The City of Richmond is accepting proposals for the redevelopment of a municipal property at 1301 East Main Street, officially known as the Intermediate Terminal Warehouse No. 3. Completed in 1938, this long-neglected structure was once an important destination for a variety of bulk goods coming into Virginia by ship such as sugar and tobacco which were unloaded at the nearby Municipal Wharf. Today its site overlooking the river, beside the Capital Trail and squarely in the path of new development sweeping along what was once the Fulton waterfront may be the salvation of the forbidding, stained concrete building. Let’s take a look at an often-ignored part of the history of the Intermediate Terminal: the six years it served as the Richmond City Jail.
Richmond’s 1938 Intermediate Terminal, Warehouse No. 3, on East Main Street.
Richmond has a long history of miserable jail facilities,
usually located in Shockoe Valley. In 1902 a dour, red-brick jail was
constructed on Marshall Street to replace a succession of jail buildings that
stood on that site for more than a hundred years. There, tucked out of sight
below the hillside now occupied by the tall hospitals of the VCU Health
facilities, the jail was literally under the Marshall Street Viaduct. The
facility was subject to a constant shower of trash and horse manure from the
bridge deck, to the point the jail windows sometimes had to be closed even in
the heat of a Richmond summer. In the press, the Richmond jail was referred to dismissively
as “our old Bastille.” By 1927 it was declared obsolete. Two years later,
“bullpens,” large dark basement rooms that in another age would have been
termed “dungeons,” were built to accommodate fifty more prisoners.
Modernity forced the hand of the City government in the late
1957. A tsunami of broken brick, cast iron, and bits of wood that had once been
the homes, businesses, and streets of Jackson Ward and Navy Hill was being
shoved into Shockoe Valley, filling the valley floor and smoothing the path of
what was then known as the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike. Construction of what
is today’s Interstate 95 was coming directly through the supports of the
Marshall Street Viaduct and would soon obliterate the jail just as it had
everything else in its path. Richmond was forced to sell the building and land
to the Turnpike Authority, bringing to an end municipal ownership of the property
that dated from 1799.
The Richmond News Leader, July 12, 1957. City Manager
Edwards is presented a check for $531,000 for the old City Jail and in turn presents
the General Manager of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike a model of the
building. Demolition of the jail began three days later.
Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 23, 1957. This photo
shows the Richmond jail in the path of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike. In the
distance is the clock tower of Main Street Station. Above the jail, the
Marshall Street Viaduct carried traffic from downtown Richmond directly to
Church Hill until its demolition in 1969. The Shockoe Examiner explored theViaduct in this story.
City planners scrambled to accommodate prisoners from the
old jail. The former Meat Market on Sixth Street, with its distinctive cornice
of terra-cotta bulls’ heads, was converted to a lockup and drunk tank for
“guests” that were only staying a short period of time. It could accommodate up
to a hundred men and women in separate cells, but a far larger facility was still
needed.
The Richmond News Leader, October 15, 1957. The
former market for meat and fish on Sixth Street with its distinctive cornice of
bulls’ heads, once stood in the block south of the Blues Armory and in the
1950s was converted to an overnight jail facility. The history of the Meat Market appeared in the Shockoe Examiner in 2014.
By mid-1957, the Intermediate Terminal Warehouse No. 3 had
been hastily converted into the Richmond City Jail. Fencing and guard towers
were constructed around the building and prisoners housed, not in cells, but in
large, high-ceiling warehouse spaces with as many as 50 to a room, mixing
hardened criminals with youthful offenders. A concrete shower in the corner of
the room accommodated the prisoners, who ate, slept and bathed in the same
space. There was no provision for recreation. Conditions must have been very
similar to how prisoners were housed in Richmond a hundred years before, and because
of the pressure from the crude conditions the facility was continually plagued
by savage fights and escape attempts. A shortage of staff contributed to the
problems and there was never enough funding to place guards in the four towers
on the perimeter fence. In late 1958, a jail break was thwarted by a guard
observing a rope hanging from a window, left there by an unknown individual who
jumped the fence and broke into the jail, apparently to facilitate a
mass escape.
R.T. Youell, Virginia Director of Corrections, was not
impressed by what he saw when touring the warehouse-turned-jail in January
1959. In his report, Youell said, “The makeshift facilities provided… jail
administration and staff the barest minimum means of control of prisoners.” Several
months later, 43 inmates rioted and used a bench as a battering ram to attack doors
and breaking up what little furniture was in the “bullpen” with them, including
their one television. City Sargeant Cavedo said the TV and furniture would be
replaced, but seemed in no hurry to order it done.
The same year the population inside the former warehouse grew
to more than 600 men (and women, in a segregated section), but there were still
only five individual cells for unruly or dangerous prisoners. The Richmond
Times-Dispatch described the grim accommodation of the isolation cells:
“Three of the cells are bare, with nothing but shadowy darkness within their
concrete walls and barred front. Each of the other has a cot, sink, and
toilet.” The worst and most violent prisoners were shipped off to the State
Penitentiary once the five cells were filled. Guards constantly found homemade
weapons and loose blocks pried from the walls, and violence continually swept through
the miserable crowds of men pent in the roaring, echoing, concrete rooms. Conditions
amid the heat and noise of the concrete “bullpens” were such at the temporary
jail that some inmates must have been wishing they could return to the comparatively
ordered squalor of the old jail in the valley.
Richmond’s Municipal Wharf, completed in 1928, was once a
busy destination for international shipping unloading at the Intermediate
Terminal. Today, only an occasional fisherman paces along the enormous concrete
wall where cargo ships once docked.
Richmond Hustings Court judges began to pressure Richmond
officials to find a solution to overcrowding and lack of security at the “temporary”
Intermediate Terminal jail. An increase in shipping added urgency as warehouse
space was in demand. Richmond attempted to build a new jail at Byrd Field
(today’s Richmond International Airport) but was thwarted by Henrico County,
which immediately initiated a change in zoning laws specifically created to foil
Richmond’s plans. Talks between surrounding counties and the City of Richmond proposing
a regional jail failed. In 1961, a 12-acre site within the city limits on the
eastern edge of Shockoe Valley was obtained, funding secured, and construction
began on the new Richmond jail on a site that had been a residential
neighborhood. The clearing for the jail obliterated Avery Street and Page
Street and cut off Accommodation and Buchanan Streets. An unknown number of
homes and buildings were again ground to dust and joined the river of fill in
Shockoe Valley.
The Richmond News Leader, Nov. 11, 1961. City Manager
Edwards and Architect J. Ambler Johnston regard the site of the jail that will
finally replace the Intermediate Terminal facility.
In October, 1964, busses began to transfer the first
prisoners from the Intermediate Terminal warehouse to the newly-completed
Richmond jail at 1701 Fairfield Way, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch
described how “Richmond’s new jail opened to its most important visitors
yesterday, and everyone stayed for dinner.” City Sergeant Frank Cavedo must
have looked around with considerable relief as the inmates he managed sat down
to their first supper in the new jail. Everyone, guards and prisoners alike, must
have been happy to be out of the Intermediate Terminal warehouse, and the newspaper reported that, “Ushered into their new quarters, the
prisoners looked about their new surroundings admiringly.” The 1964 facility
was built for 730 prisoners with the option of increasing the jail population
to 1,000. Today, the expanded Richmond City Jail holds more than 1,400 inmates.
The eastern side of the Intermediate Terminal Warehouse No.
3.
It will be interesting to see how the Intermediate Terminal building
will be redeveloped and the grim façade reengineered. The Request For Proposal
document issued by the City notes, “Though beautiful, this location is not
without challenges,” reminding developers that, “Current FEMA flood maps place
the base flood elevation in the area more than four feet above the structure’s
first floor.” Despite the challenges, the site is impressive and filled with
potential. For their part, the grim, impassive concrete walls and blocks wait
for a new purpose, one that will dispel any lingering memories that accumulated
for six horrific years in the history of Intermediate Terminal Warehouse No. 3.
- Selden
2 comments:
Thank you for supplying a very interesting history of a Richmond landmark. And thanks for including information on the continuing problem of jail overcrowding - very timely and relevant.
Amazing. I drive by #3 twice a day. I don't know that I’ll look at it the same again. Thank you for being such a bloodhound for local history.
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