Christmas Wish from Miller and Rhoads, 1909

[From the Dec. 25, 1909 issue of the Richmond Times Dispatch -
Visit the Chronicling America site and search Richmond
newspapers for the city's history in print.]

When Langston Hughes visited Richmond in 1926.

[Image of Langston Hughes (1902-1967) taken in 1939 by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964)]

When Langston Hughes visited Richmond, Virginia on Friday, November 19, 1926, it marked his first reading in the South. Hughes was an emerging poet of the Harlem Renaissance when he spoke at the chapel at Virginia Union University. On Thursday evening, the night before his reading, Hughes attended a small party given in his honor in the Richmond home of Hunter Stagg, remembered best as one of the founding editors of The Reviewer, a Richmond literary magazine that received national attention in the 1920s. The inter-racial party was quite daring for 1920s Richmond. "If Thursday evening in my library can by any stretch of imagination be called a party," Stagg wrote a friend, "it should go down in history as the first purely social affair given by a white for a Negro in the Ancient and Honorable Commonwealth of Virginia."

Stagg would write favorably of Hughes in his Richmond News Leader literary column March 21, 1927. Stagg wrote that Hughes' work should be recognized "as the authentic artistic expression of something in human nature, we are not quite prepared to say what, only that we are sure it is something very real."

This online exhibit created by VCU Libraries explores the little known visit by Langston Hughes to Richmond, Virginia. This site will be the starting point for future exhibits on Richmond's literary history of the 1920s. Included here is information on both Hughes and Stagg, and their mutual friend, writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964). A bibliography/links page enables researchers to continue to investigate these topics.

Visit this online exhibit HERE.

- Ray B.

Richmond Commission of Architectural Review Slide Collection

The Richmond Commission of Architectural Review Slide Collection contains more than 7,000 color photographs of the city of Richmond. Taken over a period from 1965 to 2000, these images document many of the changes within the city. In some cases the images serve as a record for properties which have since been either renovated or demolished. Ranging from close-ups of architectural details and shots of single buildings to photos of entire city blocks and aerial shots, the subjects depicted include office buildings, houses, warehouses, construction sites, alleys, storefronts, historical buildings, cemeteries, gardens, and garages.

Visit the site HERE - part of VCU Libraries' Digital Collections site.

- Ray B.

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?

The Old VCU Logo - Pot Plant? Image of the Fan District? What was that thing?

(Click for larger view - Image by Ken Hopson)

In the fall of 1968, the newly formed Virginia Commonwealth University (a merger of the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia) hired the New York marketing and design firm of Schechter and Luth, Inc. to develop an identifying symbol, colors, and names for the University’s campuses. The firm released its findings in January 1969.

The design of the VCU symbol provoked considerable controversy. Some commentators thought it too abstract; others believed that the design should have been created by the school’s own art students. The design itself generated many interpretations. Some saw the tree of knowledge, others discerned the street pattern of the Fan District, and a few even claimed that it resembled a marijuana leaf. University officials stated that the symbol sought mainly to create something new that would unify the two former schools and emphasize the “bold new” character of VCU.

In the late 1990s, the VCU symbol gradually became replaced with a contemporary font that displays the letters VCU and the words Virginia Commonwealth University. But you can still find some places on the Monroe Park campus where the old logo still remains. The image above was created using items from the archives in Special Collections and Archives, VCU Libraries.

-- Ray B.

Downtown Richmond’s Phantom Armories - They were demolished years ago…..weren’t they?

Prior to the establishment of the modern National Guard around World War I, municipalities like Richmond maintained volunteer military organizations, which could be called out by the Governor in times of emergency or to maintain public order. These civic militias were housed in armories where they not only stored firearms and drilled, but also were used as social clubs for the members.

The 1890s were the boom years for construction of municipal armories in this country, and Richmond was no exception. At one time there were five in this city: the Howitzers Battalion Armory, which stood back to back with First Regiment Cavalry Virginia Volunteers Armory on a block between Seventh and Eighth Streets, the Richmond Greys and Richmond Blues armories on Marshall Street, and the First Battalion Virginia Volunteers armory on Leigh Street. Of these, only the Blues armory and the Leigh Street armory remain.

In an America when not everybody was literate, armories clearly signaled their military purpose by appearing like little castles, with crenellated turrets, arched doorways, and stout granite trim. These little castles, rising up among the residential neighborhoods where they stood, must have been a remarkable and lively contribution to the Richmond skyline north of Broad Street.

[Click on each image for a larger view]

These buildings were all the product of the Richmond City Engineer’s department and its head, Wilfred Cutshaw. Cutshaw oversaw the construction of many civic projects, and it is believed the Italianate style of these armories, schools, and markets reflected his personal taste. The one exception is the Cavalry Armory, which was designed by the architectural partnership of Edgerton Rogers and Walter Higham. Rogers was a member of the Cavalry organization, but is perhaps best known as the architect of Maymont, Major Dooley’s high-style estate on what was then the far western edge of the city. There is a certain delicacy in the Cavalry armory design that reflects Edgerton Rogers’ fine hand and that is lacking in the other city armories. Nevertheless, the turrets, identical to the other armories, are probably a Cutshawesque requirement demanded by the indomitable ex-Confederate Colonel and City Engineer.

The Cavalry armory faced west; while on the same block facing east was the Richmond Howitzers’ Battalion armory. Both of these remarkable buildings were constructed in 1895. With a general demobilization after the Spanish-American war in 1898, the Cavalry Battalion was disbanded and it’s building was absorbed in the Howitzers’ Battalion complex. A largecovered drill hall was constructed to link the two armories. The Howitzers’ building was eventually expanded to include a number of amenities, including an indoor swimming pool. The facility received considerable use during World War II as a reception and recreation center for GIs traveling through Richmond to other assignments.

In this image, taken not long before both armories were demolished in the early 1970s, the turret of the Cavalry armory can be seen in the distance behind the Howitzers’ building. At this point both armories had ceased to be used by the National Guard and served only as garages and storage for the City. With the wholesale demolition of the area north of the site cleared for the Richmond Coliseum project, both armories and their surrounding neighborhoods were demolished. The last few residential structures in this part of Richmond were destroyed by the construction of the Philip Morris research facility.

The block the two armories stood on became the site of the downtown campus of J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, and in an unusual tribute to the architecture that proceeded the brutally plain Reynolds building, a portion of the facades of the Howitzers’ and Cavalry armories were kept as retaining walls. The fronts of the armories were demolished down to three feet tall. There is no signage to indicate this, but the two low walls along Seventh and Eighth Streets are actually these bottom portions of the fronts of the vanished armories. What appears to many as simply being oddly weathered brickwork are the foundations of two little castles, and what now looks like round planters were the bases of once lofty towers.

From the top of the Reynolds building you can peer over the parapet down toward Eighth Street and the outline of the two vanished buildings can be clearly traced. The two round “planters” on either end flank the base of the central square tower, the walls of which have been capped with white concrete to prevent their deterioration.

Compare that view to the original architectural drawings of the Cavalry armory, now in the collections of the Library of Virginia. Although many of the details have been lost, the central element of the elegant armory, which once stood above its entrance, is clearly still preserved in the footprint. Likewise the two towers, now reduced to knee-height beside the Eighth Street sidewalk.

Rogers and Higham would be astounded at the changes wrought to the city they knew a hundred years ago, and Rogers in particular would be aghast that the pomp and formality that was his Cavalry Battalion was today only a fading memory in the history of Richmond. Even more inexplicable to the two architects would be the chunky Reynolds building, the unworthy successor plopped down on the site of the two municipal buildings they knew so well. The persistence of the front walls of their building and the armory to the east of it would also truly be a mystery to them, as it is to many who wait for their ride sitting on the oddly weathered remains of Richmond’s phantom armories.

- Selden Richardson.

Souvenir Views: Negro Enterprises & Residences, Richmond, Va., 1907

[Click on image for larger view.]

Above is an example of the kinds of images found in Souvenir Views: Negro Enterprises & Residences Richmond, Va., published in 1907. Text and images of this rare and important work documenting Richmond's African American community are part of the Library of Congress' American Memory Collection. Souvenir Views contains over 50 images of some 200 buildings, many of which are now demolished.

For views of Jackson Ward from 1978 check out VCU Libraries' Jackson Ward Historic District Collection.

- Ray B.

Rare postcard view of Church Hill from 1908

[Click for larger view]

East from Medical College on Marshall Street, Richmond, Va., postmarked 1908.

This view of Church Hill was probably taken from the Medical College of Virginia’s Egyptian Building. The same view today is punctuated by Interstate 95. This image is one of nearly 250 found in the new book Greetings from Richmond - which focuses on Richmond's architectural history. Order the book Here. It makes for a great Holiday gift!

A Merry Christmas greeting from Ellen Glasgow, 1927.

[Click for larger view]

This print is of the Glasgow House, One West Main St., Richmond, VA by J.J. Lankes (1884-1960). It was home to Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945), the Richmond writer. This item measures 14 inches tall and 8 inches wide and was used to make Glasgow's holiday cards for 1927. It is from the holdings of Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library, VCU Libraries.

The Shockoe Examinier is back in business
after a month long vacation. Visit us daily.

- Ray B.