Richmond’s Lost Auditorium

There is an empty space in Richmond, a mammoth room big enough to have a battalion of soldiers marching through it. It once rang with dance music, shouted sergeant’s commands, and the roar of basketball crowds. Its main window, large enough to be in a cathedral, has been hidden behind sheets of plywood for decades. Hardly anyone knows this vast room in Downtown exists or what it was, although it is hidden in plain sight. Let’s take a look at Richmond’s once-popular Blues Armory drill hall, high above Marshall Street.

An architectural drawing of the Marshall Street side of Richmond’s 1910 Light Infantry Blues Armory. The building was planned as a combination of military headquarters, city market, and entertainment venue. Library of Virginia

 

For decades before the establishment of the modern National Guard, individual cities sponsored their own military units. Social events consumed a lot of the attention of these men’s organizations, but members were still soldiers, subject to activation by the Governor, and still had to practice, march, and learn to use various weapons. Drill competitions became quite competitive, and militias like the Richmond Light Infantry Blues had to practice formations. The marching band needed space to rehearse their performances. Indoor practice space, or drill halls, that could accommodate hundreds of marching men and yet had no internal roof supports to break up the formations were rare.

 

Because of this, the planners who were designing the new armory for the Richmond Blues incorporated a drill hall in the top of the building under the building’s massive metal roof. The Blues organization had been drilling in the streets until 1907 when a fire consumed their meeting hall and all of their records and equipment. A modern, concrete, fireproof armory with an indoor drill hall were among the first requirements for the new building. The new facility, designed by Washington, D.C. architects Averill & Hall, opened in 1910. Under the arching roof supported by metal beams, the drill hall was a breathtakingly large space, lit by skylights and a huge, south-facing window.

 

A vintage view of the drill hall here set up for a basketball game. Note the skylights and the illumination afforded by a series of small windows, and the huge window on Marshall Street. Richmond Times-Dispatch

 

Generations of Richmonders were well acquainted with this auditorium.  Dances, balls, band recitals, drill exhibitions, and banquets were scheduled at the Blues Armory almost every week throughout the 1920s and 1930s. High School basketball teams found a home at the Blues, and the drill hall served as a central venue for teams from all over the region. There was a Banker’s Basketball League, where women’s teams from area banks played against each other, like the First National Bank’s squad taking on the ladies of the Federal Reserve. Great rivalries, like the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia, met on the court at the Blues Armory and fought for championships.  

 

In 1924, the drill hall was made available for indoor tennis, and two doubles courts and two singles courts were laid off on the wooden floor. A traveling tennis exhibition came to Richmond and more seating had to be brought in to supplement the 3,500 seats usually available. A Richmond sportswriter noted approvingly at the time, “The huge gym floor not only provides an excellent court, but the movements of the players can be seen from almost any angle.”

 

 The afternoon sun on the Marshall Street side of the Blues Armory.

 

War intruded on the social and sporting whirl of the facility both in World War II, and again in 1950 as America embarked on the Korean War. With each conflict, the drill hall was closed to the public and used for strictly military purposes.

 

(See the Shockoe Examiner’s account of an Army training accident at the Blues Armory here)

 

As late as 1961 their marching drills were still being performed in the hall, but the arched roof no longer rang with music or the applause of approving audiences, cheering on their favorite basketball teams or tennis players. Gone were the exhibits and presentations, the banquets, and the ceremonies. In 1968 there were fundamental changes in the National Guard, local militias like the Richmond Blues were disbanded, and the armory was closed. Perhaps it was at this point the giant drill hall window was boarded up, the skylights eliminated, the thousands of feet of wooden floor removed, and for decades, darkness and silence dominated the enormous drill hall.

 

 

The former drill hall as it appeared in 2015. The vast wooden floor has been removed, exposing the reenforced concrete under it. In the distance are the boarded south window and some faded murals on the walls.

 

Remarkably, the same architects that designed the 1985 Sixth Street Marketplace did not include the former drill hall in their plans, even though it could have easily been accessed from the “Chrystal Palace” that filled Sixth Street. Hopefully, the last remains of that sad exercise in urban planning will be removed soon and Sixth Street will open as a pedestrian space, once again allowing inspection of the west side of the armory and an appreciation of its unique style.

The Blues Armory when Sixth Street really was a marketplace and vegetable and flower stalls filled the arcades. On the right is the municipal Meat Market with its distinctive bulls’ heads along the parapet. In the background note the huge armory window. Library of Virginia

 

A photograph of the Marshall Street side of the armory. The line of small arched windows and everything above them is the drill hall space. Richmond Times-Dispatch

 

Various fuzzy proposals have been created that will result in the demolition of the Richmond Coliseum and redevelopment of a twenty-block area around it, as outlined in the document with the stunningly bland name, “City Center Plan.” Happily, the destruction of the Blues Armory does not seem to be included in these visions the future of a large part of Downtown Richmond.

 

Today’s architects would do well to rediscover the drill hall and its potential as a more intimate and interesting venue, especially in contrast to the utterly soulless glass and chrome Richmond Convention Center. Refloored and painted, with skylights and windows restored, the space could be a showplace and its arching steel roof beams become a signature motif. The roar of happy crowds would echo up and down Marshall Street again, and at night that brilliantly lit south window a signal that the Blues Armory and its once-hidden auditorium was again filled with life and contributing to culture in Richmond.

 

-Selden