Bloemendaal, originally the Lakeside Wheel Club, is a clubhouse in Richmond, Virginia built by Lewis Ginter in 1894. Ginter built it as a wheel club, a gathering place for bicyclists. His niece, Grace Arents, inherited it after his death in 1913. It became known as Bloemendaal. It is now part of the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Bloemendaal means "valley of flowers". As a wheel club it was reached by the Missing Link Trail, which ran parallel to the Boulevard and Hermitage Road. Non-riders used the Lakeside Trolley. The clubhouse served "freshly made" ice cream. Ginter developed Lakeside Park around the clubhouse including a zoo and a public nine-hole golf course. The Richmond Times-Dispatch described in on March 15, 1896 as: "Within the enclosure are two large sheets of water, the clubhouse of the Lakeside bicycle club, a casino, cafe, bowling alley, billiard rooms, deer house, park office, and apartments for officers. The lake...specially stocked with fish... supplied with an abundance of rowboats and a speedy two-horse power naptha launch." It is now the Jefferson-Lakeside Country Club. Grace Arents remodeled the building and had a second story added. It was used as a convalescent home for Richmond's sick children. After the founding of the Instructional Visiting Nurses Association, the convalescent home was no longer needed. Arents and Mary Garland Smith moved into the mansion and named it Bloemendaal in homage to the Ginter family's Dutch ancestors. She died in 1926 and left the property to the City of Richmond with the stipulation that after Smith died it was to be developed in a botanical garden honoring Lewis Ginter. Smith died in 1968 at the age of 100. The city of Richmond took possession of the property and it "languished". The property and its gardens were rescued by botanists, horticulturists and passionate citizens who formed the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Inc.
Lakeside Wheel Club
Upon Lewis Ginter's return to Richmond from Australia, the Major began acquiring additional land on Richmond's northside. He created the Lakeside Wheel Club on the land he bought four years earlier. The clubhouse he built was a one-story Victorian structure surrounded on two sides by a covered veranda. The original concrete approach walks with their inlaid leaf patterns, the steps, concrete newel posts and wrought iron lamp standards remain today. The adjacent valley and waterways had long been the site of a millpond and were dammed to create Lakeside Lake. In the Gay Nineties cycling was a popular sport, and cyclists, cheered on by Richmond Belles, pedaled out to the Club on the cinder Missing Link Trail which ran along the Boulevard and Hermitage Road. Spectators of the cycling sport rode out on the Lakeside trolley and were discharged at the end of the line near the dam. After the grueling ride from town, cyclists could sit on the Wheel Club's long gallery and refresh themselves with homemade ice cream, while boaters drifted on the lake below. Earlier, north of the lake, Ginter had established Lakeside Park, with a zoo and Richmond's first professional nine-hole golf course. The granite base of the bear pit and many fine specimens of trees planted in an arboretum setting remain at the present day Jefferson Lakeside Club. When Lewis Ginter died in 1897, a large portion of his estate was inherited by his niece, Grace Arents. Arents devoted her life to philanthropy and gave generously to many causes and institutions. She was especially interested in helping the children of Oregon Hill. In 1913, she conceived the idea of a convalescent home in the country for sick infants who might benefit from the fresh air. To realize her dream, Miss Arents purchased the abandoned Lakeside Wheel Clubhouse and its approximately from the Lewis Ginter Land and Improvement Company. The structure was remodeled in the Dutch colonial style and named Bloemendaal Farm after a small village in the Netherlands which was the Ginter ancestral home. The name translates to "flower valley." The roof was raised to provide a second floor of bedrooms, a classroom, a library and a playroom for the sick children. Miss Arents traveled extensively in Europe, and her trip diaries describe the joy she derived from her visits to continental botanical gardens. Her interest in horticulture, already strong, was heightened by her travels and found abundant expression at Bloemendaal Farm. She imported collections of rare trees and shrubs, constructed a series of three ridge and furrow greenhouses and laid out a border of herbaceous perennials along the side of the greenhouse range. Her great love of roses is evident in the photographs of Bloemendaal Farm taken in the 1920s. This garden, adjacent to the Bloemendaal House, exists today as the Grace Arents Garden. The immense ginkgo on the front lawn, the massive American hollies and the southern magnolias were planted by Miss Arents. Over the years, Miss Grace added piecemeal to the original area. Thus, she reunited some of the land that had belonged to the Powhatans, Patrick Henry, the Williamsons, John Robinson and others, and Bloemendaal Farm became widely known as a model for the best agricultural practices of the day. Seventy-eight-year-old Grace Arents died suddenly on June 20, 1926 leaving Bloemendaal Farm to the City of Richmond as a botanical garden and public park in perpetual memory of her Uncle Lewis Ginter to be known as Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.
