The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Undertaker's Row?

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Undertaker's Row?

We received an email from a fan of the Shockoe Examiner wanting to know the origin of "Undertaker’s Row" in Richmond. This person lives on the 3200 block of E. Broad across from Chimborazo Park and the city tax assessor classified that block as “Tobacco Row/ Undertakers Row.”< Any ideas? Maybe the city assessor is just wrong?

Is there another area of the city that had a large number of funeral homes?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Scott's Funeral Home used to be at 2223 East Main Street, which kind of backs up to Tobacco Row, but that is the only connection I can see between these two industries. I know the idea is far-fetched, but I think the assessor just had his locations mixed up.; June 25, 2010 at 10:59 AM
Ray B. said...: I think you're right.; June 25, 2010 at 12:48 PM

Post a Comment

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.