Where was the Marshall Reservoir?

A once-infamous landmark has disappeared entirely.

In the early 1800s, the municipal water supply of the city of Richmond was best described as crude. Water for homes ran from a series of springs in the hillsides (two of these springs were in Capitol Square) or was provided by wells dug in backyards or street corners around the city. Any water that was transported was conveyed in wooden pipes made of hollowed logs. In 1829, Richmond hired Philadelphia engineer Albert Stein to design a new water system for the city using the most modern technology, and a site for a new reservoir was found on high ground just west of Hollywood Cemetery in what is today the Randolph neighborhood.

Albert Stein (1785-1874) was the Philadelphia engineer who designed Richmond’s nineteenth-century water system. From Watering the City of Richmond, 1930.

The north side of what was named the Marshall Reservoir was decorated with walks and beds, plantings, and shade trees. A reporter from a local newspaper was pleased at the result after touring it in 1870:

 

The Marshall reservoir-grounds, in charge of Mr. Baker, are in good condition and improving. The place is a delightful one to spend a hot afternoon. There, in the Summer-house, fanned by the breezes from the river, gladdened by the forest green of Hollywood on one hand and fields of grain on the other…one may sit in peace and be reinvigorated and refreshed.

 

Lystander Rose was appointed keeper of the reservoir, and he continued the policy of beautification. The public wasn’t permitted to walk along the top of the reservoir walls, but considerable gardens and paths around the base of the impoundment were clearly enjoyed by Richmonders and improved the appearance of the otherwise hulking structure.

 

Illustration from the Richmond Dispatch, May 7, 1885, showing the location of Marshall Reservoir west of Hollywood Cemetery, the adjoining smallpox hospital, the “Dead House,” and cemetery where 150 smallpox victims were buried. Note the series of walkways and beds along the Ashland Street side of the reservoir

 

Keeper Rose always started his day at Marshall Reservoir by walking around the top of the embankment and looking for debris that might have collected in the water overnight. His vexed expression must have changed to horror when he made his way toward something floating at the far end of the pool on the morning of March 14, 1885. On investigation, it was the body of a very pregnant woman named Lillian Madison. Rose’s reservoir would soon become nationally famous as the murder scene in the trial and eventual execution of Lillian’s cousin, Thomas Cluverius, for her death. As a promising young lawyer, Cluverius would be ruined by scandal if it became known he was the father of his 23-year-old cousin’s child.  He lured Madison to the reservoir, punched the weakened woman in the head and threw her in the water. The name of Richmond’s old reservoir would forever be associated with the story of the young man and his hapless cousin who died with their child. In the aftermath of the horrific murder, authorities agreed that would be an excellent time to drain and clean the reservoir, and tons of accumulated mud – the same mud found clenched in Lillian Madison’s fists - was removed, the walls and floor of the brick-lined pool were washed, and the reservoir refilled.

 

The aged Marshall Reservoir receives its second cleaning since 1832. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 24, 1910.

 

In the nineteenth century, one of the few tools authorities had to combat the smallpox epidemic was isolation of both the living and the dead victims of this disease. As if the Cluverius murder didn’t cast enough melancholy over this lonesome corner of the city, adjoining Marshall Reservoir to the east on the Clark Springs property was the smallpox hospital. This building was part of Richmond’s rudimentary health care system, administered in various hospitals and homes around the city. The facility included a “dead house” which held the bodies of those who succumbed to the disease until they could be buried, and in the far corner of the property, a cemetery for smallpox victims. In 1885, a reporter described the cemetery as “Here, 150 white headboards stare you in the face. At best, on the brightest day, it is a lonely place.” That cemetery was mentioned in a Richmond newspaper as late as 1953, but gives no clue as to what, if anything, was done with the bodies of the smallpox victims. The Richmond City Council ordered that the smallpox hospital building itself be burned down in 1886. “The people of that section will rejoice that the pest-house (and eyesore) has been removed,” commented the Times-Dispatch.

 

This slight rise, now the Clark Springs School ballfield with its one, massive magnolia tree, is the approximate location of the Marshall Reservoir. In the foreground, broken bricks litter an adjacent vacant lot.

 

The reservoir in Byrd Park was completed in 1876, but Marshall Reservoir still complemented the larger facility by serving the growing West End of Richmond. By 1911, however, the walls were exhibiting leaks and the old reservoir was said to present a threat to nearby structures. Three years later, engineers from the National Board of Fire Underwriters appeared before City Council and urged the abandonment of Marshall Reservoir if only for fire safety reasons. The old impoundment was becoming inadequate to properly supply water pressure. The reservoir was still operating in 1921 when it reopened to the public after being closed during World War I. “The grounds afford a beautiful park for people of the neighborhood and a delightful and safe place for the children to play,” reported a newspaper.

After almost a hundred years of service, Marshall Reservoir was finally taken off the city water system and drained in 1923, but the site immediately came to the attention of backers of a new stadium for the city. A plan was put forward to remove the western wall of the reservoir and expand it in that direction and use the remaining three walls as the base for stadium seating. This proposal was debated for a couple of years, but the theatricality of the site was not lost on another organization: the Klan. On August 27, 1927, Richmond Klan No. 1, Knights of the Ku-Klux Klan held an “initiatory ceremony” in the drained reservoir. “The event will be a public affair, provisions having been made for those interested to line the wall of the reservoir, while the work of the candidates is being conducted in the bowl of the reservoir.”

 

The Klan takes advantage of the amphitheater-like dry reservoir to stage a rally. Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 27, 1927. 

In the 1930s, and with the advent of Depression-era programs like the Civil Works Administration (CWA), Americans were able to stave off financial ruin and find jobs and, as a result, Richmond benefited greatly from the CWA work done in its parks and cemeteries. “Why, we are now tearing down the old Marshall Reservoir at Harrison and Dance streets, something we have wanted to do for a long time but lacked the money,” reported a director of Parks and Administration in 1934, who added, “About 250 men are working on this.” Dirt from the reservoir walls was used to partially fill Shields Lake, which was judged dangerously deep for a public swimming facility. Hundreds of cubic yards of the material filled gullies and valleys in nearby Riverview Cemetery, and tons more was hauled to Monroe Park in a renovation of the grounds. The eventual loss of CWA funding meant a stop to the work, leaving the south wall still standing for some time, but that, too, finally disappeared with the wheelbarrows and dump trucks.

Any mention of the Marshall Reservoir invariably included references to the 1885 murder of Lillian Madison. Richmond News Leader, February 9, 1934. This archival image was digitally repaired to reduce noise and sharpen details using artificial intelligence.

 

The now-flattened reservoir property was made into Clark Springs playground and served generations of Richmond kids until it was announced a new 600-pupil elementary school would be built on the site. The new Clark Springs School opened in September 1967.

So, where was the Marshall Reservoir? The once-massive embankments have been completely removed and virtually no trace remains of its 20-foot walls. Finding the site is complicated by the changes to this part of Richmond. Reservoir Street, now South Harrison Street, no longer follows the path it did in the early 1900s, and several of the small neighborhood streets that once surrounded the reservoir to the west are completely gone.

By juxtaposing old maps with modern ones and using the slight bend in what was called Ashland Street (now Lakeview Avenue), we can locate the site of Marshall Reservoir. Today South Harrison Street (formerly Reservoir Street) curves through the site, with the western half covered by houses and apartments and the eastern half by the outfield of the baseball field at Clark Spring School and a part of Riverview Cemetery.

 

On top, a 1920 map of Richmond, on the bottom, an aerial view from Google Earth, showing the approximate location of the vanished Marshall Reservoir. The large building with a white roof is Clark Springs School, and to the right of that are the roadways of Hollywood Cemetery.

Today, beyond the school ball field, near the corner of Dance Street and South Harrison Street stands a large, lone, magnolia tree. It is an attractive idea that it is a survivor of the decorative plantings and part of the landscaping that turned such a functional piece of city equipment into an attraction. Adjacent to the ballfield, a city-owned vacant lot has broken bricks embedded in the grassless surface, and it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine this is debris left from the lining of the reservoir.

Even with the complete removal of Marshall Reservoir, what transpired here makes this empty area even more melancholy. The thought of Lillian Madison, pregnant and exhausted, looking up through the snow at the black bulk of the reservoir looming in the distance and hoping this foreboding location was somehow going to be her salvation is heart-wrenching. Marshall Reservoir may be utterly erased from our cityscape, but the memory of what developed after Keeper Rose walked its perimeter on that cheerless March morning in 1885 will always be a part of Richmond’s long and colorful history.

 

-Selden

 

The Shockoe Examiner explored the murder of Lillian Madison at the Marshall Street Reservoir in a story in 2010.

 

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