The Shockoe Examiner Blogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: 800 Block of W. Franklin St.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Looking for Photographic Images of the Ellett House, or the 800 block (south side) of W. Franklin St.

I am trying to find a photographic image of the house below - believed to have been built ca.1887-1888 at 807 W. Franklin St. for Mr. T. H. Ellett. The building was designed by architect Marion J. Dimmock. A photographic image of the house or of the 800 block of W. Franklin St. (the south side, from the 1880s until 1960) would be greatly appreciated. I have checked all the usual suspects. I think the house was torn down in the 1950s to build an extension of VCU's Franklin Street Gym. If you know of any leads, just email Ray at rfbonis@vcu.edu

Residence for Mr. T.H. Ellett, Richmond, Va

– 807 W. Franklin St. from Southern Architect, August, 1890.

Residence for Mr. T.H. Ellett, Richmond, Va

– 807 W. Franklin St. from Inland Architect and News Record, Sept. 1889

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.