The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Metropolitan Engraving Co., Inc. Building, 12th and Bank Streets

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Metropolitan Engraving Co., Inc. Building, 12th and Bank Streets

Selden shared this image with me and I thought I'd share it here. Great color printing.

The image is from the 1923 Richmond city directory published by the Hill Directory Company - as is the image below. The company was formed in 1907 by William J. Moran (1879-1968), a Richmond artist and illustrator. The company existed for decades. This building was designed by the Davis Brothers and built 1920-1921 and also housed the Richmond Electro Type Foundry Co." The building was razed in 1935 (RTD, April 26, 1935.)

This advertisement also from the 1923 city directory.

- Ray

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: My father worked for this company. The bldg was razed in 1935. Did the company continue in a different location?; July 24, 2023 at 11:45 AM

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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.