Tyler Potterfield: An Appreciation

Tyler, left, exploring East Main Street for a blog entry in Spring of 2010

Here it is time that we should inscribe a terse memorial of our dear friend Tyler Potterfield.

It has been barely long enough since Tyler's death in late April to realize that is no longer with us. It's not just that he won't be biking over to sit at our table on an odd Wednesday evening, although that is very important.  Here at Urbanismo, we also prized him as a keen critic and sympathetic observer. Tyler accompanied us on most of the tours posted on the blog. He understood what a city could be and where it missed the mark. It is very important to us to remember him in full, as a friend, an urbanist, a husband, and a historian of his adopted city of Richmond.

Tyler's presentation could be a little off-putting to those who didn't know him: the ghost of a downturned lip might have been mistaken for a kind of disdain. Nothing could have been less true of him-- although, if he could have been a snob, it would have been in the cause of good sense, accomplished woodcraft, and well composed surroundings. He preserved a laconic style even when delivering a pungent comment about poor design or mistaken planning decisions; his compliments were always meaningful. It is a little known fact in Tyler's history that he once aspired to be a minister in the Lutheran Church. He very much enjoyed singing in church choirs.

As a connoisseur of urbanity, Tyler was always pleased to explore great cities and great museums. He also understood the margins of the wilderness: Tyler especially prized his time hiking and fishing from "Windy Inn," the almost plumbing-free lodge founded by his grandparents on a  Pennsylvania trout stream.  We got to visit more than once and relished the trails and the quiet porch hammock.

In the field, Tyler was a Boy Scout. When on an expedition, he displayed what his necessarily tolerant wife, Maura, once called his "Moonrise Kingdom mode." He was invariably outfitted with selected bits of the traditional kit that went along with living outdoors: shorts, nice hiking boots, elegant envelopes for fishing lures, perhaps a belt for secateurs and small hand-axes that could be useful for clearing trails, a thorn-proof vest, and a cap redolent of the Scottish highlands, ornamented with a clan badge improvised from a sprig of oak. In recent years, his walks regularly led along the bank of a trout stream.

And then there were the undertakings: restoring bridges, fostering the building crafts, marriage, learning to fish, protecting canals, cemeteries, neighborhoods, and making a Corinthian library according to the order of the "Tower of the Winds." Most of these were very successful. Both of us at Urbanismo cut our professional teeth cataloging entire streetcar suburbs under Tyler's careful administration. In recent years, Tyler was increasingly recognized as an articulate defender of the city's urban landscape. He was able to transcend his official position as the city's senior preservation planner to become a personal advocate for key elements in the historic urban fabric that serve the public good.

We also watched when Tyler and Maura, after an eventful courtship, walked into St. Andrews Church and came out in a new combination, making a particular life together in their lovingly tended Oregon Hill row house. Their companionship glowed under the stress of their frequent hospitality: Maura's elegant meals, Tyler's various aperitif combinations, dinner in the kitchen or garden, quoits in the back alley.

His most charming gift was for the creation of what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons," those small societies which make the city stronger and more humane. When he wasn't hoeing or pruning or riding his bicycle, he was continually launching serial organizations, professional circles, student clubs, and quoits teams, all of a duration short enough to prevent them from becoming automatic and, therefore, boring. Short, almost illegible notes were succeeded in recent years by email invitations. Most recently, he organized monthly conversations among the city's upcoming cadre of urban planners.

And, as his most accessible accomplishment, Tyler brought his walker's eye to scholarship. Nonesuch Place, his memorable history of the Richmond landscape, cuts across the grain of traditional civic history. It reminds us of Walter Muir Whitehill's elegantly crafted Topographical History of Boston, gifting the city with a new and exciting way of understanding itself.

Among all of these projects, Tyler was his own best effort. He was loyal, brave, very true, and most of those other things as well, even thrifty. Who knows what his next project might have become or might be? What is needed just now is a topographical history of Tyler Potterfield. We won't forget him anytime soon.

Letter to Malcolm: Chiefly on Krier

Dear Malcolm,

All traditional architecture is not necessarily classical. The classic is the very best of a tradition. Jefferson's Capitol would be an example of a classical building because it not only hearkens back to former classical buildings, but has itself become a classic. It is so because in it Jefferson took a previous example, namely the ancient Maison Carrée at Nîmes, and made it thoroughly modern for the new seat of provincial government in Virginia. In this example lies part of the answer to your question about the practical uses for classical architecture in the modern world. 

Classicism is not un-modern. One of my professors in fact describes classicism as the "other modern." Modernism, the ideology that has held architecture around the world in a death grip since the 1920's, was based in the denial of all previous models and sought to replace them with the paradigm of the machine. The "international style" is a good example of such a mentality based in the desire for a new, unsullied architecture, fitting form to function. All but a few anachronistic modernists have long since left the machine slogan behind, however its influence can still be seen in even the tamest new construction. 

Traditional architecture, on the other hand, seeks to work with and continue local traditions, to render the urban order of the city more intelligible, and to tell the user and passer-by about itself through its form. Part of this process involves the adaptation of the way things have been done in the past to suit current needs. In other words, it does what buildings have always done until roughly eighty years ago. In opposition to many modernist buildings which are often either completely inexplicable to anyone but their designer, or hideous blights on the land, (and more often both) the traditional building seeks to be a good neighbor. Being a good neighbor entails a willingness to have a dialogue with one's surroundings, not to be offensive, to understand one's place in the order of the city, and most importantly to contribute to the public good. This means that in a Western city such as Richmond, the provincial capitol will be the most important building, traditionally ornamented with a fully expressed order, etc., all at an appropriate scale. Lesser buildings take their cue from this and are ornamented in a way that tells the story of the city. Classical buildings like the State Capitol are the best of these good neighbors.   

So, perhaps another question might be "what are the practical uses of an architecture that refuses to look to the past and continues to build indefensible, un-neighborly buildings?" Of course I have made this seem very cut-and-dry. There are many current architects who seek to use the modernist language in a communal, legible way, with varying degrees of success. I would argue, however, that such efforts are inherently futile. 

I am not sure what exactly you mean by the resources and processes originally used, but your question does raise an interesting question: how do we recover the skills and traditions of a building craft ignored for the last half century? One of the main difficulties with such an undertaking is the difficulty of mastering many of the required skills of the traditional architect and builder. Many of these traditions have been protected or rediscovered in the preservation field. There are several institutions around the world, my school among them, which seek to continue and spread the skills and traditions of the last 2700 years.

If you would like to know more about traditional and classical architecture and urbanism I would recommend the book, Architecture: Choice or Fate, by Leon Krier. It is a great place to start understanding classicism in a modernist world.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Best, 

Richard

Urban Wilderness

The James River near Haxall Mills, 1865

“Let the most absent-minded 

of men be plunged in his 

deepest reveries--stand that 

man on his            

legs, set his feet a-going, and 

he will infallibly lead you to 

water, if water there be in all 

that  

region.”

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? 

Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; 

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

G. M. Hopkins

“What’s the Plan for Richmond’s River?”  Richmond Times-

Dispatch headline 29 April, 2012

“Everyone would agree that the river is our greatest asset.” 

Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones

Whenever Richmond’s citizens are gathered to assist in developing projects for civic improvement the 

talk inevitably returns to the river.   Richmond’s recent planning documents have emphasized 

the many barriers that block easy access to the river. This lack of connections is usually placed among 

the city’s most intractable problems. Under the sponsorship of the Capital Region Collaborative,  

attendees at more than 100 public meetings indicated that enhanced visitation would improve the river 

not only as a “recreational resource” and a “quality of life enhancement,” but as an “economic driver 

for our region.” While planning documents invariably list it among a range of more troubling social 

problems like inadequate education, substandard housing, and family instability, improved river 

stewardship and access is the issue that captures the greatest share of public comment. It appears, 

however, to Urbanismo that our search for domestic wilderness at the river’s edge coincides with a 

failure of the city and a passive negation of the American urban experiment.

The most recent and authoritative document put forward is the city’s Richmond Riverfront Plan, which 

has been labored over by citizen groups and organized by professional planners. The plan’s authors, 

who see the river as threatened by development, place it “at the heart of the Richmond region” and 

propose that it should become a “sustainable landscape corridor seamlessly connected with the River’s 

significant resources upriver and downriver.” 


They propose “placemaking” interventions at underused parcels, the addition of new trails, 

improvement access to the water at existing parks, and the creation of more entry points for boating and 

fishing. None of these activities are overly ambitious and some, like returning Mayo Island to its old 

role as a recreational park, are to be loudly applauded.

Urbanismo spent much of our youths climbing across the rocks, playing in the falls, and even guiding 

rafts down the James River as it passed through, or rather beside, the city, but we never fell to 

thinking that there was insufficient access to it.  More and safer access would have undercut our 

fascination. Even before the creation of the perennially underfunded James River Park, we made our 

way through broken and rusted fences, struggled through tall weeds and poison ivy, and tiptoed along 

forbidden railroad tracks to reach the river’s bed and its waterswept rocky islands studded with 

mysterious iron rings and hollowed by quarries. The risk to life and limb of directly encountering the 

river is part of its attraction for young people. More than a few of them have actually drowned in the 

unexpectedly swift water. The wildness of rivers is alien to the city, and it arrives perpetually from the 

outside, shoving against the constraints of civilization.

The yearning for water and wildness imposed on the beach and the riverbank by bootless urbanites 

seems misdirected to city dwellers. In the city, the river is restrained, sifted for its contents, and mined 

for its energy-- including its current potential as an “economic driver.” They know its moods, because 

the town and the river have always been bound together. Indeed, what great city is not on a mighty 

river? Rivers bisect the cities of every region in the state. Although they remain untamed, the wildness 

of city rivers can be deceptive- their every crevice has been explored and exploited in the name of 

prosperity. 

The city river is always framed by buildings, harbors, and equipment. Its edges make room inevitably 

for strolling and gazing, but have always been irresistibly conditioned by the raw exchange of civic 

order and primal power. The recent subsidence of industrial activity along its banks fosters the illusion 

that we would be even happier if Richmond provided more “solid connections” to the river’s many 

seasonal moods: we want to extend “the ability of people to get to, around and across the river on foot 

and on bicycle, by car or public transportation” as Mayor Dwight Jones says.  But what we have told 

the planners is that the river is actually too wild, too dangerous, and too strong for us. The new plan 

calls for safe, code-compliant access to a system of public interventions that would virtually line both 

banks of the river-- our “great, wet Central Park”--  for most of its length through the city. 

Not every intervention is so heavy-handed a part of the official planning process. The North Bank 

Mountain Bike Trail along the river bluff below Hollywood Cemetery contrasts with the kinds of 

“placemaking” typical of most park systems. The trail, created and maintained with minimal 

infrastructure by cyclists, is kept as clean and clear as an animal path. It retains the subtle sense of 

adventure that gives zest to urban exploration.  On the public side, however, walking to the parkland at 

Texas Beach seems “wild” in a more unsavory way. Crossing the rusted steel bridge and decaying stair 

tower is like traversing a disused New York Subway tunnel accompanied by unpleasant sights and 

smells, only to reach a waterlogged and often unusable path to the river. The decaying industrial ruins 

along other sections of the river seem of a piece with the park’s access structures and support buildings.  

City dwellers will realize that Richmond’s problems do not stem at all from lack of access to the river. 

We already drink from it, drive over it, and keep its powerful image in our imaginations, where 

rivers and other similarly potent forces of nature do their most effective work. In fact, the heart of the 

city is most certainly not the James River: real wilderness has only a small place in the city’s necessary 

order. Our life as citizens- practicing politics- the great art of living together- is at the heart of the city.  

Neglecting our urban life and its finely crafted architectural setting, we have somehow abandoned a 

shared understanding of what it takes to build and maintain a good city. Our sidewalks have been 

depopulated, the prosperity that serves the civic good has fled, and our schools are unable to fully 

reform themselves. Richmond’s fragile connective tissues should be of more immediate interest 

than the waters of the beautiful, unstoppable river. 

A Proposal for 17th Street Market

 

 Proposed market and square between Main and Broad Streets with Main Street Station on the left

This proposal for the Market at 17th Street is taken from a master's thesis presented in the spring of last year at the University of Notre Dame's School of Architecture with the title, "Politics and Commerce: The Architectural Rhetoric of the Market Hall." The renderings are watercolor washes hand drafted on 90lb Arches.

To see a more recent proposal for the Market at Seventeenth Street in the context of the Shockoe Ballpark Controversy, please visit this recent post.

Please click on the images to zoom in (to zoom in even more right click and select "view image").

Aerial photograph showing the existing conditions of Shockoe Bottom and the 17th Street Market

THESIS

Following the theories of urban form developed by Carroll William Westfall and Saverio Muratori and his students, including Gianfranco Cannigia and Mario Gallerati, I propose to provide a new market set alongside an architecturally unified square in order to reassert the significance in Richmond of architecture at the urban scale in furthering the civic life and to function as a rhetorical tool to civilize the commercial activities of the market within the higher and more important political framework of the city.

View of the proposed Main Street facade looking up 17th Street

INTRODUCTION

Artists and architects, in the tradition of Socrates, have always questioned accepted truths and sought to translate them into the language of their own time. The process of allowing our judgment to be informed through the comparison of the way things are with the way things should be is the basis of successful design. Many of the accepted truths that dominated the urban and architectural discourse over the last seventy years have lost their force. It is increasingly clear that a different approach to our world and the way we live is unavoidable. But how do we determine what we should do? The pattern for thriving, beautiful cities is to be found in the long history of trial and error, of genius and imitation stretching beyond written record, but preserved in our building traditions. To operate traditionally is not concerned with preserving a specific programme or way of thinking, but with ensuring that our future is the best it can possibly be.

Insofar as nature is composed of stable, unchanging classes of things, including those of human activity, architecture is capable of clarifying the structure of the city. Through the judicious use of the orders, the depiction of famous narratives of the city, and its overall suitability, architecture provides a comprehensible framework conducive to the pursuit of the good life. Architecture thus functions rhetorically by embodying and explaining the order of the city through the imitation of nature.

In the Western city, with economic freedom connected with urban life, the market and the polity are architecturally linked and the market hall is the heart or center of the city. In republican polities it is has often been in the market building that architecture most prominently holds up the ideal of the good life lived in community. In order to make that order more visible, the civility which the market reinforces can be extended through the city’s neighborhoods by means of a series subsidiary markets deriving their form from the central building. By this means, the architecture of commerce can effectively embody the struggle between what is and what ought to be.

Nolli plan of 17th Street Market and surrounding area (proposed buildings are shown in brown)

PROJECT OVERVIEW

ARCHITECTURAL SCALES
The students of Saverio Muratori work within the understanding that cities and buildings are composed of a number of scales and that to be successful each part must engage its appropriate station in the hierarchy of the city or state. The Muratori approach is interested not only in individual buildings, but in the concept of the formal square, and on a larger scale, the forms of cities. This approach is based on the idea of a system of architectural scales which can be described or “read” using “synoptic tables” that compare traditional building similarities and differences from the scale of entire regions down to the scale of window treatment.

Section showing the proposed market in its context on Main Street, a model subsidiary or neighborhood market, and a proposed public fountain

The different architectural scales of the city embody the order of communal life which has the common good as its end. These various scales are hierarchically important according to the degree to which they deal with the public realm. More directly, parts of the city on the architectural, or building scale are subordinate to the urban scale, or “urban ensemble” in the words of Carroll William Westfall. Significant events in the urban scale might include civic places such as law courts, libraries, markets and baths. These places are more important than private buildings, but in turn subordinate to the larger, more public building which is the city. The various scales are represented by their use of similar components. Without similarity between these scales comparison between them would be impossible, and yet without difference their location in a higher order would be equally unintelligible.

Historically, the First Market in Richmond was the central public building in the life of the city, linking private interest and public good. Since its non-commercial functions and most of its market functions have been dispersed to other city institutions, the market’s dissolution can be seen as a major civic loss: of the face-to-face relationship of buyer and seller, the linkage of public and private life, and the elevation of civic discourse made possible by the rhetoric of good architecture.

TYPOLOGY
European (and by extension) American markets and market halls are formally linked to the stoa, forum, basilica, loggia, exchange, and bourse. Like their ancient models, they provide a covered place to transact business within an ordered framework. Thus, the arcades of the 1794 Market Hall at Richmond are related to a long tradition of civic architecture. Markets are almost always associated with extended arcades for both practical and symbolic reasons. Examples of arcades at hand include courthouses and the Williamsburg Capitol. The compass-headed window or door opening was generally reserved for public buildings. The Virginia examples had their models in England. The arcaded piazzas found at the Williamsburg Capitol and incorporated into courthouses in neighboring counties have their roots in English market halls and the courtyards of mercantile structures in London, Oxbridge colleges, and local buildings such as almshouses built in the seventeenth century. For more on the Richmond market please read our earlier post.

View from market towards the old Loving's Produce building showing the proposed public square

PROPOSAL FOR A NEW MARKET AT SEVENTEENTH STREET

The 17th Street Farmers’ Market is operated and maintained in perpetuity as a public market where locally-grown and locally-made goods are sold directly by their producers. Independent local food producers, artisans, and crafts people are encouraged and promoted.
                      Current Market Mission Statement

Cities are places where people come together to pursue a common good which can only be achieved in communal life. Architecture serves this public good—politics is more important than architecture. The public realm is more important than the private realm. In order for the city’s prosperity to contribute to the common good, the market must be civilized. A market is not a city. A market serves private goods, but the city requires both public and private goods.

The current 17th Street Market sheds

The current market, consisting of a series of lightweight open sheds, serves as an anchor for community life by providing a setting for cultural and civic activities that complement the market and its location in downtown Richmond, but it does not succeed in the larger goal of reintroducing an armature of civic architecture into the marketplace. The intention of this thesis project is to reunite the old and new sections of Richmond, Virginia, to architectonically recover the commercial and civic life of the city by embodying its order.

The project will consist of a produce market and common hall for civic and cultural purposes and a resale market linked by a piazza that would serve the multiple purposes of deliveries, public entertainment, and strolling. The current night-time activities around the market will be accommodated within the market hall and piazza. The open areas will provide room for the crowds of revelers and an ordered context for the common life.

In order to effectively recapture the significance and civic value of the First Market to the city, the building will participate in the formal, poetic and material architectural traditions of the city. It will take into account the various scales of the city: the scale of building components, the architectural scale, and the urban scale. It is intended that this be the main public market for the city, but that there should be other subsidiary markets on the neighborhood scale. These smaller markets would be built as diluted versions of the First Market, reinforcing and explaining the order of the city, much as traditional libraries and post offices reveal through their scales the meaningful hierarchy of the city.

BUILDING PROGRAM

The principal First Market structure will consist of two parts: a South Market which will include a mixed public market on the first floor and a civic hall on the floor above and a North Market housing an open produce market on the first floor and city offices above. Permanent stall holders will be housed in an enclosed and secure accessible area in the South Market provided with garage-type doors opening to an exterior colonnade and connections for food storage and preparation. The narrower, northern portion of the market hall will open to the exterior through arcades and will house regular fruit and vegetable sellers like those now operating on a daily basis in the market.

Ground floor plan and elevation of the proposed market (the Main Street facade is toward the right).

The second floor of the North Market section will contain a large meeting room, smaller meeting rooms, a catering kitchen, toilets, and the offices of the Richmond City Board of Architectural Review. The existing mid-block alley will cross through a hyphen linking the two parts of the building at mid-point and containing the main stair, elevator, and public toilets.

Second floor plan and section through the proposed market

The First Market will provide a setting for the benefit of civic life. The renewed district will serve multiple purposes, including:

(1) a semi-weekly farmers’ market. Market stalls will be housed in an adjoining arcade. The adjoining square will provide access, parking for farmers’ vehicles, and additional movable market stalls.

(2) an area for festivals, performances, and public gatherings. Access will be re-opened along Franklin Street under the Main Street Station Shed to the important sites along the Richmond Slave Trail.

(3) a unifying center for a renewed market district, including a hotel fronting on the square, and new commercial/residential units based on the traditional basic building type of the city.

The elongated series of market buildings will respect the historic land divisions and take advantage of existing street paving and edging. They will occupy the same ground as the historic market. The new structures will recall the architectural forms of preceding market halls on the same site and of versions of the building type over time. They will exhibit architectural diminution as the structures move away from the principal street.

Section through the historic market site cut along Shockoe Creek looking East

The square functions on the urban scale as a public room for the entire city. Like the Civic Hall above the market, it is treated with appropriate festive and ceremonial ornament. Historic Crane Street, currently barren, has become the focus of a new residential and cultural area off Broad Street. It will be possible to walk from the streetcar stop in front of the proposed cinema on the south side of Broad along a colonnade on the west side of Crane, to the covered walk around the new civic square.

Crane Street connects the square and market with Broad Street and the proposed theater, based on the Latrobe's unrealized design for a theater in the center of Broad on Council Chamber Hill.

The sculptural program celebrates the several myths of Richmond’s founding. The proposed houses along the west side of the square are modeled on the 1809 row of houses with a giant Doric order built by the Carrington brothers on Broad Street. Other basic row houses are proposed along Seventeenth Street and Crane Street.

The west side of the square refers to Carrington Row for an overtly ordered row house precedent 

The South Market is supported on a brick arcade with applied Doric pilasters that refer to the colonnade of the former market. The upper story features an implied Ionic arcade with fully realized pilasters on the principal, Main Street, facade. The Main Street frontage contains a wide loggia for public use, joining other important brick public buildings along Main Street that feature arcaded elevations. The central tower that connects the south and north sections is modeled on the incomplete tower at the rear of Richmond’s Monumental Church. The open interior spans historic Arch Alley and connects the new commercial development between the market and the train station with the Market Hall.

The central tower connects the two market buildings and spans historic Arch Alley

The second floor of the South Market contains a multipurpose civic hall ornamented with Corinthian columns. A vaulted gallery fronts on Main Street. The second floor of the North Market contains offices for the city’s Board of Architectural Review and a hearing room fronting on Franklin Street above the loggia of the 24-hour coffee shop. Representation of this aspect of city government is particularly important in reinforcing the civilizing function of political life.

The market buildings are designed using load-bearing composite masonry walls, made of lime-based masonry blocks, faced with hand-made brick. It is roofed with slate and the eighteen-foot-tall ground floor is heated with in-floor radiant piping and is naturally ventilated using roll-up doors and large ceiling fans.

 Axonometric rendering showing the load-bearing composite masonry walls

The square is treated with a large, diluted Doric pilaster order. The strip pilasters are flanked by a Tuscan suborder that alternately supports trabeated and arcuated openings. The unitary architectural treatment of the entire square is articulated to permit the uses of the interior rooms to speak on the exterior. It is derived from Roman Baroque examples and motifs, such as those found at the Sapienza and Piazza Santa Maria della Pace in Rome.

 

Sections through the proposed public square

The integration of the shops and residential accommodations across the west side is based on Richmond precedent. The farmers’ market north of Franklin Street is supported on brick columns with stone trim. A hotel located at the north end of the square extends into the second floor of the market. A large loggia in front of the hotel can be used as a restaurant. A triple entrance on the square’s south side rationalizes the irregular historic street layout in the area.

 Detail of the public square between Franklin and Grace Streets

The market complex includes the following amenities:

(1) Secondary loggia on Franklin Street containing Coffee House
(2) Two-story Market Hall between Main Street and Franklin which includes a wide loggia on Main Street, permanent stands for goods, and a colonnade for vendors.
(3) Central tower with an archway at the alley crossing and ceremonial second-
floor access.
(4) A headhouse for the Farmer’s Market north of Franklin Street surmounted by a cupola for a bell and incorporating the police station and public toilets.
(5) Resale market in the former Loving’s Produce Building off the square.
(6) Formal square between Franklin and Grace for events and farmers’
market.
(7) One-story enclosed market between Franklin and Grace for resale market.

The new First Market complex described in this thesis serves to recapture the significance and civic value of commerce to the city. The building will participate in the formal and material traditions of the city. It participates in the various scales of the city: the building component scale, the architectural scale, and the urban scale, reinforcing and explaining the order of the city.

 The Main Street facade

ALONG THE BANKS OF RICHMOND'S SHOCKOE CREEK

                                Detail of the Market area from the 1879 Beers Map of Richmond. Shockoe Creek can be seen running to the left of the long Market Hall

Today Urbanismo walked the area of the First Market on Seventeenth Street and the Richmond Slave Trail, a poignant reminder of the nefarious trade in slaves that was based in Richmond. A heritage tour  is being developed around archeological resources connected with Richmond’s slave markets.

Market Square in 1793 (north is to the right) 

Markets, since the earliest times, have been placed on the edge of built-up parts of towns, where access by wagons and animals is easiest and the noise and refuse associated with them can be segregated. The Richmond market, and, presumably, the semi-annual fair which preceded it, was placed just beyond the plat where the bottomlands prevented easy settlement, beside the bridge which connected the original town with the newer suburbs on the hill to the west. Over time edge markets are surrounded by shops and fully incorporated into the town.

As we have detailed elsewhere, the city government laid out a formal market square in 1793. It ran between the town and the creek and extended 123 feet to the north and south of Main Street. A two-story brick Market Hall was built in the following year on the bank of the creek on the north side of Main Street. While the market hall survived for many years and has been succeeded by three more structures in the same location, the original market square layout was abandoned as the former commons was laid out in irregular lots and streets over the following decades.

Former trestle extension into Main Street Station

Our winter afternoon walk, one of a series of explorations begun last year, started at the north end of Main Street Station, in a parking lot located between the elevated railroad tracks that split apart to pass on each side of the station. In 1879, this was the location of the Chesapeake and Ohio Freight depot that stood between Broad and Grace streets (see Beers Map below). When Main Street Station was built in 1901, the tracks were carried over the streets on cast iron trestles and the tracks fanned out in this area to allow six locomotives to enter the great train shed which fronted on Main Street and ran back almost to Grace. Franklin Street ran below the station, although this was blocked off when the shed was enclosed in the 1980s. The iron trestles taken from the north end of the station were used to create decorative gates at the new side entrances to the train shed.

1905 Sanborn Map of the area along Shockoe Creek showing the large train shed (1901) in yellow and the long Market Hall of 1855 to the right. Shockoe Creek can be seen running vertically between buildings in the center. The site of Lumkin's Jail is near the angled building in red and yellow northwest of the train shed

The area where Main Street Station was built, west of the market, was a natural one for construction of a massive new structure and for the interstate highway which would later overshadow it. The area along the curving route of the creek was subject to regular flooding. Except for a continuous streetfronts added in the early nineteenth century along the valuable lots on Main and Franklin streets, the banks of the creek were nearly empty. Between Franklin and the James River the creek had been confined to a straight channel running perpendicular to Main Street, but once north of Franklin it wandered back and forth under the steep eastern slopes of Shockoe Hill.

Main Street Station seen from the Seaboard Depot

Freight wing of the Seaboard Depot sen from the northwest

The Seaboard Freight Depot, built in 1909

Where Franklin Street once ran below the great train shed of Main Street station, seen from the west.

A gently rising terrain extended for about two blocks west of Main Street Station. It was once a tightly settled neighborhood of shops, modest houses, and foundries, but is today a parking lot for state employees and the location of the two-story, early twentieth-century Seaboard Freight Depot, fronting on the short stub of Franklin Street that remains intact on that side of the station. A long freight wing extends to the north. The construction of the Richmond Petersburg Turnpike (Interstate 95) in the late 1950s so altered the eastern slope of Shockoe and Council Chamber hills that it is difficult to see their historic form. The elevated highway, wrapping closely around the southwest corner of the station’s ornate tower, also placed much of the area south and west of the station in shadow below the huge concrete highway spans. The earth fill supporting the highway north of Franklin Street creates a steep edge along the valley.

The site of Lumpkin's Slave Jail, marked with stone blocks, lies here beneath fifteen feet of fill

It is in the area of the state-owned parking lots south of Broad Street that archeologists have found foundations of the infamous Lumpkin Slave Jail, one of several dealers that operated on the fringes of the city's commercial center. Much of the slave jail and associated buildings are buried beneath the slopes of fill added as part of Interstate 95. A trail with signage has been developed around the theme of slavery, including the results of the archeological explorations. A larger program of interpretation, including a museum, is planned. Similarly, a large African-American cemetery, abandoned in about 1816, is located below Interstate 95 and to the north of Broad Street.

The area along the creek was mostly residential by the late nineteenth century. The descent was steep from the hill, as can be seen in the postcard shown below, so that the Egyptian Building housing the Medical College was on the edge of the hill, as were the Brockenbrough House (Confederate White House) and the First Baptist Church (later the First African Baptist Church). The land at the bottom of the hill on Marshall Street was parceled out by the city to secondary public buildings, principally the Lancastrian School and the City Jail.

View east along Marshall Street from Shockoe Hill, Online Postcard Collection, VCU Library

The view from the the top of the hill on Broad Street probably looked similarly steep in the early nineteenth century. After Broad Street was extended to the valley in 1845, Shockoe Creek flowed through a narrow bridge under the road. Parts of this still stand, as seen below, although the creek, uncovered throughout the nineteenth century, is now fully underground. The area between the rail tracks was an ideal one for unloading materials. Hungerford Coal and Oil Company is located here. The huge timber bins into which coal was emptied and sorted remain to this day although no coal has been sold since the major flood of 2004.

Stone wall on the south side of Broad Street The stone wall marks the spot where Shockoe Creek passes beneath Broad Street.

Stone abutments on the north side of Broad Street. Rutherford's Row, a continuous line of small
 dwellings described on late nineteenth-century maps as "negro tenements," once lined the north side
 of Broad Street in this area.



Ornamental coping on the top of the walls on each side of Broad Street

Coal unloading facilities at Hungerford. Coal was bagged in the small shed until 2004 

A well-preserved, cobbled section of N 16th St. north of Broad Street, west of the tracks

View looking north from Broad Street under the pylons of the railroad.

The area east of the tracks and north of Franklin Street has been used for parking for many years, but in the early twentieth century it was full of tightly spaced shops. Of these only one large building on the northwest corner of Grace and Ambler (formerly Union) streets remain. This housed Loving’s Produce, a wholesale company, until c. 2008. In 1905, it was the warehouse of the Richmond Branch of Armour and Company meat suppliers.

Loving's Produce Building facade facing Ambler (Union) Street

Continuing with the tour, we visited the area between the Market and Main Street Station. The YMCA Hotel, which corresponds to the French Renaissance detailing of the station in style and material, replaced a block of nineteenth-century shops in the early twentieth century. It sits back from the street to match the setback of the station, permitting a corner view of the market shed. Shockoe Creek once ran uncovered in a narrow straight channel just west of the YMCA Hotel. It then curved to the west and ran under the station. It is now entirely underground.

The Main Street front of the YMCA Hotel Building, east of Main Street Station

Arch or Walnut Alley from the above the path of Shockoe Creek looking east to the existing Market Shed

Early buildings between the Market and the railroad station relate to the market function of the area. include the fine, three-story commercial building on the northeast corner of Seventeenth and Franklin streets. The one-story Acme Tomato Company Building, dating from before the Second World War, occupies the space between the three-story building and Main Street Station. 

The well-preserved three-story commercial building with the Acme Tomato Co Bldg.  beyond

The desert-like parking area north of the market bore the brunt of the 2004 flood, which washed
 away much of the paving. It was, however, the site of a full block of shops in the early twentieth
 century, of which the Loving's Produce Building is the only remaining example.

Here we ended our tour of the fragmentary urban tissue along Shockoe Creek with a visit to Havana '59 for some much needed refreshment.