The Sanborn insurance maps are a wonderful resource for researching buildings in Oregon Hill and the City of Richmond. The Sanborn maps were very detailed, showing frame buildings in yellow, brick buildings in red, and stone buildings in blue, with notations of the number of stories and building additions. For example in the detail above we see that the Laurel Street Methodist Church, at the corner of Laurel and Albemarle Streets, was made of brick 28 feet in height to the eaves, had a basement and gas lighting. The Sanborn maps were revised from 1905 through 1925 and the 1905 version is available for free on the Library of Congress web site: http://www.loc.gov/

Photo credit: Library of Congress

A very useful map for anyone studying the history of Oregon Hill and Richmond is the 1876 Beers Atlas. This very detailed atlas identifies the names of the property owners and shows the building footprints. For example, the detail above shows that the Baptist Church in 1876 was on the opposite corner of the 400 block of S. Pine Street, and that the Samuel Parsons House at 601 Spring Street was then known as the Spring Street Home. The Illustrated atlas of the city of Richmond, Va. / by F.W. Beers is available for free on the Library of Congress website (much of Oregon Hill is shown on Section P of the map): http://memory.loc.gov/
Photo credit: Library of Congress