#gracestreet

[iwanttobeapharmacist]

Black sesame shaved ice with all the fixins #foodporn #gracestreet 😍

[rocketwerks]

SA-118 Childsavers’ WRVA Building

Philip Johnson, one of the foremost architects of the 20th century, designed this building and its accompanying tower as a new headquarters for WRVA Radio. Dedicated in 1968, the structures were composed of poured concrete, and the windows simulated punches made by a machine. WRVA, founded by a local tobacco company in 1925, broadcast with a powerful signal and was known as the “Voice of Virginia.” ChildSavers, a nonprofit provider of mental health and child development services, acquired the WRVA Building in 2003. ChildSavers originated in 1924 when social reformer Martha Patteson Bowie Branch established the Children’s Memorial Clinic in Richmond.

200 North Twenty-Second Street

June 2020

[rocketwerks]

Brinser Building

208 East Grace Street

Built, 1930

Architect, H. Carl Messerschmidt

May 2020

An overlooked Art Deco gem on Grace 

May 2020

For O. P. Brinser, Carl Messerschmidt created a jewel of architectural ornamentation. No other small building in the city has such a lavish display of sculpted decoration.

May 2020 — showing early Christian design ornamentation

The style of the building was assertively modern with vertical pylons and an unusual central entrance. The ornamentation is related peculiarly to early Christian design motifs.

(Getty Images) — Deer, peacocks and grapevines, mosaic in the early Christian basilica in the city of Heraclea Lyncestis

Traditionally, the grapes and vine were symbolic of either holy communion or drinking and revelry. The second interpretation was unlikely in Prohibition era Richmond. The first is inappropriate for a commercial building. 

May 2020

Art Deco ornamentation is concerned rarely with meaning or symbolism. It has been enjoyed for its decorative properties alone. This is clearly the case here.

[ADR] — building in 1981 downtown survey

The signage on the building is an almost perfect example of what a sign should not be and where it should not be located. 

May 2020 — composite image showing scarring from previous signage

Moreover, numerous holes in the superb decoration indicated that this is not the first bad sign. Poor signs defacing fine buildings are a recurrent theme in American downtowns. [ADR]

May 2020

Grace Street is littered with cool little buildings like this one — small commercial spaces constructed with actual time spent considering the aesthetics of the thing. Foster Studios or the Cokesbury Building just two blocks away are other examples.

(Brinser Building is part of the Atlas RVA! Project)

Print Sources

[ADR] Architecture in Downtown Richmond. Robert P. Winthrop. 1982.

[rocketwerks]

Cokesbury Building

415 East Grace Street

Built, 1921

Architects, Carneal & Johnston

April 2020

Once there was this trendy little bookstore in the heart of the downtown shopping district.

[ADR] — Cokesbury Building in 1981

This building was built for the Methodist Publishing House and designed by Garnett & Johnston. Its design clearly is related to the Mosby Store at the corner of Jefferson and Broad Streets, by Starrett & Van Vleck.

April 2020 — showing projecting cornice

That design was, in turn, related to McKim, Mead & White's Gorham Building in New York, a modernized version of an Italianate palazzo with an arcade at the base of the building and a heavy projecting cornice at the roof.

April 2020

This design was felt to be a particularly successful blending of traditional and modern features, most appropriate for a modern shop. 

April 2020

The Cokesbury Building is designed carefully and well detailed. The first floor arcade was glazed fully, but is now closed partially.

April 2020

The interior vaulted ceilings have been removed, but the building is otherwise well preserved. The reason for the popularity of this building type is seen easily. It is simple, dignified and impressive. [ADR]

(Richmond Times Dispatch) — Cokesbury Building in 1952

The Cokesbury Building, with the Cokesbury Bookstore on the first floor, was an outgrowth of the Methodist Episcopal Book Concern. Created in 1789, this organization was established to religious materials for the Methodist church. It would eventually expand to include books and religious supplies and rebranded as the Cokesbury Press in 1925. By 2012, there would be 57 Cokesbury Book Stores nationwide, one of which used to be on Grace Street.

April 2020

But in that same year, Cokesbury announced the closure of their brick-and-mortar stores, and today they’re online only. The Grace Street location had long been abandoned by that point, having relocated to Tuckernuck Square shopping center in 1992. A loss, really. They were more than just religious books and often had unusual or hard to find titles, back in the days before Amazon.

Today, it’s the Cokesbury Building Apartments.

(Cokesbury Building is part of the Atlas RVA! Project)

Print Sources

[ADR] Architecture in Downtown Richmond. Robert Winthrop. 1982.

[rocketwerks]

Wayback RVA (157)

Kirkmyer Motor Company “Authorized Ford Agents” Night and Day Service, phone Rand. 3467. 710-12 E. Grace Street, Richmond, Va.

Ford The policy of the Ford Motor Company to sell its cars for the lowest posible price consistent with dependable quality is too well known to require comment. Therefore, because of present conditions, there can be no change in the prices on Ford cars:

Runabout... $500.00 Touring Car...$525.00 Coupelet...$650.00 Sedan... $775.00 Truck Chassis... $550.00 These prices are f. o. b Detroit.

Universal Motor Co., Inc. 1012-14 West Broad Street. Randolph 387.

Kirkmyer Motor Co. 710 East Grace Street. Randolph 3467.

Richmond Motor Co., Inc. Tenth and Broad. Randolph 407.

That nice, pastoral look for Kirkmyer Motor’s is a bit out of step with East Grace Street’s urban setting, but let’s chalk that up to the feeling of freedom you get when you drive a Ford. As for hooking up with one of their peppy roadsters, remember, the price is the price. No haggling allowed.

Guide Book of the City of Richmond, 1918. Louise Nurney Kernodle. 1918.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Richmond (1905) — Plate 4

Richmond Times-Dispatch. Sunday, May 4, 1919.

710-712 East Grace Street

Atlas RVA! Project

October 2019

[rocketwerks]

Butler & Bosher

AKA, American Tobacco Center

117-121 North Twentieth Street

Built, 1902

July 2019 — looking towards 117-121 North Twentieth Street at the southeast intersection of Grace & Twentieth Streets

Don’t mess with Buck Duke.

(Duke University Libraries) — James Buchanan Duke

James Buchanan Duke was many things. A philanthropist, an industrialist, trust builder, and creator of the modern tobacco industry, he was not the kind of person who had much patience for weak-kneed associates who sniveled about minor things like legalities, nor was he apt to let such annoyances get in the way of his ruling the market.

[RVCJ03] — Arthur St. Clair Butler, circa 1903 

In January, 1903, Mr. A. St. Claire Butler, of Butler & Bosher Co., Richmond, Va., and a friend spent a day at No. 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, with Mr. Duke, Mr. Fuller, and one other trust representative. Mr. Duke wanted to buy and offered to buy 51 per centum of the capital stock of the Butler & Bosher Co., whose business for several years previously has been supplying the Navy Department with tobacco, and manufacturing and selling tobacco in the South and New England.

(Chronicling America) — Richmond Times advertisement — Tuesday, February 14, 1893

Mr. Duke, in offering to buy 51 per centum of the stock, told Mr. Butler that the business was to continue just as it had been managed, and their interest in it to remain a secret. Mr. Butler was to continue an independent manufacturer, continue to use the union [7564] label, and continue to associate with independent manufacturers. When Mr. Butler said that this would not be honest, Mr. Duke replied, “Plenty are doing it to-day, and if you do not do it, we will ruin you and drive you out of business.” Mr. Butler asked time to consider the proposition, and returning home consulted his lawyer, who, happily, was a lawyer of the old school, as he advised Mr. Butler he would not be able to do what was proposed and be honest. Then Mr. Butler declined to sell. 

(Pinterest France) — a tin of Butler & Bosher Pipe Full Cut Plug

Thereupon the trust started out in its campaign against him. Mr. Butler had worked up quite a trade in New England on a smoking plug under the brand “Butler's Light and Dark.” which was much the same as Mayo's “Eglantine” and “Ivy,” brands owned by the trust, and which were large sellers, and on these the trust placed a deal, which so cut down Mr. Butler's business that he was greatly demoralized. Later the Navy contract was again awarded to Mr. Butler, and then the trust began bidding up the price of sun-cured tobacco, out of which the contract had to be made, and when Mr. Butler was thoroughly frightened, again offered to buy him. This time, however, they offered to buy his business outright, and finally they did so, continuing him as manager upon a salary. 

(Library of Congress) — Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Richmond (1905) — Plate 41 — showing Butler & Bosher Tobacco Factory at Twentieth & Grace Streets

The foregoing is a copy of the statement made January 20, 1905, to the Hon. James R. Garfield, Commissioner of Corporations. Mr. Butler was continued as manager of the business of Butler & Bosher Co., owned and controlled by the American Tobacco Co., from the time of its purchase, July 1, 1903, until March, 1906. Then the factory was closed, and Mr. Butler thrown out of employment. He, like 98 per cent of the manufacturers who have sold out, being under contract not again to enter into business, is now in the prime of life unable to engage in a business in which his whole life has been spent. Thus his experience as a tobacco manufacturer is lost to the country. [BDCRT]

[RVCJ03] — Butler & Bosher factory, circa 1903

It’s not clear when Butler & Bosher started as a business, but the earliest advertisements appeared in the Richmond Times and Richmond Dispatch in 1892. The 1893 edition of Richmond, Virginia: The City on the James (RVCJ) identifies Robert S. Bosher as President of the T. C. Williams Company but he must have found a way to dedicate time to this other enterprise. Regardless of they started, they were an independent tobacco firm, and not part of Duke’s voracious trust, the American Tobacco Company (ATC).

(VCU) — 1889 Baist Atlas Map of Richmond — Plate 3

They started their business in a four-story brick tobacco factory on the west side of Twenty-Second Street, remarkably, a location that is also still standing [RT19020518]. The Navy tobacco deal they won in 1902 vaulted them into the big time, requiring them to produce 200,000 pounds of plug tobacco over the three-year contract [RD19020403], and it must have been with giddy anticipation that they announced the construction of a new six-story factory at Twentieth and Grace barely a month later [RD19020529].

It also effectively put themselves squarely in ATC’s crosshairs, and by September Butler & Bosher was in active denial of the inevitable [RD19020910]. However, Duke wasn’t about to let minor players gum up his grand schemes, and the darlings of the Navy capitulated in July the following year.

(Find A Grave) — Arthur St. Clair Butler in later years

After the acquisition, ATC made good on its intention to have the “independent” Butler and Bosher continue to bid on the federal contract when it came up again for renewal in 1905. The truly independent tobacco manufacturers cried foul, but it appears to have changed no minds. ATC won and would continue to win until the 1911 smackdown by the Supreme Court forced its breakup. 

By then it was too late for Arthur Butler, whose non-compete ejected him from the industry. He bought a piece of land in Mathews County called Poplar Grove and got the hell out of Richmond.

(Butler & Bosher is part of the Atlas RVA! Project)

Print Sources

[BDCRT] Bills and Debates in Congress Relating to Trusts: 1902-1913 Fifty-Seventh Congress, Second Session, To Sixty-Third Congress, First Session, Inclusive (December 1, 1902–December 1, 1913) Vol. 2 Pages 1115–2403. Office 1914.

[RD19020403] Richmond Dispatch. Thursday, April 3, 1902.

[RD19020529] Richmond Dispatch. Thursday, May 29, 1902.

[RD19020910] Richmond Dispatch. Wednesday, September 10, 1902.

[RT19020518] Richmond Times. Sunday, May 18, 1902.

[RVCJ03] Richmond, Virginia: The City on the James: The Book of Its Chamber of Commerce and Principal Business Interests. G. W. Engelhardt. 1903.

[RVCJ93] Richmond, Virginia: The City on the James: The Book of Its Chamber of Commerce and Principal Business Interests. G. W. Engelhardt. 1893.

[rocketwerks]

Wayback RVA (146)

Richmond, Virginia This excellent view of the Richmond Skyline shows part of the old city as well as the modern with the Medical College of the Virginia group of buildings at the west end of the Marshall Street Bridge. The new Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike can be seen running under the west or far side of the Marshall Street span.

How different the skyline looks 60 years later. You’ve still got the Highway Annex Building and the VCU School of Medicine anchoring the gateway to the downtown, center-left in the postcard, and center-right in the photo.

Rocket Werks RVA Postcards

2101 East Grace Street

Atlas RVA! Project

June 2019

[rocketwerks]

Foster Studios

404 East Grace Street Built, 1927 Architect, Henry Barnham

February 2019

A building for those who love fantasy.

(Wikimedia) — from the 1911 Richmond Directory, showing the location before the Foster Studio building was constructed

This spectacular, small building is Spanish fantasy designed by Richmond architect Henry Barnham for W. W. Foster, owner of the city's most popular photographic studio.

February 2019

The building is one of the city's more elaborate examples of the Spanish/Moorish style, ranking with theaters like the Towne or the Mosque, all of which were built about the same time.

February 2019

The dark, heavily textured brown brick effectively contrasts with the terra cotta ornament in buff and white. The original show windows and canopies are preserved, marred only by the new sign. The interior carried out the architectural theme, with the entrance hall treated as a diminutive streetscape, and an upper level window overlooking the space.

[ADR] — showing the uncomplimentary modern sign above the canopy

This building is well preserved; the modern sign makes no effort to compliment the front.

Barnham proposed developing a gas station at the corner of Belvidere and Broad streets with resembled a Mexican village, suggesting that he may have specialized in the Spanish style in its more fantastic expressions. [ADR]

(FindAGrave) — Walter Washington Foster

Richmonders may be more familiar with the classic photographs of the Dementi Studio, but Walter Foster operated his own studio here in Richmond from the late 1870s to the mid-1930s. The Virginia Museum of History & Culture (AKA Virginia Historical Society) has a fascinating collection of his glass plate negatives, available online. (Virginia Museum of History & Culture)

(Foster Studios is part of the Atlas RVA! Project)

Sources

[ADR] Architecture in Downtown Richmond. Robert P. Winthrop. 1980.