The Curious Case of the Chamber of Commerce Building

In 1890, a group of some of Richmond’s leading architects were in competition for an important commission. The goal was a design for a Richmond Chamber of Commerce building to be erected at Ninth and Main. The Chamber wanted “…a building commensurate with the dignity and importance of the body and alike creditable to the city.” Noted architects Marion Dimmock, Charles H. Read, Jr., Carl Ruehrmund, Edgerton Rogers, and Walter R. Higham all submitted plans for the project, but Dimmock won the competition. Dimmock was highly regarded and was once termed “the dean of Richmond architects” and designed numerous hotels, churches, and houses all over Virginia.

MarionJ. Dimmock (1824-1908), from The Cotton States and International Exposition and South, illustrated, 1890.

Dimmock’s design for the new Chamber of Commerce building proposed a seven-story Romanesque mashup of styles and fenestration. The building was topped with a small tower or observation point. From this vantage, all of downtown and the industry in the James River valley could be admired. Placing an observation deck on a major civic building has been a tradition in Richmond and was a component of what is now known as Old City Hall, whose clock tower incorporated a public viewing space. The current City Hall, built in 1971, continued the tradition and reserved the entire top floor as a place to view the city below.

An early version of the Chamber of Commerce Building. Note the cupola as originally designed by Marion Dimmock. The cornerstone of the building was laid on August 25, 1892, with much ceremony and Masonic ritual.

The Chamber of Commerce Building, pictured with the redesign of its tower. Outcry about the unattractiveness of the small square tower meant its construction was halted, and the tower demolished before the building was even finished. The Richmond Dispatch reported in February 1893 that “The Building Committee of the Chamber of Commerce met yesterday morning, and on the advice of Captain Dimmock, the architect, and decided to dispense with the tower projection at the corner of the structure. Therefore, as much of it as has been erected will be taken down.”

Postcard view of the Chamber of Commerce Building, ca. 1910. The building stood at 823-827 E. Main Street.

As directed by the Chamber, Dimmock designed the building to house a bank and rented offices on various floors to generate revenue. The eastern side of the building had a multi-story courtyard to admit air and light into even the innermost office spaces.

A lone Richmond policeman patrols Main Street in front of the Chamber of Commerce Building in this photo, ca. 1910.

The version of the Chamber of Commerce without the tower was used as the illustration for the organization’s 1893 Annual Report.

The Chamber chose to use an illustration of the earlier version of the building with its square tower on the cover of their 1893 promotional book, The City on the James.

The new headquarters of the Chamber had some interesting features, not the least of which was a large auditorium. One description of the building predicted the auditorium “… will be a very beautiful room with tiled and oak paneled walls and oak-paneled ceiling.” The entrance to the auditorium was a dramatic, glassed-in “bridge” that crossed the light court from the elevator lobby.

Dimmock’s plan for the fifth floor of the Chamber of Commerce Building. Note the entrance to the auditorium on a bridge across the light court. Image from the Richmond Chamber of Commerce Annual Report, 1893. 

By 1910, modernity had begun to make inroads into Richmond and reflect on the Chamber of Commerce building. Once a focus of civic pride, the 20 year old building already began to look old and dated. The use of especially dirty soft coal for heating downtown Richmond buildings brought criticism of the appearance of City Hall and the “sooty condition of the old Chamber of Commerce building…”. The Chamber announced plans to sell the building, and in April 1911 it was demolished.

The intersection of Ninth and Main today, where the successor to the Chamber of Commerce Building, the First National Bank Building, stands. Unlike its short-lived predecessor, this building has stood at 823 East Main Street, serving the Richmond banking and business community for 113 years.

The Chamber of Commerce Building was gone, but pieces of it still lived on in the Richmond streetscape. In 1908, the Richmond Press Company on Twelfth Street was destroyed by fire, and the principals of the business, Gibson G. Worsham and C. A. Zincke, purchased a brick factory at 201-207 Governor Street to replace their ruined facilities. In May 1911, they received a building permit to “put in a new stone front and make other alterations” to the former brick works on the hillside just behind the Governor’s Mansion. Worsham and Zincke salvaged granite members from the first floor front and side façade of the Chamber of Commerce and used them in the new Richmond Press facility.

Elements of the front façade of the former Chamber of Commerce building were repurposed as the front of the Richmond Press building at 203 Governor Street. Photo taken in 2006.

The grand arched entrance of the old building was reused as nothing more than an oddly elaborate framing for modern aluminum windows, and other elements were used to create an asymmetrical first-floor façade. It isn’t known why this decision was made to decorate an otherwise plain brick industrial building with blocks of carefully carved James River granite. Perhaps the reuse of the Chamber of Commerce Building architectural fragments provided a cheap alternative to hauling them away.

An article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch notes he conversion of the former Richmond Press building into State offices. September 27, 1960.

In late 1957 the building at 203 Governor Street was sold to the Commonwealth of Virginia, and three years later it became a warren of small State agencies and offices. Now known simply as “Building No. 8,” 203 Governor Street served the State for fifty years, and the source of the oddly elaborate Victorian stonework on the front of this otherwise unremarkable brick building was largely forgotten. The granite pieces of the Chamber of Commerce building were threatened in 1985 by its site being identified as the leading contender for the location of a new Virginia State Library and Archives but that was later changed to a more easily accessible site on Broad Street.

An illustration in the May 26, 1989 Richmond Times-Dispatch showing the proposed replacement of the Richmond Press building (the “recommended site”) by a new Virginia State Library and Archives.

 

203 Governor Street today.

Sometime around 2015, 203 Governor Street was finally demolished and its site is currently a parking lot for State employees. At first, the scattering of large, granite blocks along Governor Street today where the building once stood makes it seem like elements of the Chamber of Commerce Building have once again escaped the landfill. Close inspection, compared with photos of the granite pieces from the original building, shows the stones on the site today were dressed a different way. The granite blocks now on Governor Street are crisply polished and show no evidence of prior use, let alone the scars of two demolitions.

Instead, this scattering of granite seems a reference to the parts salvaged from the original building. It is as though someone knew the history and placed these granite blocks here not just as a parking lot border, but also as a subtle tribute to Marion Dimmock’s vanished Chamber of Commerce Building.

 

-Selden

Aerial view of the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) campus from the 1958 (now the Monroe Park campus of VCU).

67 years ago. Aerial view of the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) campus from the 1958 Cobblestone yearbook. RPI was sometimes referred to as the Cobblestone campus because of the stones used in the street alleys in and around the school. You can see the 800 block of West Franklin St. on the right. Park Ave on the far left. A major walkway/alley runs south to north in the middle, still used by students at what is now VCU, it runs from Laurel St. north to what is now the old Anderson Gallery building. The arrow in the image is pointing to the Administrative Building (or the Admin. Building as they said then). Many today know it as Ginter House. Not many of these buildings have survived the growth of RPI and later VCU (RPI merged with MCV in 1968 to become VCU). -- Visit this site to view more Cobblestone RPI yearbooks.

- Ray

"Tomorrow's History" - A 1942 color film about Richmond and its two major newspapers.

Looking west on Broad Street - a rare color view, 1942. 

"Tomorrow's History" is a 1942 produced film that shows 1940s Richmond in color. The 30-minute film is available in three parts on YouTube. It spotlights the role of the two major Richmond newspapers at that time, The Richmond Times Dispatch and The Richmond News-Leader. It shows the process of writing, editing, publishing, and delivering a metropolitan newspaper. The links to the film's three parts are provided below.

Douglas Southall Freeman (1886-1953), editor of the Richmond News-Leader, 1915 to 1949, and Virginius Dabney (1901-1995), editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1936-1949, are seen in the film. "Tomorrow's History" provides a rare glimpse of Freeman, Dabney, and other Richmond notables on film. For those people interested in Virginia history, seeing these men on film (looking much younger than we are familiar with and moving -- even if it is just them typing on their typewriters) -- is a rare, nerdy kind of treat. 

A scene from the film looks just like a 1940s Hollywood newsroom depiction. Many reporters, editors, columnists, and other newspaper staff are shown on the job in the film. 

The newspapers were part of Richmond Newspapers, Inc., founded in 1940 and owned primarily by the Bryan family of Richmond. In 1969, Richmond Newspapers, Inc. became Media General, which became part of Nexstar in 2017. Learn more about the media company's history Here. You can access old issues (1925-1963) of The Richmond News-Leader HERE - its part of the Library of Virginia's Virginia Chronicle newspaper site. The Richmond-Times Dispatch is also available at Virginia Chronicle as well as on Newspapers [dot] com and the Library of Congress' Chronicling America stie. 

Front page image of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dec. 8, 1941, shown in the film. Produced in early 1942, references to the start of World War Two and its effect on publishing a newspaper are a consistent presence in the film.

"Tomorrow's History" is certainly a product of its time. There is hardly a black person seen in the film. A segment on women staff editors seems dated and a bit chauvinist. 

Image of the same newspaper cover from Newspapers [dot] com. That newspaper portal is one of the best to research history in newspapers. 

This scene shows Fred O. Seibel (1886-1968), the longtime editorial cartoonist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Visit this online exhibit to learn more about Seibel. 

The presses roll. The process of printing the newspaper and its distribution and circulation are major segments in the film. 

The film was produced by Walker C. Cottrell, Jr. (1911-1992) and LeRoy Anderson (1909-1984). Cottrell was an inventor and the founder of Cottrell Electronics Corp., which designed and installed electric audio equipment. Anderson worked as a staff photographer for the Richmond Newspapers, Inc. In late 1942, Anderson joined the Navy to become a photographer and filmmaker for the military. He later worked as a commercial photographer. Both Cottrell and Anderson made several educational films in the early 1940s. The narrator of the film is Erwin Darlington, a WRVA announcer. The music was provided by Emil Belasco, a radio organist of New York City. [Information listing the filmmakers is from the May 5, 1942 issue of The Richmond News Leader.]

The 30-minute film was broken up into three sections on YouTube. It was shared on YouTube by Richmond's WRIC-TV's Creative Services department.

Links to the video of "Tomorrow's History" - 

Part One.    Part Two.   Part Three. 

Let us know what you think of the film.

- Ray 

The Exchange: Passion and Murder in antebellum Richmond. Part Two

[The story continues -- read Part One here.]

All four men in Hoyt’s bedroom must have gasped as the pistol in William Myers’ hand misfired and the cap popped harmlessly. The multi-barreled revolver (popularly known as a “pepperbox”) was notoriously unreliable and a design described by Mark Twain as “…sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it.” Not to be deterred by the inadequacies of his revolver and still determined to have his revenge, Myers pulled the trigger again, and this time the gun fired and hit Hoyt in his leg with the ball lodging in his thigh.  A third shot missed Hoyt entirely and lodged in the bed frame. The fourth shot hit Hoyt squarely in the forehead. The wounded man leaped out of bed and fell down a step onto the floor of his office. Seeing him shot in the head and bleeding heavily, the Myers brothers and William Burr must have felt their task complete. The trio left the moaning Hoyt in the pale gray gun smoke that drifted through the “Prize Office” and they stepped out into 14^th Street.

An advertisement from the 1846 Richmond City Directory for a “pepperbox” revolver of the type used by William Myers to shoot Hoyt. Myers may have purchased his weapon at Thomas Tyrer’s gun shop on Main Street.

Orlando Pegram was a clerk in a store next door to Hoyt’s office who had heard rumors about Hoyt and Virginia Myers, so when he saw the two Myers brothers pass by his window apparently on their way to Hoyt’s office he became curious and walked to the door. He soon heard gunshots from Hoyt’s, and a couple of minutes later, the pair went by in the opposite direction. “…as they returned, Col. Myers seemed very much agitated,” recalled Pegram, “but W. R. Myers appeared quite composed.”

Thompson Tyler, the assistant manager of the Exchange, was sitting in the hotel barbershop when someone ran in and said Hoyt had been shot and that he should come immediately. Tyler recalled when he went in Hoyt’s office he noticed two horrific details: there was a wide trail of blood leading into the bedroom and “I found a small tea-spoonful of something I supposed to be Hoyt’s brains, lying at the foot of the steps.” Hoyt was back in bed, wiping blood from his face when Tyler came in. “Tyler, old fellow,” said Hoyt, “it’s hard that an innocent man be shot down this way.”

By modern standards, the fact Hoyt survived being shot in the head, let alone was conscious and lucid seems remarkable. Handgun technology in the 1840s before the revolutionary designs of Samuel Colt became available was relatively crude. Hampered by metallurgical limitations, pistols could only fire a low-velocity lead ball where a modern pistol bullet, fired at that range, would have gone completely through Hoyt’s skull. Dr. E. H. Carmichael was sent for and later described Hoyt’s wounds in the terms of medical treatment of the 1840s: “I passed my finger into the wound, which was about 3-8 of an inch in diameter, and found the inner table of the skull extensively fractured, and many pieces of the skull driven into the brain…”. By trepanning, or taking out a section of Hoyt’s forehead, Dr. Carmichael was able to remove “13 or 14 pieces of the skull and part of the ball.” The piece of lead he recovered weighed 13 grains in contrast to the ball recovered from Hoyt’s bed, which weighed 59 grains. In comparison, a typical modern 9mm pistol bullet weighs 124 grains and travels at far greater velocity.

Remarkably, Dr. Carmichael “Found Mr. Hoyt perfectly sensible, calm and collected – informed him immediately of his approaching end, and the impossibility of his recovery – he was very cool and expressed his conviction that he would never get well.” Hoyt, uncertain of how much time he had, asked Thompson Tyler to immediately bring Richmond Alderman James Evans in his official capacity as Magistrate in order that Hoyt might make a sworn statement. Evans arrived and carefully copied down Hoyt’s account, reading each sentence back and confirming what was said. Hoyt slowly explained how his day had begun with the arrival of first Burr and then the Myers brothers, how he was shot and by who, and concluded, “While lying on the floor and not expecting to live many minutes, and in the presence of the two Myers’s, I said that I was innocent of any crime and the lady in question also and I now repeat the same, and shall, to the moment of my death.”

As Hoyt languished, the sensational story of his affairs and his shooting was spread by newspapers throughout the country. On October 10^th a headline in a newspaper in York, Pennsylvania, screamed, “THE BLOODY TRAGEDY IN RICHMOND – Hoyt not yet dead.” On the same day, the Cleveland Plain Dealer took a gentler tact and ran this headline at the top of the sensational news from Richmond: “Romance in Real Life – A Chapter for Married Men.” As the news spread and Hoyt slowly died, his thoughts always turned to Virginia Myers and he was determined that she not be made a pariah for what they had done. Hoyt was visited by Rev. William Norwood, the Rector of St. Paul’s Church as well as Reverend Dr. Moses Hoge of Second Presbyterian. Both men asked Hoyt about the state of his soul and his faith, and the bandaged Hoyt again swore to his innocence and that of Virginia Myers, only conceding to Norwood “that their conduct had been very imprudent, and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he said so…”

A majority of people familiar with the story of Hoyt and Virginia Myers felt that the pair had been wildly reckless in their attraction to each other, violating all societal norms of marriage and honor. Samuel Gleves was passing through Richmond on his way to Philadelphia, and wrote to his father in Buffalo Ford, Virginia, on October 8, 1846, commenting, “Thos. J. Hoyt [sic] who was shot by Myers a few days ago is from what I can learn dying. There is no sympathy at all for him in Richmond every one thinking he is guilty of the charge.”

Letter from Samuel Crocket Gleaves, October 8, 1846. From the Gleaves Family genealogical website.

William Burr and the Myers brothers were arrested and put in the Richmond jail, all three being charged with wounding Hoyt. Meanwhile, newspapers across America reprinted the stories of Hoyt’s shooting and agonizing decline, always linked to the salacious nature of the letters from Virginia Myers. The weakening condition of the dying Hoyt was also described in lurid detail.  The New York Daily Herald reported, “…the attending physicians pronounced Mr. Hoyt’s condition more critical than it had heretofore been, owing to a protrusion of the brain through the wound…Drs. Carmichael and Mills, replied to a question put by the Mayor, that they regarded the condition of the patient more critical than it had been – a fungus having formed on the brain.” The New York paper concluded, “Last evening Hoyt was a good deal worse.”

Marvin Dudley Hoyt lapsed into a coma and died two days later on October 9, 1846, still in the same bed he had gone to sleep in on the evening of September 19. The next day R. Tate Wicker, the Richmond Coroner, assembled a jury at Hoyt’s office to view the body and determine what was the cause of death. The scene was described in a Richmond newspaper: “The corpse lay in the room in which the wounds were inflicted. It is situated under the Exchange Hotel and is the back part of the room that was occupied by Mr. Hoyt as a broker’s office.” The coroner produced the unsigned demand to leave Richmond that William Burr gave Hoyt, which was found in the stained and tangled bedsheets. The paper was identifiable as the original document because of the blood on it. The Coroner’s Jury charged William Myers with murder and his brother, Samuel, and William Burr as accessories, their bail revoked, and new warrants were issued for their arrest.

This view is from the Times-Dispatch in 1895, but the Richmond’s “ancient Bastille” probably looked very much like this when William and Samuel Myers and William Burr were brought here after being arrested for shooting Hoyt.

Hoyt’s body was taken upstairs at the Exchange for a funeral service, perhaps back to the now-infamous Parlor 18 where he spent so many pleasant if furtive moments with Virginia Myers. A Baltimore newspaper described the scene: “The Funeral Services of the Episcopal Church…were read for the deceased (the late D.M. Hoyt) on Saturday evening at the Exchange, by Rev. Mr. Norwood. The scene was impressive. The deceased’s brother-in-law and sister were present – the latter had come from New York to see him die; she came too late to be recognized by him. Her extreme distress enlisted the earnest sympathy of all present.” It was reported that Hoyt’s body was sent to New York for burial, but an account of his murder published by a relative in 1847 specifies that Hoyt was buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. No record exists of Hoyt’s burial in either place, so it appears his grave has been lost.

October 12, 1846, was a Monday morning and Mayor William Lambert took his seat in the Hustings courtroom at exactly 11:00 am to preside over the trial of William and Samuel Myers and William Burr for the murder of Dudley Marvin Hoyt. Mayor Lambert called for Joseph Mayo, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for the City of Richmond, to be summoned along with the accused and their lawyers. Dr. E. H. Carmichael was the first to testify, and gave a summation of what he found when called to Hoyt’s lottery office early on the morning of September 28, followed by Dr. Mills, who spoke of assisting Carmichael in operating on Hoyt’s skull, and then Alderman Evans, who took Hoyt’s sworn statement as to what occurred when first William Burr and then the Myers brothers appeared in his bedroom that morning.

Resting on Mr. Mayo’s desk was a large packet of 50 letters collected from Hoyt’s room, which were all determined to all be in the handwriting of Virginia Myers except for one. Major Pollard handing over the letter that he intercepted from Hoyt to Virginia Myers provoked a debate in court as to its admissibility. Mr. Mayo, the prosecuting attorney questioned the relevance of an exchange that was more than six months old, then James Lyons of the defense rose to speak. “He claimed the right to introduce testimony to show the nature of the provocation his client had received.” Lyons then read Virginia Myers’ reply, revealing all her innermost thoughts, fears, and longings for Hoyt, and the contents of all the letters eventually became public knowledge. Ironically, Hoyt’s failure to destroy Virginia Myers’ correspondence led to the her downfall and disgrace. 

Six days later, the New York Herald devoted its entire front page to the text of the letters on October 18^th, allowing the entire population of the country’s largest city to weigh in on the death of Dudley Marvin Hoyt. The Richmond Enquirer was torn between news of the exciting trial ongoing in Richmond and accounts of a desperate siege in Mexico. “The public mind is so fully engrossed by the painfully interesting trial now in progress, and the thrilling and glorious deeds of our soldiers at Monterey…we therefore throw down our pen and devote the whole of our columns to the details of each subject.” The whole country was riveted to the story of the lottery agent and the unfaithful wife.

Richmond City Hall (demolished 1874). The trial of the Myers brothers and William Burr was held in the Hustings Courtroom, inside the three windows under the portico on the second floor.

Perhaps of all of Virginia Myers’ letters to Hoyt, even with their impassioned prose, the last one is the most wrenching.  It reflects her misunderstanding that Hoyt himself released the letters, and she begged to have them back. The letter was sent after he was shot and was dated the day Hoyt died. He never saw it.

       Having learned, through the medium of a friend, that all my letters addressed to you during the whole period of my acquaintance, have been placed in the hands of Dr. Mills, with directions from you to circulate them freely and extensively through Richmond, in order to show the public you were sought and seduced by me, thus increasing popular prejudice against me, you can surely imagine how I was shocked and astounded at this intelligence…You can imagine how I shrink from such an exposure of letters, written in such sacred confidence. Spare me this blow, at least, for I am overwhelmed with sorrow. Grant this my last and only request. You would not, surely, by such a course, lacerate more deeply the wounds already and forever inflicted on my peace, my reputation, and my hope. Virginia Myers.

To her dismay, Virginia Myers’ letters were not only circulated but were immediately collected and reprinted as a book, and by the end of October, the volume was being advertised for sale. “THE RICHMOND TRAGEDY – Just published in book form – price 12-1/2 cents – an authenticated report of the trial of Myers and others for the Murder of Marvin Dudley Hoyt. With the eloquent speeches of Council and ‘The Letters’ in full and with explanatory notes which furnish a clear and complete history of the case.” The publication was “Drawn Up by the Editor of the Richmond Southern Standard,” an apparently short-lived newspaper that was established the same year the story of Hoyt and Virginia Myers became public.  In the Preface, she is clearly described as the guilty party and was characterized as a seductress and responsible for the entire catastrophe: “A few short years, and she, who was surrounded with love, honor, and wealth, finds, as the consequences of her unpardonable conduct, herself a miserable outcast, her lover murdered, her father’s head bowed down with shame, and her husband arraigned as a common felon. Is it a wonder if she should become, what rumor has already made her, a raving maniac or a desperate suicide?”

On October 26, 1846, the Hustings courtroom was packed to hear Virginia Myers’ correspondence read into the record, and the next day was spent reading more letters, interspersed with new and damning evidence. A man named B. F. Mosby was called to the stand and admitted he was the anonymous author of a vaguely threatening note found in Hoyt’s papers which could have only accelerated the sinking sensation that the lottery agent was feeling: “Dear Sir: This letter is to inform you that the writer is in possession of a facet relative to your being in No. 18 on Tuesday with a Mrs. M. what you ware thare for NEADS no guessing. I saw Her come out of the room and then you come out. Her Husband will go north in a few days and they you can have a fair field and I hope you will have a good time of it…” The note was signed, “Yours until we meet,” but the signature had been cut out of the paper and written at the bottom of the note was one ominous word, “SPECTATOR.”

Despite his reputation as a gentleman and an effective and honest businessman, public opinion was against Hoyt. With the publication of the letters the salvation of the three defendants was ensured. “The Virginia public, in its high estimate of female virtue, deems the mental seducer as not a whit more of deserving of pity or mercy,” explained the Tri-Weekly Nashville Union, “…than the villain who effects the personal prostitution of the wife – and Myers will be acquitted.” Seldom were Americans treated to such displays of raw emotion and desire in print, and no matter who was seducer or seduced, everyone felt William Myers had been wronged. His brother and friend who came with him to exact righteous justice on Hoyt were viewed simply as concerned gentlemen who assisted in this honorable quest. Hoyt had been warned several times that his conduct was punishable by death, and once these warnings became public knowledge there was no turning back from the brink. The fact Hoyt refused to sign the pledge and flee Richmond as Myers had demanded was also cited as evidence that what followed was correct and fair. He had a chance, declined it, and there was nothing left but for Hoyt to pay the penalty that honor demanded.

At the end of the trial, “Mr. Mayo concluded the case for the prosecution, Mr. Lyons opened on behalf of the defense.  His speech received profound attention from a large audience, and its conclusion was marked by an outburst of applause,” wrote the reporter from the Richmond Enquirer, who managed to squeeze into City Hall. The defendants were all acquitted. “The Courtroom was crowded almost to suffocation with spectators, who lingered through the long argument, full of anxiety for the result. When that was ascertained, such a burst of applause took place as we never heard in a court of justice. It was an irresistible impulse of public opinion, roused by the developments of the painful trial, which has been concluded. The entire community rejoices in the result.”

There also was a degree of fatigue in Richmond, worn out by the constant, raw emotion read into the record in the Hustings Court and immediately broadcast in print across the country. Chatter about the case was unceasing, and the city grew tired of becoming famous as a hotbed of infidelity and vigilante justice. A woman who signed her letter to the Richmond Enquirer only as “A Friend to the Unfortunate” denounced Hoyt and cried, “Are there none to condemn the breaker of so many hearts – the wrecker of so many destinies?” The same newspaper fervently wished, “We now hope that a veil will be drawn over this painful subject, and that pity will be extended to the misfortunes of one whose sufferings must have been cruel, indeed.”

The nineteenth-century news cycle moved on, and dispatches from the war in Mexico soon eclipsed any further news of Marvin Dudley Hoyt, now somewhere to the north in his unmarked grave. The Myers brothers and William Burr resumed their lives, and Virginia Myers continued her exile in Albemarle under the watchful eyes of her parents. At No. 3, Exchange Hotel, E. B. Pendleton took over Hoyt’s office and lottery business, and as a point of reference, advertised himself as “Successor to M. D. Hoyt.” In November 1846, a small announcement signed by William Myers appeared in the Richmond Daily Whig: ”NOTICE – I shall petition the next General Assembly for reasons to be set forth in my petition, for a divorce from my wife, Virginia Myers.”  Divorce was a rare occurrence in nineteenth-century Virginia, being far unusual in the past compared to today. It could only be granted by a formal application to and act of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In February 1847, the Virginia House of Delegates voted 24 to 73 to grant a decree of divorce to William Myers. “Mrs. Myers is hereafter to be known as Virginia Pollard, her former name.” The Virginia Senate passed the bill on March 9, 1847.

William Myers died February 8, 1851, at the age of 38, and his body was taken to his family’s mausoleum in Baltimore. His friend William Burr died seven years later and his unmarked grave is in his father’s plot in Richmond’s Shockoe Hill Cemetery. In 1865, the Daily Evening Herald in far-off Stockton, California, ran a tiny story that was a coda to a series of events that once shook the city of Richmond. Samuel Myers was the last of the men who stepped into Hoyt’s bedroom that September morning, determined to settle “some unpleasant business.”

An Old Notable – An old citizen died a few days ago in Richmond, of whom hardly a word was said, and yet, fifteen years ago, his name was on the lip of every citizen in connection with a tragedy which occurred. The citizen was Col. Samuel S. Myers, who was the only survivor of the Hoyt tragedy which occurred here. Hoyt, a lottery dealer, was shot and killed in the Exchange Hotel by William Myers, a brother of the deceased, who charged Hoyt with the attempted seduction of his wife. The two brothers and a friend named Burr were present at the tragedy, but all are dead now. All of the parties are of the highest standing. Colonial Myers had been wealthy, but was much reduced in means at the time of his death.

There isn’t a record of Virginia Myers’ reaction to her divorce and her return to her maiden name. Divorce was rare, and with the shame of that very public process and the invariable coverage in print, Virginia Pollard must have prayed the worst was finally over and that she could find some measure of happiness after the wreckage of her life in Richmond. Pollard family genealogies fail to record when she married a Dr. Theodore Parker, but they had two daughters, Mattie and Pauline. Mattie became a painter of some note, exhibiting her work at a salon in Paris. Research has failed to find exactly when Virginia Pollard Parker died, but a family history published in 1895 notes both she and Dr. Parker are both deceased. It is not known where she and her husband were buried.

The Exchange Hotel (right) was connected to the Ballard House Hotel with a walkway in this 1875 view on Franklin Street. Note the basement level along 14^th Street where Hoyt’s office was located. From the digital collection of the New York Public Library.

The Exchange Hotel was torn down in 1900, and with it Parlor 18 and its pleasant view through the tall windows into the hotel’s landscaped interior courtyard. Gone were the carpeted halls and marble floors, the chandeliers and the obsequious staff. The bar that Charles Dickens found so inviting was utterly erased as though it never existed. Dudley Marvin Hoyt’s Prize Office was hauled away with the rest of the debris from the Exchange, but the hotel probably kept the stories of the basement office with the odd room in the back until the end. “Our city post-office was on the Fourteenth-Street side of the Exchange Hotel for many years preceding its establishment in the present post office building,” recalled a history of the Exchange, written in 1900. “On that side of the hotel, too, a very sensational homicide occurred about 1844. Dr. Hoge, who at that time lived at the hotel, heard the statement of the dying man (Hoyt) and was a witness at the trial.” Today, the grid of streets in that area of Richmond has been completely obliterated, with only a short stretch of “Old 14^th Street” hinting at the warren of houses, stores, and businesses that surrounded the Exchange.

Dudley Marvin Hoyt must have felt that the downward path of his life in Richmond was inexplicable. He certainly would not have understood the acquittal of the three men so obviously responsible for his death. Responses to the verdict in other parts of the country where personal honor was less vivid, reactionary, or well-armed were also uncomprehending. The Cleveland Herald said only, “THE MURDERERS ACQUITTED - Myers and his associates, who shot down Hoyt in his own room in Richmond, Va., have been tried and acquitted. The Recorder, in Hoyt’s native Massachusetts, said, “No one contended they did not commit the murder, yet the feeling abroad is that the community overpowered the court, who rendered a verdict opposite to law, truth, and justice.”

The Port Gibson Herald and Correspondent in Mississippi wrung one last eye-catching headline out of the Richmond story as they attempted to explain the conclusion of the trial: “SEDUCTION AND MURDER – The Myers’ who shot Hoyt for the seduction of Mrs. Myers have all been acquitted.  They were tried for murder. The murderers had the sympathies of the public enlisted in their favor, and when that is the case, it is almost next to an impossibility to obtain a correct verdict and sustain the laws.” It was not easy to explain a sensational rupture in that thin veneer of the law that usually restrained the harsh and often bloody, misplaced code involving honor, love, and murder in the antebellum American South. Richmond, explained the Mississippi newspaper with monumental understatement, “…is not a community where the dearest rights and tenderest ties can be treated with impunity.”

- Selden. 

Click here to visit Part One of this story.  

 

The Exchange: Passion and Murder in Antebellum Richmond. Part One.

 

From An Authenticated Report of the Trial of Myers and Others, for the Murder of Dudley Marvin Hoyt… (1846)

Among the several lottery agents doing business in the basement of Richmond’s Exchange Hotel in the1840s was Dudley Marvin Hoyt. Born in 1812, Hoyt was a native of Lowell, Massachusetts who moved to Boston to join his half-brother, Charles, who was the operator of a lottery agency. Unlike today’s system of governmental appropriation, lotteries funded much of the infrastructure of eighteenth and nineteenth century America - a time that demanded improvements to support America’s industrialization and rapid westward expansion. Indeed, a seminal point in Richmond’s own history was a lottery held in 1767, where the prizes were lots and parcels in the newly formed town. Wharfs, bridges, colleges, fortifications, and canals all over the country were financed through lotteries licensed by local governments in the 1800s. Lottery agents like the Hoyts charged a small commission to sell tickets and distribute prizes.

After his Boston apprenticeship Hoyt moved again, first to Norfolk and then to Richmond, bringing his knowledge of the lottery business. Hoyt opened a “Prize Office” on the 14^th Street side of the basement of the Exchange Hotel in October 1843, and lived in an apartment in the rear of his establishment. Hoyt had a good reputation in his business dealings, and in a short biographical sketch by “a relative,” was described as a perfect gentleman, “although his peculiarity of dress and appearance often provoked remark” on the streets of Richmond. Another description of Hoyt agreed on his fashion choices, noting, “He had a fine person, of which he seemed particularly regardful, adorning it with a very outré and extravagant style of dress, which excited much attention, and perhaps some animadversion.”

Hoyt set up his office at the Exchange Hotel for good reasons. Not only was it a social crossroads of the city, but it was also luxurious by Richmond hotel standards with an interior described in Lost Virginia (2001) as featuring, “marble floors, a large vestibule ornamented with statuary, a ‘great hall,’ a ladies’ dining room, a gentlemen’s drawing rooms, a dining room accommodating 300, reading rooms, and a ballroom, all surrounding a landscaped central courtyard.” The hotel was one of the few bright spots in Charles Dickens’ visit to Richmond in 1842. Despite his disgust with the institution of slavery, Dickens had to admit the Exchange Hotel was ”…a very large and elegant establishment, and [we] were as well entertained as travelers need desire to be.” He described the convivial atmosphere of the Exchange with music and laughter echoing down its carpeted halls and beautifully furnished public spaces: “The climate being a thirsty one, there was never, at any hour of the day, a scarcity of loungers in the spacious bar, or a cessation of the mixing of cool liquors; but they were a merrier people here, and had musical instruments playing to them o’ nights, which was a treat to hear again.” Dickens must have known he was experiencing a degree of service at the Exchange Hotel only made possible by the unseen enslaved who went about their duties quietly serving, cleaning, and maintaining the opulent hotel.

Hoyt regularly ran newspaper advertisements for the lotteries he was promoting and his ads, like his clothing, tended to be more colorful compared with those of his competition along 14^th Street. Charles Wortham, Russell Bigger, and W.P. Turpin were all vying for lottery business, but their advertisements never matched Hoyt’s overheated prose that promised riches only a lottery ticket away.

HOYT is about to eclipse himself. He has eclipsed everyone else in selling Grand Capitol Prizes, and is now about to sell $75,000 for $20.00…You hear a lot about Prizes, but you know that HOYT stands at the head of the present generation of Vendors. Talk about Capital Prizes! You should never mention the subject without mentioning HOYT’S name with it.

A picture emerges of a successful businessman with flamboyant tastes in both clothing and ad copy, perhaps all part of the self-promotion that Hoyt felt was necessary to project himself above his growing competition. More lottery agents were appearing in Richmond, like J. F. Word, who established a shop on 14^th Street across from the Post Office, and the improbably named Caddis B. Luck, whose “New Lucky Lottery Office” was under the Eagle Hotel a block away on 13^th Street. Hoyt, like many other Richmonders, probably joined his fellow lottery agents milling around the Exchange Hotel Post Office where papers from other cities brought the news of the day. Deliberately resplendent in his flashy garb, Hoyt would have been easy to pick out among the crowd on the sidewalk who were chatting and smoking as they followed the news of the war with Mexico which began in May 1846 after the United States annexed Texas.

An 1846 lottery ticket. From the WorthPoint online auction site.

Hoyt, if not a gambler himself, certainty understood the psychology of gamblers as he faced them across his desk when they came in and put down their hard-earned money on a long shot at great fortune. He no doubt observed the bitter regret in the faces of the losers when their ticket didn’t win. He probably had few illusions about luck and odds, about consequences of a misstep, picking the wrong number, and the looming specter of terrible loss. Because of this experience, Hoyt might have thought better than to gamble on what began as a secret relationship with a woman married to a prominent Richmond tobacco dealer, with the torrid exchange between Hoyt and William Myers’ wife exploding into public and leading to the death of one and the utter disgrace of the other.

Title page of An Authenticated Report of the Trial of Myers and Others, for the Murder of Dudley Marvin Hoyt… (1846). The book is available on the Internet Archive. 

Virginia Pollard was born in 1814 in Nelson County, the daughter of an officer in the Continental Army who was later a prominent planter in Albemarle County. One account described her as, “She is a lovely, talented, and accomplished woman, and we well remember when, a little while ago, the admired belle became the blushing bride of an envied husband.” She married William R. Myers in 1840 and the couple moved to a home in Richmond on 7^th Street. Myers was a partner with his brother in the tobacco firm of Samuel S. Myers & Co. at 7^th and Canal Streets and was termed “a gentleman of the highest respectability, moving in the first circle in the City of Richmond.”

The relationship between Virginia Myers and Dudley Hoyt survive in an extraordinary collection of letters, for the most part from her to Hoyt. There is an almost complete absence of surviving letters from Hoyt to Virginia Myers, with one notable exception which was intercepted by her father. “Have no fear of writing…” she assured Hoyt in a letter written in September, 1846, “…for every word is burned instantly.” This is in contrast to the more than 50 letters she wrote Hoyt over the course of ten months, almost all of which were recovered from Hoyt’s rooms at the Exchange Hotel and to Virginia Myers’ utter embarrassment, published before the end of the year.

Near the end of that ruinous year of 1846, Virginia Myers wrote to a friend in Baltimore to explain how her exchange with Hoyt began. “The commencement of my acquaintance with Mr. Hoyt was under the following circumstances.” Virginia said, “Up to this time, I had never exchanged a word with Mr. Hoyt in my life.” She rather vaguely recalled Hoyt sent her a letter and “the contents of this letter rendered it necessary that I should seek a few words of explanation with him. I was reluctant to make this the subject of a letter to Mr. Hoyt, and therefore I addressed him a note, ‘requesting to see him at my own house concerning the matter.’” Recognizing they were nearing the boundaries of propriety, Virginia Myers agreed to meet Hoyt formally at the studio of a miniaturist, Mr. Morien, who at the time was painting Hoyt’s picture. “From this time his visits to me were very frequent.”

These assignations with Hoyt and Virginia Myers seem quite chaste by modern standards. Their correspondence was mostly about Virginia’s real or imagined miserable marriage and Hoyt’s perpetually sympathetic ear. Her emotional dependence on Hoyt and his deepening involvement with her led to infatuation, and then passion. At the end of 1845 she sent Hoyt a small keepsake, and wrote “…may I not, my best of friends, ask you to prize it as a memento of one whose hours of darkness and sadness you have brightened by your words of goodness, of kindness…”. By Spring, 1846, Virginia’s tone has intensified: “My God! My God! What am in not suffering?” she wrote Hoyt, “Agony, yes, tenfold agony. May I not still call you DEAR, dearest love? for you are so in the fullest meaning of those words.” Virginia Myers and Hoyt would occasionally meet at the Exchange Hotel, generally in a private salon called Parlor 18. This tall-ceilinged room had interior shutters on the windows that opened onto the “piazza” in the hotel’s central courtyard, affording Parlor 18 a degree of privacy. On April 25, 1846, Virginia Myers wrote Hoyt, “Good-bye, love, till to-morrow, when I will talk to you again. I will seal all I have promised you with a dear kiss. Shall it not be two? Yes! I say. How strange it is, I never loved to kiss anyone, save you, precious darling.” Virginia Myers’ letters, printed and arranged chronologically, chart a downward path, increasingly hysterical and fraught. Despite the desperate tone, Hoyt, perhaps flattered by the attention, responded with sympathy and a growing desire for Virginia Myers.

Later, when all was revealed and her letters published, Virginia Myers understandably received much criticism about a letter she sent her husband on September 8, 1846, while he was in New York City. In the midst of her passionate exchanges with Hoyt, she wrote William Myers: “Oh! Dearest Willie, how sadly, have I missed you! I really feel this morning almost too gloomy to write, and yet this will tell you how fondly I have thought of you since we parted. My darling husband, I do indeed love you very dearly, and could you know every feeling of my heart, you would never doubt one so purely yours.” She concluded the letter, “Now for a thousand kisses, and good bye, my dear precious husband. With every assurance of devotion and affection, I am unchangingly yours, Virginia.” One Richmonder, outraged by reading this letter to William and its raging hypocrisy, later wrote “Does she call it a pure heart, and an angel’s spirit where she says, in letter No. 55, ‘she prays Heaven to take all her relatives from her, that she might be united with Mr. Hoyt?’” The shocking passion voiced in the letters between Hoyt and Virginia Myers was as loaded and damaging in Richmond public opinion as though the two were physical lovers.

View looking west on Franklin Street, showing the Exchange Hotel on the left with its bridge over the street to the Ballard House Hotel. From Richmond: A Pictorial History from the Valentine Museum and Dementi Collections, (1974)

As the Summer of 1846 passed by, Virginia Myers and Hoyt had a growing awareness that their meetings, their sly signals to each other at the theater, and their encounters at the Exchange were drawing unwanted attention. “I left No. 18 at a most unfortunate moment, I fear, for I observed several persons in the room opposite, whose faces I could distinguish for my veil, also a servant in the Rotunda,” wrote Virginia. “Now I am afraid they will speak of it…I can only hope you did not come out the same door I did, for if you did, of course, it gave rise to remarks.” Eugene Pendleton was Hoyt’s clerk and lived in a room in Hoyt’s office under the Exchange Hotel. He recalled Hoyt asking him in late September if Pendleton had heard any reports about him and Mrs. Myers, and if so, to tell Hoyt who it was as this sort of thing had to be stopped. Hoyt sensed the enchantment between himself and Virginia Myers was leading both of them into dangerous territory, perhaps knowing the heaviest penalty would fall on him.

It was in that summer of 1846 that William Myers found a note that had been slid under the door of his office. Myers read it, got on his horse and rode home. He quietly entered the house through the basement and was astonished to find Hoyt upstairs, as promised by the anonymous warning, sitting in his parlor with his wife. Myers “remonstrated” with Virginia on the “impropriety of her conduct.” Hoyt later visited Myers at his office and said the note had been made up by some malicious person and Myers responded that no matter who wrote the note, these visits must be stopped and Hoyt solemnly promised they would be.

The anonymous note left for William Myers

Virginia’s father, Major John Pollard, recalled that in June, Virginia and William Myers were visiting her parents at their home in Albemarle County and on the 13^th his wife observed Virginia writing a letter to Hoyt. Major and Mrs. Pollard decided to let that letter go in the mail and to intercept any reply, which soon came in the form of a letter from Richmond for Virginia but addressed in a woman’s handwriting. Inside was a letter from Hoyt to Virginia Myers, termed by Major Pollard “of a most improper character for any gentleman to write to a married lady.” Because it was intercepted this is the only surviving example of Hoyt’s writing to her, but the content is no less intense and overheated than her letters to him. Hoyt wrote on June 18^th: “My dearly loved Virginia – While lying on my couch, where I had been from some two hours, thinking of thee – much to my surprise and delight, your dear sweet letter of the 13^th inst. was handed to me….You well know, dearest Virginia, how anxious I am to make you a happy woman, and I would willingly give my life to accomplish it – would that but do it.”

Major Pollard intercepted Hoyt’s letter on June 23^rd and by the 25^th was in Richmond with the sole purpose of confronting Hoyt. That evening the furious Pollard found Hoyt in his office at the Exchange Hotel, and demanded that he stop all communication with his daughter. Pollard repeated the demand several times and in each instance Hoyt agreed, asking only that the two letters be burned. Major Pollard said he would be back in Richmond in two weeks but for the time being would retain any letters between Hoyt and his daughter.

The next evening Pollard was standing in the Rotunda of the Exchange Hotel and was surprised by his son-in-law, who said he and his wife were returning from Albemarle and stopped at the Exchange. Major Pollard went to Parlor 18 expecting to talk to his daughter and was astonished to find her sitting side-by-side with Hoyt, who moved away suddenly when he saw Virginia’s father appear in the doorway. Major Pollard left the hotel but was back at Hoyt’s office early the next morning and roused him from bed. Taking him outside and speaking with Hoyt on the 14^th Street sidewalk, the enraged Pollard “reproached him for his treachery.” He said that if this persisted and caused a rift in his family between his daughter and her husband, he assured Hoyt that he would kill him. Pollard returned to his home, thinking Hoyt was sufficiently frightened that he would no longer trouble Virginia Myers or intrude in her marriage, but at the same time took the precaution of preserving the two damning letters.

James R. Pollard, Virginia’s brother, was not that confident that Hoyt had been frightened off and was no longer a problem. In mid-July, having been appraised by his father as to his confrontation of Hoyt, the younger Pollard said flatly, “I came down to Richmond to watch Hoyt.” He spotted the lottery dealer, walking in the cool shade of the trees of Capitol Square with Virginia Myers. James Pollard wrote Hoyt a note the next day and told him for the first and last time, to “desist from the course he was pursuing, and told him if he did not, his life would pay the penalty.” He later met Hoyt before leaving Richmond, but Hoyt assured James Pollard that now that he was fully aware of the effect of his association with her, he would avoid Virginia Myers both in public and private.

The Exchange Hotel. Image from the Mutual Assurance Society papers, pictured in Old Richmond Neighborhoods (1950)

 

Despite his protestations, Hoyt was in an increasingly dangerous position as the summer wore on. Among the many Richmonders who frequented the Exchange Hotel, was Poitiaux Robinson, who was a keen observer of what was happening at the hotel – especially between Holt and Virginia. Robinson said he had stopped by the bar at the Exchange one day for “a snack” and happened to walk by Parlor No. 18. Glancing in, he was astonished to find Virginia Myers sitting on a sofa with Holt beside her and his head in her lap. Holt was also seen emerging from the Myers house or meeting Virginia at the Exchange Hotel on several occasions. So rife were the rumors that when they reached William Myers, he wrote to his father-in-law in mid-September describing the deteriorating situation. William’s brother, Samuel Myers, directed William’s carriage boy to bring him any letters Virginia sent to the Post Office that were addressed to Hoyt, and when she was confronted by Samuel, in a panicked rage, she denounced the letters as forgeries. Told of all this, Major Pollard returned to Richmond, collected Virginia and her trunks on Wednesday, September 23^rd, and forced her to return to the Pollard home in Albemarle County. She never saw Dudley Marvin Hoyt again.

On the evening of Sunday, September 27^th, Poitiaux Robinson spoke to Hoyt about the rumors circulating around Richmond, but Hoyt seemed reserved and reluctant to talk about the subject. Robinson mentioned that William Myers was on his way back to Richmond and warned Hoyt that he should expect to be held accountable for his actions toward Virginia Myers. Hoyt speculated aloud it would all lead to his destruction. Nevertheless, he swore again, “before God, on this Sabbath night, I am innocent of any criminality.” “Surely, said I,” recalled Robinson, “…you have been grossly imprudent. How could you be so mad as to walk home with Mrs. Myers the other night whilst these rumors are afloat?” The last thing Hoyt told Robinson was that “If I have a friend in the world, and are found to be in a dying condition, I take it as a favor from him to interrogate me at this point, and I will then, as I do now, assert my innocence.”

To the casual observer, nothing had changed in Richmond, but for the increasingly uneasy lottery agent, the city must have seemed smaller and darker. Everyone was spreading rumors of him and Virginia Myers, and the fact she had been collected by her father and whisked out of the city only fueled the speculation. Hoyt’s name was on everyone’s lips and he was becoming infamous among the clientele and patrons of the Exchange Hotel. Both Hoyt and Virginia Myers often spoke of their stainless innocence, and used the words often in describing their status and condition. They carefully parsed the difference between the emotional depths of their relationship and physical contact, each calling themselves blameless and innocent, pure and without guilt. On the streets of Richmond, this wasn’t the impression.

Hoyt had the Pollards calling for his blood, everyone at the Exchange Hotel was chatting about his most personal business, and the affair had the danger of affecting his livelihood. The lottery business must go on, tickets had to be sold, money collected, and prizes awarded. Hoyt sat down to compose the advertisement to run on the next day:

There seems to be a scarcity of money with all except the patrons of HOYT. With them it is plenty. He is filling their pockets with capitals, and each in turn will be served. All those who have drawn prizes and those who have not should have tickets now. HOYT is in luck….

Dudley Marvin Hoyt could not have been more mistaken.

The next morning was Monday, September 28, 1846. At 6:30 AM, Hoyt woke up to a knock on his door. We can only imagine what his apartment behind the lottery office looked like, but a newspaper article said it was consistent with the Hoyt’s taste in clothes: “He was remarkable in his dress, always in the extremest [sic] fashion, and his tastes were peculiar, as strikingly exhibited by the furniture and decoration of his room.”

Into that exotically decorated space stepped a Richmond businessman, William S. Burr. Hoyt, still in bed, propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Burr, who introduced himself and said he was there on “a very disagreeable piece of business” which he hoped, “could be happily adjusted.” He gave Hoyt a single sheet of paper to sign, on which was written:

I, D. Marvin Hoyt, of the city of Richmond, do hereby pledge myself to leave the said city forthwith, and never to return to it, acknowledging at the same time the penalty for any violation of this pledge to be the forfeiture of my life.

Richmond, Va., Sept. 28, 1846.

Hoyt, no doubt confused and probably hoping to God this was all just an extremely bad dream, read the letter and looked up and said, “I can’t sign this.” Immediately on Hoyt’s refusal and to his further astonishment, two more grim men stepped into the room and joined Burr: William Myers and his brother Samuel. They advanced close to the bedside and looked down on the confused and frightened Hoyt, still holding in his hand the paper Burr wanted him to sign. The three men in their black suits loomed over Hoyt, and with the bed against the wall blocking the far side, there was no space and no time to avoid whatever was certainly coming. Without a word, William Myers reached in his coat pocket, produced a pistol, pointed it at Hoyt’s head, and pulled the trigger.

End of part one. Read part two here.

 

- Selden