Court End wasn't always polite. Before the Federal-era mansions went up, the same blocks held a vibrant theater district and a large outdoor market. Both burned out, in their different ways. The Richmond Theatre fire of December 26, 1811 destroyed most of the Theater Block and killed seventy-two people, including the Governor of Virginia - one of the worst urban disasters of its era. Robert Mills, who would later design the Washington Monument in DC, was hired to build Monumental Church on the ruined ground as both a sanctuary and a memorial. The market on Shockoe Hill never recovered either, eclipsed by the better-located First Market in Shockoe Bottom. With the entertainment and commerce gone, the neighborhood could remake itself as something quieter. According to historian Mary Wingfield Scott, the elite moved in during three distinct waves: the 1780s, the 1810s, and the 1840s. By mid-century the Court End was wall-to-wall mansions, churches, synagogues, and the academic buildings of the Richmond Female Institute and Hampden-Sydney Medical College.

When Richmond became the Confederate capital in 1861, Court End housed the new government. Jefferson Davis and his family moved into the Brockenbrough-Crenshaw House at 12th and Clay Streets - the building that would later be renamed, in the 1890s, the White House of the Confederacy. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens lived briefly in the Bruce-Lancaster House on the opposite corner. The wealth that had concentrated here over three generations stayed in place, but now it served a different government. After Appomattox, Davis's house became the military headquarters for federally occupied Virginia, then for the next twenty years served as Richmond Central School - the city's first public school, operating in the rooms where the Confederate cabinet had once met. The architectural fabric absorbed each new use the way old neighborhoods do, accumulating meaning rather than replacing it.

Two parallel projects reshaped Court End starting in the 1890s. The first was consolidation: the small medical colleges that had begun in the neighborhood merged into the Medical College of Virginia, which grew into a major research and trauma center and merged with VCU in 1968. MCV's expansion swallowed block after block of Court End. The second project was preservation. In 1890 the Confederate Memorial Literary Society formed to save Davis's old residence from demolition; in 1896 it opened as what is now the Museum of the Confederacy. In 1892 the Valentine family started a non-profit to preserve local history, opening the Valentine Richmond History Center in 1898. In 1911 the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities saved the John Marshall House. The two projects - expanding hospital and preserved past - existed in tension for over a century. VCU has since saved a number of historic buildings within its medical footprint, including the William Beers House, the Egyptian Building, First Baptist Church, the Putney Houses, the William H. Grant House, and the Leigh House.

Mary Wingfield Scott's 1950 prediction that 'all traces of Richmond's past will soon disappear from this, the most historic of its many old neighborhoods' has come partly true and partly not. Court End is no longer residential; most of it is institutionally owned by VCU, the Commonwealth, and the City. But the John Marshall House still stands. So does Monumental Church. The Egyptian Building - Thomas Somerville Stewart's astonishing 1845 Egyptian Revival lecture hall for the Hampden-Sydney Medical College - is still in use. The Valentine, the White House of the Confederacy, and the Wickham House have all been restored to their original appearances and remain open to the public. Each December the neighborhood opens its buildings for Court End Christmas. The Court End Passport, sold by the Valentine, packages the major museums together. The free attractions include the Library of Virginia and the Richmond City Hall Observation Deck. The neighborhood that the Federal era built is still here, working a different shift.