The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Main Street - Over 100 years ago - Old postcard view of the 1400 block of E. Main, c. 1907

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Main Street - Over 100 years ago - Old postcard view of the 1400 block of E. Main, c. 1907

[Click for larger view]

Before it became Richmond’s financial district in the 1910s and 1920s, Main Street was the principle business district. Every Richmond merchant wanted a storefront on Main Street. This image, ca. 1907, shows the 1400 block of E. Main Street. The 1907 Richmond directory notes that this crowded block included over 70 merchants selling a wide variety of goods including

several firms engaged in the manufacture of carriages, buggies, and wagons. For more postcard views of Richmond, buy this great Holiday gift: Greetings from Richmond.

And how does that block look today?

3 comments:

Bryan said...: What a sad before-and-after! I always love the richness and variety of the old streetscapes. Any guess as to what that bicycle-wheel looking thing is atop the building midway in the block on the south side of the street?; December 17, 2009 at 8:36 PM
Ray said...: It's a wagon wheel - that block had lots of businesses dealing with wagons and farm equipment.

- Ray; December 29, 2009 at 10:32 AM
HEK said...: Oy. If this doesn't show you the utter destruction of that dadblasted interstate (which two public referendums voted to bend it around the northside of the city) nothing will. The subordination of the common weal to the nepotism of the government's agencies and business leaders foisted upon us the "Richmond Petersburg Turnpike Authority." Which is bureaucratese for "We're building this damn right through the middle of town, whether you like it or not, punks." -- HEK; April 16, 2010 at 6:38 PM

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Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.