2024.
Some major themes of the plan include:
- Economy: The plan envisions the 12th Street corridor as a new business hub. Numerous undeveloped lots and vacant buildings have untapped commercial capacity, and the plan says access to essential goods and services such as groceries and laundromats should be expanded.
- Housing: About 25% of Diamond Hill’s housing is owner-occupied, compared to 43% for Lynchburg as a whole. Residents expressed concerns about the affordability of housing, unsafe housing conditions and accountability for landlords.
- Safety: In 2023, three Diamond Hill youths lost their lives in separate incidents of gun violence, and the Lynchburg Police Department began increasing patrols due to a high volume of calls. The neighborhood plan calls for initiatives for safer streets, including expanded Neighborhood Watch efforts.
The plan also identifies strengths in Diamond Hill, including historic districts and landmarks and community anchors such as Diamond Hill Baptist Church, Dunbar Middle School, Payne Elementary School and neighborhood centers. The plan recommends that those existing touchpoints be used and supported to improve residents’ sense of community and access to resources.
Dean has moved in and out of the Diamond Hill neighborhood through different phases of her life. She first moved to Diamond Hill while she was in the third grade, and she grew up there throughout the 1950s. At that time, the neighborhood was defined by welcoming streets, businesses and neighbors, she said. Her favorite memories include running errands at family-owned grocery stores and pharmacies, going to community dances at the Hunton Branch YMCA and regularly eating breakfast with her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, who had an impressive collection of dolls. Dean collects dolls today in her honor, she said.
“Then, no one ever locked their doors, or rarely did,” she said. “We knew everyone’s names, and everyone was always saying, ‘Come in.’ That’s the community that I grew up in.”
Over time, businesses closed, housing deteriorated and the neighborhood changed, Dean said. Today, she “would not, could not” leave the door unlocked for fear for her safety, she said. And she doesn’t know the names of many of her neighbors, who are mostly renters. Many of the storefronts she frequented are empty, and Diamond Hill is widely considered a food desert, she added.
A mural to bring new life to 12th Street
The Diamond Hill Neighborhood Plan creates a long list of tasks requiring years of work, seemingly endless stacks of grant applications and patience, said Charlotte Lester, neighborhood planner for Lynchburg.
“Some projects can be completed quickly. Some are more complex and may take longer. But all of them are important,” Lester said. “You have to have small projects to keep the momentum going.”
One such momentum-generator was completed on 12th Street this month, Lester said, in the form of a mural titled “Every Color Speaks.”
The artwork is located on the retaining wall at the corner of 12th and Fillmore streets, across from R.S. Payne Elementary School. It was created by local artists Christina Davis and Jawansa Hall and uses bright colors and abstract lines to represent leaders of the neighborhood. Davis said she opted for the abstract design so residents can see the past, the future, themselves and others reflected in the faces on the wall — not just one “right answer” or interpretation of specific historical figures.
“A sense of pride is what we’re passing out, and a confidence, and an ability to feel like part of your community,” Davis said of the mural.
Public art was identified as a strategy in the neighborhood plan to revive dormant areas. Research shows that murals can discourage vandalism, encourage neighbors to pause and connect with each other, and show that areas are being invested in and taken care of — which promotes economic development and safety. The mural was one of six projects across the state this year funded by the Virginia Walkability Action Institute, which aims to foster safe, active transportation, like walking and biking.
“There are people who say, ‘It’s always been trashy here, so why should I care?’” Davis said. “This is how you fight that battle. You take the first step. You have to be a leader and show the example that you care.”
Davis said she had a team of about 15 residents who volunteered to help her paint, and dozens more who provided feedback through surveys and meetings as the mural was being designed. She traced chalk outlines on the wall so volunteers could fill them in with paint as if they were coloring in a coloring book, she said.
Dean helped to paint the mural, she said, and was honored to leave a mark in the neighborhood she’s called home for decades.
There’s a long way to go to rebuild the Diamond Hill that Dean grew up in, she said, but “I see some life coming back, and I’m happy to see improvements like the mural bearing fruit.” She hopes investments in quality housing come next, because that’s the neighborhood’s biggest need, she said.
Davis has completed more than a dozen public art projects in Lynchburg, including Art Alley and the community market mural in downtown Lynchburg. The 12th Street mural feels special, she said, because she’s walked past the retaining wall more times than she can count. It was on her route to get her favorite meal at Crown Fried Chicken and a 7-Eleven slushy on the side when she was growing up in Lynchburg, she said.
She hopes the mural encourages residents to slow down, talk with each other and dream about what’s next for their community — rather than simply pass by, as she did so many times on her walks along 12th Street.
A list of projects already completed
The mural joins a list of other projects completed in Diamond Hill since the neighborhood plan was adopted in 2024, Lester said.
Last year, Pierce Street was the center of the work, Lester said, with water infrastructure upgrades, sidewalk improvements and the installation of a tree line that provides shade and separates road traffic from houses, lawns and pedestrian areas.
Also in 2025, community leaders got the Hunton Branch YMCA, which is now known as the Hunton-Randolph Community Center, recognized on the state and national registers of historic places. The neighborhood plan describes it as “an important recreational and social space for Black residents during the civil rights era,” when community centers were segregated.
And this year, the city’s focus has been on the community schoolyard at Dunbar Middle School, Lester said. The school has prime green spaces that have historically been underused, she said, because they weren’t easily accessible to the public on evenings, weekends and summer breaks when the school was not using them.
Improvements include a wayfinding system unveiled this spring that welcomes visitors at each of the schoolyard’s five pedestrian entrances and gives directions to various places and amenities within the park. The city is also wrapping up the first phase of a three-phase project to enhance park features. Projects in the works, Lester said, are building walking pathways, adding seating and improving landscaping and fencing.
It all adds up, said Sarah McAllister Blankenship, executive director of Pierce Street Gateway, a nonprofit based in Diamond Hill that seeks to preserve the history of the area while running a cultural and educational hub in one of its oldest storefronts.
“The city is starting small to uplift our streetscapes, but that improves the neighborhood quality overall. It makes it a place that people want to move to and then manage and take care of,” she said. “It’s the stepping stones that will have a much larger effect.”
When visitors come to Pierce Street Gateway for its educational programs or community garden, their journey can now continue through other parts of the neighborhood, Blankenship said. She can direct them to stay in town to check out the mural, visit the schoolyard or take a walk along the streets that are now cool from the shade — in the area that has more historical markers in a two-and-a-half block span than any other space of its size in Virginia, she said.
The Diamond Hill neighborhood is packed with history via four recognized historic districts, according to the neighborhood plan. Notable figures include local leaders like Clarence W. Seay, who led Dunbar High School to be one of the top-rated Black high schools in the segregated South and served as the first Black professor at Lynchburg College and the city’s first Black vice mayor.
National history makers also called the area home, like R. Walter “Whirlwind” Johnson, who led the effort to desegregate the sport of tennis, and Anne Spencer, a prominent Harlem Renaissance poet who became the first Black woman to be included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
Lester said further implementation of the neighborhood plan largely relies on securing funding, which is why projects happen piece by piece. So far, projects have been funded by Community Development Block Grants, which are federal dollars allocated to eligible city areas, and smaller pools such as a grant from AARP.
A U.S. Department of Transportation grant is powering an ongoing initiative to improve transportation in the 12th Street corridor, Lester said. Other projects will have to wait until proper funding becomes available and is secured.
“I’ve learned that it’s important to take the time to keep the community engaged along the way,” she said.
Bringing in businesses, remediating abandoned housing units, improving code compliance for existing buildings, making streets safer and other long-term goals of the plan are initiatives still years in the making. Small-scale projects such as the mural can “show progress and show investment and generate additional interest in the community, from the community,” she added.
Davis said she has “a long list of old walls” that could use a pop of color, and she hopes the 12th Street mural isn’t her last in Diamond Hill.
