But the seminary is contracting in size — it no longer needs much of the property it owns across Brook Road and is considering options to develop about 35 acres known as the Westwood Tract, which includes an exercise track, tennis courts and soccer fields.

Moving a theological library from the heart of Virginia to a new neighborhood in Richmond was a strenuous task in the 1890s. Books had to be packaged carefully in barrels and loaded into crates to be shipped downriver.

In the spirit of that journey, Union Presbyterian SeminaryPresidentBrian Blount and more than 20 others will climb on bikes Saturday for a two-day, 85-mile ride from Hampden-Sydney College near Farmville to the seminary’s campus in North Richmond.

The bikers will spend the night at a Presbyterian church along the way and arrive at the seminary in time for a homecoming festival Sunday afternoon that will mark the beginning of a yearlong commemoration of the seminary’s bicentennial.

The school was founded as Union Theological Seminary in 1812 at Hampden-Sydney and moved to Richmond in 1898 after industrialist Lewis Ginter donated land from the streetcar suburb he was developing.

The seminary became an anchor for the new Ginter Park neighborhood and still is, Blount said.

“We’re stitched into the fabric of the wider community around us, and we always have been,” he said from his office in Watts Hall, one of the original seminary buildings notable for its bell tower and fierce gargoyle. (A happier gargoyle in the likeness of retired librarianJohn Boone Trotti oversees the seminary library on the other side of campus.)

But for all its imposing Victorian Gothic and Queen Anne architecture, the quad-shaped campus is quietly tucked away between Brook Road and Chamberlayne Avenue.

The bicentennial is a year of events intended to raise the seminary’s profile as it expands its ecumenical goal to educate church leaders, Blount said. “It is an interesting time in the life of theological education.”

The seminary last year had 188 students in Richmond and 78 at its campus in Charlotte, N.C. It also is part of a consortium with Baptist Theological Seminary, located just across Brook Road, and Virginia Union University’s School of Theology.

Although declining church attendance has had an impact on enrollment, the seminary intentionally keeps its numbers low, Blount said. Tuition is heavily subsidized to keep students from graduating with a lot of debt to allow them more freedom in their choice of ministries.

Students drawn to the seminary find rigorous academics and a close-knit community, said Matt Drumheller, a 2009 Virginia Tech graduate pursuing a master of divinity degree.

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