Monday, October 18, 2010
Richmond skyline - between 1900 and 1915
The skyline of Richmond, from sometime between 1900 and 1915. It took me awhile to figure it out, but this is looking northwest from just south of the State Capital. Note the Miller and Rhoads Dry Goods tower and the Richmond News Leader building.
Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress
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I think this is before 1912 because(if im correct) this is in the direction of the 700centre building
ReplyDeleteI'm no expert on turn-of-the-century automobiles, but I was thinking this photo must be closer to 1915 based on the car in front of the Alhambra Hotel?
ReplyDeleteSo I figured out that the intersection of Franklin & 7th is near the center, based on the fact that the row of six white 3-story buildings (across from the Alhambra) are still there. A lot has changed, obviously, but I'm wondering what happened to the two beautiful churches--the one just above center with the tall spire, and the even taller spire of the one at the far left. Do you know anything about the fate of those two? Neither one is there anymore--the one near center appears to have stood at Grace & 7th, which is currently a surface parking lot (naturally). Hopefully such a structure wasn't yet another beautiful building lost to parking, but if not, what happened to it? I can't reckon exactly where the other one was, but it appears huge--something must be known about its fate.
ReplyDeleteAs to the car, that could probably be anywhere from 1910 to late teens. So it could be before '12, just not too far before.
My guess is that the spire in the middle belonged to Seventh Street Christian Church (now at Malvern and Grove), and the one on the left was All Saints Episcopal Church (now on River Road at Parham)
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed those white 3 story buildings are extant. Not all 6 of them, though. They are on 8th St. north of Franklin directly across the Supreme Court of Virginia building. Amazing how few of the buildings from this picture are still around.
ReplyDeleteThe building directly behind the Alhambra Hotel is the Academy of Music, a center of the city's theater scene until it burned down in 1927. In early-to-mid-1912, construction began at Seventh and Franklin streets on one of Richmond's early (and still extant!) skyscrapers, the headquarters of the Virginia Railway and Power Co. (later Vepco, later Dominion). It would be pretty much right in between the building with the American flag at the photo's left and the big church (Seventh Street Christian Church) in the center, and it's nowhere to be seen, so the photo's definitely from before then.
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