A Warehouse for Richmond’s Criminally Inclined: The Intermediate Terminal Warehouse No. 3

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