The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Elvis Presley in Richmond at the Mosque, 1956

Friday, August 21, 2009

Elvis Presley in Richmond at the Mosque, 1956 - Here he is inches away from Main St.

Elvis and fans on the backstage ramp at the Mosque
- June 30, 1956 - photo by Alfred Wertheimer.

I've past this spot a million times - Have You? It's behind the Mosque -- about 10 feet from Main St. - in the heart of the VCU Monroe Park Campus - across the street from the VCU Main Street Parking Deck.

This image is from a great site about Elvis' appearances at the Mosque (now the Landmark Theater) in Richmond, Va. It's full of photos of Elvis in the Mosque including that famous Kiss photo. This site is really a musical history of the Mosque. Check it out - it's part of a larger site about guitarist Scotty Moore.

Here's a view of that spot today from Google Maps.

- Ray B.

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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.