URBS IN RUS: COURTHOUSE SQUARES IN VIRGINIA

Hanover County Courthouse of c 1740 (VDHR], where the arcaded piazza,
at grade, fronts a raised courthouse interior. 

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Virginia, the civic architecture built in the rural counties that spanned the state, such as courthouses, was always closely related to the public buildings  found in cities and towns. The Capitol at Richmond, like its predecessor at Williamsburg, stood at the heart of a political system that was housed in public buildings erected at a series of crossroads hamlets. By their form and ornament, mostly derived from provincial English sources, these meticulously imagined structures illustrated for their users the way in which the political order could promote the common good. By the 1730s, a continuous hierarchy of substantial civic buildings was in place, from the courthouses and jails at the local level to the capitol, prison, and governor's house at the state level. Local and state leaders, spurred by Thomas Jefferson, successfully undertook a thorough reformation of civic architecture at every level. They projected a new series of civic buildings in order to set a rigorous standard, worthy of the new republic, for architectural achievement in both the public and private realms. Local leaders adapted regionally appropriate building types (like the basilica-plan courthouse with a piazza and a curved end wall) that served specific political orders, and transformed them through a careful use of classical and Renaissance architectural forms.  

The Virginia Courthouse Square

In the overwhelmingly rural context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Virginia, county courts were the dispensers of justice, regulation, and administration for most of the widely dispersed population. County government involved a monthly gathering of the county's elected political leaders at a central point located along the county's most important route. The two most important buildings associated with county government in colonial Virginia were a courthouse in which to conduct the basic functions of local government and a “prison” or “gaol” in which to hold two sorts of individuals: those who were awaiting trial and/or punishment and those who had been identified by the court as debtors. Given the absence of towns or villages in many counties, public buildings were often placed on an enclosed tract of one or two acres, entirely surrounded by an open agricultural landscape, usually referred to as the "public square."

The courthouse square is closely related to the market places of medieval and Jacobean England.  The English market square typically included a government building in the form of a town hall/ market hall equipped with a loggia, piazza or portico, as well as a market cross, the venue for official announcements and the public administration of justice. The rural nature of Virginia counties precluded regular markets held in the same building that housed local government, such as was the case in England and in larger Virginia towns such as Richmond and Fredericksburg, but fairs and court days brought the public square and the area around it to life on a monthly or semi-annual basis. In much the same way, the stocks and whipping post found in courthouse squares were instruments long associated with the conduct of justice at the local level on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Capitol at Williamsburg (1705, reconstructed 1934)
stood at the top of the hierarchy of colonial government.  
The central "piazza," entered through brick arches, is 
related to architectural forms associated with town halls 
in England. The curved apses, ultimately derived 
from ancient Roman basilicas, contained seating 
for political and judicial authorities. 

The King William County Courthouse (c 1730). Beginning
about 1730, county courts began using more permanent
construction materials.  Arcades or "piazzas" not unlike 
the central piazza at the Capitol began to appear at 
some courthouses, along with curved back walls 
containing, like those at the Capitol, the seats from which the 
political and judicial leaders exercised their authority. 

The arched piazzas at eighteenth-century Virginia courthouses (and at the Capitol in Williamsburg) are related to a long tradition of civic architecture, and were provided provided for both practical and symbolic reasons. Their models were found not only in the market halls of England, but in the courtyards of mercantile structures in London, Oxbridge colleges, and local buildings such as almshouses. The ultimate reference, recognizable to classically educated Virginians, was to the Roman forum, particularly as interpreted by Andrea Palladio. The forum was seen as a significant precedent for enclosed courtyards and for the larger public square. Carl Lounsbury has pointed out how Christopher Wren made the arcade at Trinity College Library in Cambridge “according to the manner of the ancients, who made double walks . . . about the forum” [Carl Lounsbury, The Courthouses of Early Virginia: An Architectural History, 2005].  

When Leonard Bacon (1801-1881), a nineteenth-century Congregational clergyman, explained the reasons behind the creation of the New Haven Green, he echoed what countless other classically trained civic leaders understood. The public square was "designed not as a park or mere pleasure ground, but as a place for public buildings, for military parades and exercises, for the meeting of buyers and sellers, for the concourse of the people, for all such public uses as were reserved of old by the Forum at Rome and the ‘Agora’ (called in our English bibles ‘the market’) at Athens, and in more recent times by the great Square of St. Mark in Venice; or by the ‘market place’ in many a city of those low countries, with which some of our founders had been familiar before their coming to this New World" [see Early British and American Public Gardens and Grounds].

According to Lounsbury, the pre-Revolutionary courthouse was often a small and undistinguished building. However, as the eighteenth century progressed, members of the principal county families began to see the courthouse and the church as arenas for architectural expression. They became the most architecturally developed buildings at the scale of the county, and increasingly combined permanent materials, regional architectural forms, and cosmopolitan classical features imported from abroad. The floor plan was adapted to include the special features required for local government in Virginia. Courthouses began to include a semi-circular seating area for the judges facing the entrance that, as we have seen, was ultimately derived from the curved ends of the basilicas where justice was administered in the Roman forum.

The building was the scene of a solemn enactment of the rituals associated with the administration of justice at this local and most familiar level. Although the deferential society of Virginia enforced a clear demarcation, socially and architecturally, between the sitting justices and the majority of the county's population, the local scale meant that justice (at least for the free members of the community) was rooted in the close relationships of all the participants. These included the justices, the plaintiffs, the jury (when empaneled), and the spectators, each of whom took a part in the action. 

The Virginia Capitol preceded Jefferson's successful 
campaign for a proto-typical county courthouse by some 
years. As he hoped, the temple form eventually prevailed 
over older courthouse types. The architectural relationship 
of many courthouses to the Capitol underlines the 
hierarchical connections between local and state government.

The Charlotte County Courthouse (1823), part of the
transmission of Jefferson's program of revised civic 
architecture across every level of government. After the 
1820s, versions of the temple-form courthouse became 
closely associated with county government.

With increasing prosperity in the nineteenth century, county leaders sought to replace their aging public buildings. Thomas Jefferson proposed a new prototype for the courthouse that was very influential in determining the form that Virginia courthouses would take for next 100 years. According to Charles Brownell, Jefferson made the case for a temple-form building, scaled and ornamented appropriately for local government, using Palladio's Tuscan order to "wrap" the traditional basilica form that had been developed in Virginia over the previous two centuries. The eighteenth-century piazza was replaced by a classical pedimented portico, but the floor level remained nearly at ground level, where it continued to provide a transition between interior and exterior and act as a sheltered place to transact legal business, make deals, and take cover in the busy, fair-like atmosphere associated with the special days on which court was held. 
   

The Goochland County Courthouse is one of the finest examples of Jefferson's program to improve the quality of civic architecture at the local level. 
The Tuscan order as employed here results from a careful inculcation of classical principles among a cadre of designers and workmen.

The courthouse square received an increased level of attention in the first decades of the nineteenth century. County officials began to place new buildings in symmetrical locations flanking the courthouse and to clean up the roughly kept grounds. At the same time that the public square (Capitol Square) in Richmond was landscaped and enclosed with an elegant iron fence, counties began to make efforts to order the local landscape by adding ornamental gates, fences or brick walls, intended, not only to prevent the entry of cattle and pigs, but to set the public square apart from the rural land for civic use. 




Hanover Courthouse by Benson Lossing. This drawing documents the Courthouse Square in the early 1850s. Note the well and the trees surrounding the courthouse and how the paths from the tavern (center), the jail (right), and the clerk's office (left) run through the arcaded porch.

For example, Goochland County saw an intensification of activity related to the courthouse that begin in 1820. County leaders were clearly resolved to upgrade the architectural character of the public buildings and the square in which they stood. A higher level of expense was required to achieve these goals in response not only to increasing prosperity, but to the program of architectural improvement widely promoted by Thomas Jefferson. These included the use of permanent materials and improved adherence to normative standards of classical design. The county went great lengths to improve the square. A new post and rail fence with handsome gates was built round the square and it was planted with ornamental trees in the spring of 1820. The county court ordered a brick wall to enclose the square in 1840.

The Goochland County Public Square in 1929. The "crier's platform" shown is otherwise
 undocumented, may also be associated with the location of the stocks and pillory
 [Goochland County Historical Society].   

The courthouse square was the scene of the county’s shared social and political life: festive court days, somber executions, political rallies, and the celebrations associated in Virginia with voting days. As new civic buildings were added, they were often placed to flank the courthouse, following the tripartite form used earlier at grand Virginia plantation houses. These were ultimately derived as well from eighteenth century pattern books with Palladian origins. When the Hanover County court added a clerk's office in the second decade of the nineteenth century, they carefully placed it as a dependency to the side of the main building. Later, when they built a new jail, it was placed in the corresponding position at the other side.  A similar layout can be seen at nearby Goochland County's public square, where the courthouse of 1827 is flanked by the jail and the clerk’s office, dating from 1825 and 1847, respectively. 

Goochland's Public Square in 1915. The one-story Clerk's Office is at the far left. Note
 the three building along the rear line of the square. Other privately owned buildings stood
 along the sides and front (see 1929 map above) [Goochland Historical Society]. 

In many courthouses, landholders bordering the public square sold off in small lots for use in constructing law offices, inns, and even Masonic lodges. This can be seen in miniature rows of tiny law offices opening off the public squares in towns like Woodstock and Culpeper and in the several brick and frame structures that around the square in early twentieth century Goochland. Even thought these lots were not located on official streets, their owners thought it appropriate to informally front their private buildings directly on the green, as a kind of nascent urbanism.

Powhatan Courthouse Tavern, Powhatan County, Virginia a late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century tavern [Powhatan County Historical Sites].

Hanover Tavern, dating from 1791, placed directly across the main road from the courthouse [VDHR].

The Goochland Courthouse Tavern, operated by Benjamin Anderson, stood directly
opposite the courthouse. An "Old Tavern" and a lodging house stood on either side of the square,as can be seen in the plat below [Goochland Historical Society]. 

1822 Plat of the Goochland County Prison Bounds (area within which certain prisoners
 were allowed to move about). It shows the T-shaped courthouse that proceeded the
 present 1827 courthouse, the taverns, stable, and the old jail [Goochland County Deed
 Book 25: 325].

In rural courthouse communities, the tavern, located along one side of the square, provided the essential counterbalance to the courthouse. At Hanover, the rambling tavern, rebuilt in 1791 and enlarged several times afterwards, faced the courthouse from across the road. It served as a home for visitors from outlying parts of the county during court sessions. It was the setting for much of the social exchange that bound together farmers and planters at the county level. By the late eighteenth century, Virginia taverns in the both urban and rural locations often were fronted with a long porch for warm-weather seating and social life.

In Cumberland County, the courthouse of 1778 did not face the tavern. In 1818 the new courthouse was positioned directly across from tavern. As Marc Wagner observed, whether or not it was intended, the "interesting relationship of portico facing portico . . . created a town center where outdoor gathering would have had appropriate ceremonial legitimacy [NR nomination, Section 8, footnote 6]."

In its fullest form, the extended tavern porch formed one side of a partially enclosed public square. It served as the counterpart to the piazza of the courthouse, each symbolically extending toward the other. Together, they represented a porous boundary for the model of the civic realm that was enacted each month in the public square. 

   

Richmond's Second and Third Markets

As detailed in an earlier post, the legislation through which the city was chartered in 1782 established a common council and court of hustings as the local government, a clerk of the market, and a sergeant. A city market and market square were also mandated by the charter. The newer, less developed, and more elevated section of the city located on Shockoe Hill was selected as the site of the new capitol. The state authorities, encouraged by Thomas Jefferson, planned a new city around six adjoining public squares on the hill. Jefferson’s program for the new city, enacted in 1780, included placing the market on one of the squares. The authorities, however, demurred, undoubtedly because there was insufficient population on the hill to support it. Instead, the new market was placed directly between the old town of Richmond to the east of Shockoe Creek and the new capitol city on the hill to the west.

Although the city began with one principal public market at the crossing of Shockoe Creek, as the city grew subsidiary markets would be needed in new quarters or neighborhoods. These would be built as diluted versions of the First Market, responding to and reinforcing the organizational structure of the city, in much the same way that, in later years, branch libraries and post offices would express through their relative scales its hierarchical order. Richmond would have three public markets in place by the 1890s, each serving separate neighborhoods.

The historic relationship between a successful market and a traditional conception of the city's ideal order is shown by the repeated attempts to establish a prominent market on Shockoe Hill, where Jefferson envisaged a market as part of his new capital.  A "Shockoe Market" was set up to serve this area on the north side of Broad at Twelfth streets in the early 179os.  The General Assembly in 1793 retroactively gave the “Market-House erected on Shockoe Hill” the same privileges and regulations as the first market [An Act ascertaining the Boundaries of the City of Richmond, and for other purposes. November 27, 1793]. A sketch (below) shows the Shockoe Market Hall to have consisted of a long arcaded frame building similar to contemporary market halls in small towns across the state. At about the same time, the common council had rejected a plan 1793 to place this new Shockoe Market in the middle of Broad Street like some new markets that were inserted into existing street grids in other cities.

Shockoe Hill Market Hall at Broad and 12th (on the right) with the unfinished Academy
Building beyond from a sketch by Latrobe, 1797 or 98 [From Bryan Clark Green, 1997]. 

 Site of 1793 Shockoe Market ("Old Market Square") near the Baptist Church [Young's Map of 1817].

Like the first market, the new market square was located off the grid. It was placed on the eastward slope of Shockoe Hill on a tract known as “Watson’s Tenement” where many public buildings were to be located in the coming decades. The part of this tract that had been laid off in lots was officially included in the city in 1793 by city ordinance. These would include the Academy, the Theater (and, therefore, Monumental Church), as well as the Medical College near the top of the hill and, eventually, the Lancastrian School and the City Jail at the bottom. Benjamin Henry Latrobe also proposed sites for his planned theater/hotel and church of c. 1798 at this key nodal location where the main route (Broad Street to Governor Street) turned to descend the hill. The new market appears to have failed to become established. 

The 1858 Adams Map shows the Second Market of 1834 at the upper left in relation 

to the First Market (unlabeled near the creek) at the lower right corner.

It was not until the upper town had grown in density and diversity a decade later that it could rise to urbanity by the  successful establishment of a second market. By that time, Jefferson’s program for the new metropolis on the hill was, for all practical purposes, complete.  At about the same time, the urban governing function was separated from the old First Market and moved to Shockoe Hill, where the City Court (City Hall) occupied a Neoclassical temple-form building behind and in an axial relationship to the Capitol, facing the city’s principal axis, Broad Street. 

The "New" or "Second" Market filled a lot on the southeast corner of Sixth and Marshall streets on Shockoe Hill in 1817. There are very few images showing the market house of that period. The illustration above shows it to the right. It was arcaded like its predecessor in the valley below.

The extension of Richmond's Second Market on the north side of Marshall Street 
after 1834,  showing the additional Market Hall on the left and the new square to the left 
of the central lot line [Virginia Mutual Policy of 1865].

The market square was expanded across Marshall Street to the north in 1834, and the large open area was eventually lined by shops on the north and east and by another market hall, also of a single story in height. It appears that the butchers had expanded in the original location and needed an enclosed hall, so that produce sellers needed a new market of their own.  The old hall south of Marshall was probably enclosed at this time to serve as a more sanitary meat market. 

Richmond’s Second Market on the 1876 Beers Map. The original c. 1817 Market Hall is on the south side of Marshall and the Market Square of 1834 is to the north (north is to the top on each).

 The 1889 Sanborn map shows the Headhouse/Police Station  with an arched opening on 
each side as is visible in the 1865 image below, by this time surrounded by shed roofs. 
Separate facilities for sale of fish and a large hay scale were features of most markets at this time. A new Meat Market replaced the c. 1817 market hall south of East Marshall in 1885. In Richmond the duties of the Weight Master, a city employee who certified the quality and weight of all fodder, hay, and other "long forage," were spelled out in a city ordinance dated Oct. 2, 1827.  The weight master or his deputy was employed from sunup until sundown every day except Sunday making sure that citizens were receiving the correct weight of animal feed for the price they paid.

By 1851, the hucksters had begun to block Sixth Street as far north as Broad and council responded to local concerns by extending the market boundaries to Broad and planning a police station, since the watch house was nearly two miles away at the First Market. In 1853, the city replaced the 1834 market house with a new open market house with a brick loggia at the south end containing the police station. The new hall, supported on tows of cast iron columns, also ranged along the west side of the 1834 square. A delicate trio of fanlights made a transom between each cast iron column (see also the William Sheppard illustration below).

A contemporary article commended the new market for its strength, durability, taste, neatness and convenience." He admired the two belfries. The one on the police station contained a 700-pound bell used to open and close the market and to sound alarms. The six-room police station continued cells that reflected badly on the uncomfortable "cage" that housed reprobates at the old market [Richmond's Flowering Second Market, Virginia Calvacade, Spring 1956]. A fish market, added in 1856, and the city scales were housed in separate structures to the east. Along the north side and an alley running along the east side the square was hedged in with shops. 



Leslie's Weekly illustration of 1865 showing the City Dogcatcher at the Second Market
with the 1817 Market Hall at right and the c 1834 Headhouse/Police Station
at the center with bell tower

The New Market, Corner of Market [sic] and Sixth Street, Richmond, Va.
[Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper 10 Aug 1865]. This appears to show the 
market hall on the north side of Marshall Street from the wide arch of the
 Headhouse/Police Station.     

 
The illustrations above show the head house which fronted the 1853 market hall and its interior. Like the First Market Hall in the Shockoe Creek Valley, rebuilt at the same time, it housed the police station and had a cupola and bell on the roof, looking not unlike the arched tower at the First Market. The elegant structure was designed as a two-story, classically organized loggia, with a parapet roof. It took the classic form of the medieval/Renaissance town hall or broletto, where a meeting hall for local government was superimposed over an arcaded market at ground level.  By 1889, it was surrounded by a projecting canopy (see the Sanborn Map above).

The Tholsel, Town Hall, Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland, 1761 

Witney Town Hall and Market, Whitney, Oxfordshire, England, 1770s

 The city built a new Second Market Hall or Sixth Street Meat Market, a modern sanitary facility, in 1886 on the site of the c 1817 market house.It was built by Joseph Heppert [Virginia Calvacade Spring 1956]. The regular pilasters (supporting a memorable series of bull's heads), the battered stone water table, and the segmental arched openings are remarkably similar to the Third Market building of 1892 seen below.  


The new Sixth Street Market Hall of 1886 [Valentine Richmond History Center]

Sixth Street looking south with northern part of market, including hucksters to right and the rebuilt "head house" with cupola at left. The meat market can be seen beyond [Library of Congress].

The head house/police station at the Second or Sixth Street Market was rebuilt in the late nineteenth century. The north section of the market with the head house, cupola, and bell, is seen in a pre-1909 postcard above.

According to a contemporary article, the city's three markets expanded in the last two decades of the twentieth century. In 1900, the First Market at 17th Street produced $9,000 in revenue, the Second Market at Sixth Street between $7,000 and $8,000, and the Third, located in the city's West End, only $1,000. In 1895, the city ceased taxing vendors from outside the city limits and substituted a modest sanitary tax from those who left behind dirt or trash. The Sixth Street Market, being centrally located, was the most popular. 

By 1900, most of the population purchased foodstuffs in the city's three markets, rather than from itinerant street-vendors.  They made  many of their purchases from from the huckster, who, according to the terms in use at the time, was "the regular dealer, who rents his stall in the market by the month, and has an established trade at a small scale." The "truck gardener, who sells from his cart his own home-raised productions," made up the other major class of vendors [The Markets of Richmond: When They were Established and How They Pay, unidentified newspaper, 10 Feb. 1900, files, The Valentine].   

The Sixth Street market was long regarded, from the point of view of white visitors, as one of Richmond's most colorful points of interest.  Indeed, it probably served as the principal public intersection between the races. Articles written in the 1950s, as the market was failing, document the importance of the city's markets in the eyes of both vendors and customers. 

While the meat and fish were indoors, the exterior of the market served as a large and popular flower market. It drew national attention as a busy market for Christmas greens in the winter. The market provided a popular subject for artists, including illustrator William Sheppard in 1875, local color painter Margaret Dashiell in the teens and twenties, Teresa Pollack in the 1930s, and Bell Worsham in 1956. The drawings usually show white patrons passing through the picturesque and clamorous setting of the market.

William Sheppard, Selling Christmas Greens, Harper's Weekly, Cover for
the Christmas edition, 1875. The Sixth Street market in in the background.

Teresa Pollack, corner of Sixth and Marshall streets, 1930
[Virginia Calvacade, Spring, 1956.]

A contemporary "local color" piece by columnist George Rogers describes the vendors, mostly elderly black women, who "sat crunched on boxes or leg stools, clustered around an old lard tin or iron kettle from which heat radiated from . . . charcoal or small stubs of wood. Their lower limbs were wrapped in old bed quilts, horse blankets or any available protection. On their bodies were all the clothes they possessed, supplemented with a couple of masculine coats and vests. The head covering was either an old straw hat or a felt hat that had withstood several years of usage, and protruding from the headgear were several pig tails decorated in red or white braid. The finishing touch of the makeup was a short-stem corn cob pipe from which curling smoke indicated the vendor was in business" [George W. Rogers, News Leader 24 Nov. 1956]. 

Another nostalgic writer recalled how "for generations that stretch back into the closing antebellum years, city dwellers have been able to observe the cycle of the seasons in the appearance and subsequent absence of blooms and plants. Throughout the procession of these hundreds of seasons, negro women have sat in this scene, an invariable fixture in theses colorful banks of blossom. . . . Hucksters from the nearby countryside hopefully exhibit their home-grown vegetables in the same market area. Time was when these men came into town before daybreak, riding in open or covered wagons or two-wheeled covered Hanover carts. Once arrived, they built fires on the street to take the bit from frosty mornings" [Richmond's Flowering Second Market, Virginia Calvacade, Spring 1956].

1909 Market and Armory at Sixth and Marshall streets, same view as the 

Leslie's Weekly view from 1865 seen above

Second Market- Detail of 1924-5 Sanborn Map of Marshall between 
6th and 7th Streets. It shows the Armory Building to the north and the Meat
 Market to the north of Marshall Street.

Mid-20th c view of Sixth Street Market shoppers and vendors, no date,
from Sanford, Richmond, 1975

  The town hall form, of a market with a civic meeting room above, was reiterated there when, in 1909, when a new, appropriately castellated Market and Armory was built on the same site. The market function was enclosed at the ground floor and the upper floor was dedicated to public events and the use of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues as an armory. The Sixth Street Market operated in this building until it was uprooted for the construction of the Sixth Street Marketplace development in 1985. The market function here was made visually secondary to the military. 

Terra cotta bull's head from the Second (Sixth Street) Meat Market as

reused at Seventeenth Street 

An article in the Richmond News Leader on 14 February, 1956 recounted the story of the Sixth Street Market. The city wanted the site of the Meat Market for a new parking lot to support downtown shopping. The 17 stalls were at that time rented by  total of six vendors and three stalls in the dilapidated building were vacant. The 1886 Meat Market was demolished and two of the ornamental bull's heads were placed at the Seventeenth Street Market. It was, sadly, demolished in the 1964 to make way for a multi-story parking garage. 

The Second or Sixth Street Market area from Broad, 2nd 1/4 20th c., 
showing the Blues Armory at rear with the Meat Market 
in front of it with the terra cotta bull's heads visible along 
the top of the facade [Sanford 1975]

Market halls declined in importance as time passed. Their function was transformed in the late nineteenth century by the development of new technologies for the production and preservation of food and new concerns for hygiene. These changes, coupled with the growth of truck farming and neighborhood grocery stores, in the words of Bryan Clark Green, "removed the market house from the economic, administrative, and social center of Virginia's towns."  

Third Market, Richmond Virginia [VCU Archives]

As a result of the growth of population in the western end of the city, the city planned, in 1881, a third market for the area known as Sydney (today's Fan District). The Richmond Third Market hall was built on West Main Street in the early 1890s, designed by Richmond architect Marion J. Dimmock. Like its predecessors, it took the traditional form of an arcaded market, only on a much more ambitious scale. Like the one-story Sixth Street Meat Market of 1886, which it closely resembled, the Third Market Hall consisted of a single, large open room lit and ventilated by a prominent roof monitor. 

The market did not, however, prosper at the Sydney location and was closed in 1906. It  was converted for use in the following year as a civic assembly hall, with the addition of a vestibule, dressing rooms, and a rostrum. It was known as the City Auditorium until it was replaced by the Mosque in 1928. It was rehabilitated by Virginia Commonwealth University as a gym in 1981, expanded in 2009 as the Cary Street Recreational Center.