Commercial Block
1211-1217 East Cary Street
This commercial row of warehouses and retail structures was built immediately after the Civil War, in 1866, to serve the nearby James River and Kanawha Canal.
The Doric colonnade framing the doorways and windows on this building was produced in Richmond by Asa Snyder, who owned several ornamental iron companies during his career.
The partial cast-iron fronts of many of our 19th-century buildings were supplied by the well-known iron industry in Richmond. In addition to serving as a dignified and fairly economical facade, the fronts were believed to be a fireproof method of ornamentation.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, these buildings, like their neighbors, were storehouses for liquor, groceries, and tobacco; but from 1948 until the late 1970s they served as a barrel factory. Now the row has been renovated and converted to attractive office and retail space.
Cary Street & Shockoe Slip, SW
November 2017
