The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Laurel Street Market, 349 S. Laurel St., 1917.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Laurel Street Market, 349 S. Laurel St., 1917.

This photograph and some other materials related to the family who owned this store are on sale on Ebay today. I thought I'd share them here.

It's a wonderful image of the Laurel Street Market located at 349 S. Laurel St., corner of Laurel and Albemarle Streets in Richmond's Oregon Hill neighborhood. The seller shows the back of this photograph where it's written: "Taken Feb 27 - 17" - so I assume it was taken on Feb. 27, 1917. The store was owned by John Frederick Ernest Steinmann (1871-1934).

Here's an image of the same address, 349 S. Laurel St., from a Google Street View dated June 2015. This bike shop - the Bunny Hop Bike Shop - has since closed.

Here's another image from this Ebay sale. The seller also shows the back of this image which reads: "Original Bldg. Laurel St. Market, Ernest Steinman, Henry Steinmann, Berta Steinmann, and Willie Smith (helper)." Where was this? I'll have to check the city directories. More later....

- Ray

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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.