Dedicated to the lasting memory of Larry E. Bryant, a faithful and dedicated employee of the City of Richmond, Department of Public Works, who died from injuries received in a runaway boxcar accident while performing his duties in operation of the Richmond Floodwall Protection system on July 28, 1994. Also injured were City employees Ronald Coleman, Willie Edwards, John Hay and Robert Streater.
Virginia Capitol Trail, near Seventeenth & Dock Streets
908 Oliver Hill Way
Built, 1886, 1913 & 1916
VDHR 127-6914
September 2018
A chilled what?
The Circuit Superior Court of Richmond divided the real estate of Charles Ellis, recently deceased, among his heirs in 1842. His daughter Jane Ellis received a lot on the western side of North 17th Street. The southern boundary line of the lot ran along the future site of the northern wall of the 1885 packing house.
(Find A Grave) — Junius Albert Morris
Years later, after Jane Ellis had married N. Beverly Tucker, she and her husband sold the lot to William Isaac Johnson on June 26, 1883. Johnson, in turn, sold the lot on February 1, 1884, to Isaac Davenport Jr., Griffin B. Davenport, and Junius A. Morris, principals in the firm of Davenport and Morris. The men were involved in several enterprises, with a grocery business located at 120–124 S. 17th St. They were also stock brokers (Davenport & Co.) with offices at 1115 E. Main St., and Isaac Davenport Jr. was president of First National Bank and Union Bank.
(Find A Grave) — Isaac Davenport Jr.
In 1886, Davenport and Morris constructed a brick and stone tobacco warehouse that adjoined the 1885 warehouse along its northern wall. Bernard J. Black was the architect. The one-story warehouse had a “tin and glass roof,” cost $25,000, and filled the lot. By July 1886, the work was reported “under way.”
In 1889, Davenport’s 1886 warehouse appeared in G. William Baist’s Atlas of the City of Richmond. Similar in appearance to the 1877 Beers Atlas, Baist’s work is more schematic and less detailed than the Sanborn Insurance Company maps. It does, however, show Davenport’s new brick “Tobacco Ware Ho[use]” just north of and abutting the “Packing Ho[use]” that appeared by itself on the 1885 Sanborn map.
September 2018 — earliest section of the Branch House complex
After the demolition of the meat-packing house between 1959 and 1964, Davenport’s warehouse constituted the southern end of the present-day Oliver Chilled Plow Works Branch House.
The demolition perhaps caused a need for the southern wall of the 1886 building to be partially rebuilt, which may account for the lack of a tie-in to the remainder of the front wall, as well as the parging and pilasters on the southern elevation.
(Rocket Werks RVA Postcards) — James Oliver
On March 18, 1892, the Davenport and Morris partners sold their “warehouse and other improvements” to the South Bend Iron Works Company.
James Oliver had founded the company in 1853. Obsessed with inventing a stronger, more-efficient plow, he experimented until he achieved success with a process that involved sand-casting and rapid cooling (“chilling”) of the metal.
(R. M. Wade & Co.) — Oliver's No. 10-V Full Chilled Plow from 1917 R.M. Wade Catalog
He first sold his new plows, fifty in all, in 1857. By the early 1870s, after years of further experimentation and enlarging the foundry, his company was selling 300,000 plows a year and had expanded into the international market. He also established what he called “branch houses” in other states and cities, including Richmond, to sell and deliver plows to retailers.
(iCollector) — Oliver Chilled Plow Pamphlet for the Oliver Chill Plow Works
Oliver’s plows were famous for their strength and efficiency. In 1911, Oliver and the M. Rumely Company staged a plowing event near South Bend under the auspices of Purdue University. Fifty Oliver plows were attached to three Rumely Oil-Pull tractors to plow a twenty-acre field with stubble. After the event concluded, the Purdue scientists calculated that one acre had been plowed every four minutes and fifteen seconds. Farmers who witnessed the event recalled that fifty years earlier it had taken two men, an ox, and a single walking plow ten hours to turn one acre, and the farmer had to walk ten miles to do it. The savings in energy and time were obvious, and the demand for Oliver plows was high as a result.
(iCollector) — Oliver Chilled Plow Pamphlet for the Oliver Chill Plow Works
The company’s purchase of the Davenport warehouse in Richmond in 1892 suggested that the demand for its plows was strong in Virginia and the nearby states that were connected to the new Oliver branch house by the rail line and spur adjoining it. In May 1913, South Bend Iron Works sold the lot and branch house to its successor company, the Oliver Chilled Plow Works, which had been created in 1901.
September 2018 — middle section of the Branch House complex
The two adjoining buildings—the meat-packing house and the plow company branch house— appeared on the 1895 Sanborn map. The 1885 “packing house,” which had a basement and a “gas eng[ine],” was labeled “National Linseed Oil Co. Ware Ho[use]” in 1895. The 1886 building was labeled “Plow Ware Ho[use],” for the South Bend Iron Works. The northernmost lot on Washington Street, which was vacant on Baist’s map, was shown as a single lot with a rail spur penetrating its center from the north.
(LOC) — Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Richmond (1905) — Plate 24
The 1905 Sanborn map showed few changes from 1895. The American Linseed Oil Company occupied the 1885 warehouse as a “tank station,” while the Oliver Chilled Plow Works used the 1886 building as a branch house. Both still were of one story and the 1885 building still had a basement. The former Hagan and Hunt lots just north of the Oliver branch house were vacant. The northern lot, which had no name attached to it, contained a large woodshed.
By 1919, construction of the large three-story, reinforced concrete addition with brick curtain walls had begun. During the decades following the completion of the building by 1923, Oliver Chilled Plow Works underwent mergers and changes in ownership. In 1929, it merged with the Hart-Parr Tractor Company, the American Seeding Machine Company, and the Nichols and Shepard Company, to form the Oliver Farm Equipment Company. The new company acquired all of the lots and buildings on North 17th Street from Oliver Chilled Plow Works. (VDHR)
September 2018 — 1919 section of the Branch House complex
From here the property got batted around like a shuttlecock.
White Motor Company acquired Oliver Farm Equipment Company in 1960, and changed its name to Oliver Corporation.
Oliver Corporation sold the property to Saunders Oil Company in 1969, and then sold it to Philip Morris in 1970.
Philip Morris transferred the parcel and buildings to Frank B. Daniels, Jr. that same year, who then sold the parcel and buildings to William M. Walker in 1979.
Walker, in turn, sold it to Norman E. Herod, of Herod Seeds Inc. in 1979.
Today, the 1919 portion of the Branch House still bears the Herod Seeds name, but the business moved to Manchester, and has since gone the way of the dodo. (VDHR) Norman Herod still owns the property, and as recently as November 2017, the Richmond Planning Commission was considering his rezoning request, so that it can be developed into residential units. Today, however, it remains mostly dormant.
(Oliver Chilled Plow Works Branch House is part of the Atlas RVA Project)
The Richmond Ice Company, wholesale dealers in Kennebec-river ice on the south side of Dock Street, corner of Seventeenth, is successor to Captain A. G. Babcock, who established himself in that line here in 1866. The company was incorporated in 1881.
(LOC) — Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Richmond (1905) — Plate 14 — note the removal of the depot building above
It has $32 000 capital stock. It handles about 20,000 tons of Kennebec ice in the course of a year and 10,000 tons of coal—which business will amount to an aggregate of $100,000 a year — and employs, perhaps, 75 hands. It is a shipper to all points in the Carolinas, the Virginias, Georgia and Tennessee. It has the advantage of rail connection and transportation by water, is owner of the premises it occupies, and is proprietor also of a steam barge for unloading shipments made it.
[RVCJ03] — A. D. Landerkin
E. D. Haley is its president and treasurer and A. D. Landerkin its secretary and superintendent. Mr. Haley lives in Gardiner, Me., and is an ice dealer there and in New York. Mr. Landerkin was formerly with the Knickerbocker Ice Company, of Philadelphia, but has been here for the last eight years. He is a director of the Chamber of Commerce, and is one of the leading spirits in the movements undertaken by it and in public atfairs generally. [RVCJ93]
(LOC) — Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Richmond (1905) — Overview Plate
The area around Seventeenth and Dock Streets became a little complicated in 1901, when the C & O Railroad built both the James River Viaduct and the Peninsula Trestle. Now there was not only basin traffic to contend with, but also the smoke and noise of trains passing by on a timetable. It must have caused a few problems trying to keep the ice clean and free of soot.
June 2018
Today, the former location of Richmond Ice Company has been consumed by the Flood Wall and Canal Walk, and the Canal Basin no longer reaches the north side of Dock Street.
(Richmond Ice Company is part of the Atlas RVA Project)
Sources
[CDRVA] Chataigne’s Directory of Richmond, Va. J. H. Chataigne. 1881.
[RVCJ93] Richmond, Virginia: The City on the James: The Book of Its Chamber of Commerce and Principal Business Interests. G. W. Engelhardt. 1893.
[RVCJ03] Richmond, Virginia: The City on the James: The Book of Its Chamber of Commerce and Principal Business Interests. G. W. Engelhardt. 1903.
