Category Archives: Inventory

Pump House Park

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Architect: Wilfred E. Cutshaw
Date: 1882
Address: 1708 Pump House Dr

Tucked away along the Three-Mile Locks of the Kanawha Canal, a weighty Neo-Gothic structure rises over the water, a symbol of utility, conviviality and mystery. Massive gabled slate roofs look out across the river from their overgrown land, neglected but not forgotten.

The great city engineer Wilfred Emory Cutshaw, whose hand is seen in so many Richmond works, employs the same granite in the Pump House as he used for the original City Hall, in part to handle the pressure of the moving water inside the structure. Thin, tall windows with pointed arches allow light to penetrate the heavy building’s mass, into grand spaces within. It was Cutshaw’s unique vision that intended for the public utilities building to be a desired and popular social hall as well was something truly unique, a convergence of function and location.

A boat that started at Seventh Street carried the city’s high society up the river’s gentle rapids to the pump house, where they would dance and fraternize on the upper level open-air dance hall, located above the equipment room, and a catwalk that looks over the machinery below. The open-air hall is more than a beautiful spatial moment of architecture, a blurring of outside/inside; the entirety of the experience, set in the wilderness-environment beyond, must have been one of the most original and exciting ones in Richmond’s history.

The glory of the building didn’t last, however, with population migration beyond the city’s limits at the turn of the century causing the abandonment of the Pump House in 1924, with the machinery sold as scrap metal. The building nearly dodged demolition in the 1950s, became a popular spot for vandals in the 1980s, and fell into disrepair. The isolation and grandeur of an abandoned building as such given the Pump House a reputation as one of Richmond’s spookier spots, with locals ‘ghost hunting’ across the grounds. However, the importance of this historic and impressive structure has made its way back into the public’s conscience in recent decades. Preservation efforts look to possibly reuse the building as offices for the James River Park System, where other rehabilitation plans include installing a coffee shop and bookstore.

The Pump House Park separated from Byrd Park in the mid 1980s, and contains a trail to Washington’s Arch, constructed in 1791 to signify the start of the Kanawha Canal, the first canal in the country.

M.F.A

The Chesterfield

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The Chesterfield 6


Architect: Muhlenburg Bros. with Noland & Baskervill
Dates: 1903
Address: 900 West Franklin

The Chesterfield Apartments opened in November 1903 as Richmond’s first high-rise apartment building. It was also the first building of such a large scale on the prosperous blocks of West Franklin Street near Monroe Park. The building holds a cherished place in Richmond’s collective memory as the home of the Chesterfield Tea Room. At the time of it’s closing in 1988 it was the city’s oldest continuously operating dining establishment.

Seven stories sit atop an english basement that now contains a book store. The former tea room still houses a restaurant. Following the building up from the ground, a traditional classical order is observed. The lightly rusticated stone base transitions into a dark brick and culminates in a novel stuccoed cornice. Bands of wrought iron balconies and bay windows emphasize verticality, a feature that becomes all the more pronounced when compared with the 3 story structures surrounding it.

The Chesterfield is an indispensable element in the West Franklin Street historic district, an area characterized by luxurious town-homes, most of which have now been converted into offices or apartment buildings. The tower’s juxtaposition in scale and introduction of a retail element bring vitality and intrigue to the pedestrian experience. The building is also a contributing structure in what is colloquially known as the “Monroe Park Skyline,” an assemblage of mid and high-rise buildings surrounding Richmond’s Monroe Park.

D.OK.

Morson’s Row

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Morson's Row 1


Architect: Albert Lybrock
Date: 1853
Address: 219-223 Governor Street

Morson’s Row is the most handsome assemblage of attached houses in Richmond. These three former dwellings in the Italianate style establish an axial relationship at the eastern end of the pedestrian mall that was once Capitol Street while gently stepping down to reflect the slope of Governor Street. Morson’s Row is grander than other, upscale, mid-19th century dwellings in Richmond– more akin to houses one would find in urban Baltimore or Boston. They were designed as speculative housing by James Marion Morson, a lawyer who practiced in the city and in Goochland County.

Architect Albert Lybrock, born and educated in Germany, came to Richmond in 1852 via New York City, to oversee his design for the United States Customs House which stretched between Main and Bank streets. He would become the most important architect working in Richmond in the prosperous decade prior to the Civil War after landing a number of prestigious commissions here. In addition to his Italianate customs building, his commissions included major interior renovations at the Capitol (1858) and the unique, cast iron Gothic reliquary in Hollywood Cemetery that contains the sarcophagus of James Monroe, the fifth United States president (1859). In the late 1870s Lybrock designed the Miller School in Albemarle County.

While the three townhouses comprising Morson’s Row were built as speculative housing, there was no stinting on detail. Each house is three stories high and rises from an English basement. The most glorious feature of each of the three houses is its curved bow front.  Each of these bays rises to a partial entablature containing crisply defined dentils and a generous cornice supported by handsome brackets. The basement is faced with granite ashlar and the upper exterior surfaces of the façade are brick covered in stucco.

This trio of houses creates an almost musical rhythm as it steps down (or ascends) Governor Street. And the softly-rounded lines of bow fronts are picked up by the curved configuration of the sun porch on the rear of the adjacent Memorial Hospital (now part of the Virginia Department of Highways complex) just up the hill.

Architect Lybrock, himself a slave owner, apparently became an active player in the life of his adopted region including his financial support of a regiment of local Germans in the Confederate army.

Morson’s Row, now owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia and an important part of the Capitol Square district, has long been empty and awaits a new use. Miraculously, its interiors still contain much of their original detailing such as moldings and marble mantels.


E.S.

The Pollak Building

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Pollak 1


Architect: Ballou and Justice
Dates: 1970
Address: 325 N. Harrison Street

On Harrison Street at the eastern terminus of West Avenue lies the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Pollak Building. The building is occupied by various parts of the VCU School of the Arts including the office of the dean, and the graphic design, fashion, film, and photography programs.

The Pollak Building is, in plan, reminiscent of Louis Kahn’s monumental form of modernism. The large stair towers anchor the building’s four corners while rectangular classroom blocks span the space in between. This creates a large interior courtyard planted with magnolia trees. This space is linked by foot paths to the Anderson Gallery, the Scott House, and the center of campus.

The courtyard is accessible to the public by way of a raised brutalistic arcade that extends to front Harrison Street. The street itself is presented with two main elements. First, spare concrete piers and stairs with a textured pattern left from the form molds used to create it and, second, a low brick wall. The space, though generous and attractive, is underutilized. This is somewhat troubling considering the high premium on space along the retail-heavy Harrison Street.

The principle facade begins at a story above street level and continues up a further 3 stories. Each of the four bars of classrooms and offices that make up the building are sided with blank concrete and fronted with concrete bands containing brick bays, each with two windows. The vertical windows and grid system employed by the facade reference the surrounding Victorian apartment and office buildings.

Recently, the building was outfitted with a green roof. VDMO Architects designed the roof to meet environmental goals such as reduced heat absorption and storm water runoff but the space is also recreational. A small terrace with views of the surrounding Monroe Park skyline and Fan District roof scape is a welcome addition to the Pollak Building.

D.OK.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

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Architects: Peebles and Ferguson Architects, Norfolk (1936); Theater Wing, Merrill C. Lee Architects, Richmond (1954); South Wing, Baskervill & Son Architects, Richmond (1970); North Wing, Warren Hardwicke Associates, Richmond, and Sculpture Garden, Lawrence Halprin Associates, San Francisco, landscape architect (1976), both demolished; Lewis Mellon Wing, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, New York City (1985); Frances G. McGlothlin Wing, Rick Mather Architects, London (2010) with associate SMBW Architects, Richmond.   

Dates: 1936-2010

Address: 200 North Boulevard

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was founded and is supported by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Its 14 acre campus, defined by Boulevard, Grove Avenue, Shepherd Street and the grounds of the Virginia Historical Society, is situated on the former Robert E. Lee Camp (for many years it was a retirement community for Confederate veterans and their female relatives). In 1936, during the Great Depression and with construction funding from the Federal Works Administration, the museum opened its doors to a structure elegantly oriented to Boulevard. Peebles & Ferguson Architects took its cues for the building’s design from a Late Renaissance addition to Hampton Court in London by Christopher Wren. The museum’s galleries were located on the upper level with offices and support facilities situated on the ground floor.

Additions were made in 1954 (for additional galleries and a theater) and in 1970 (for galleries). These continued the architectural spirit of the original, center block.

In 1976 another wing, by Warren Hardwicke Associates, and a walled sculpture garden designed by Lawrence Halprin Associates, were added to museum’s north end. These broke with the Wren-inspired classicism. The addition’s curved brick walls recalled the Johnson Wax Company building in Racine, Wis. by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 1984 the architectural direction of the museum shifted again with construction of the Lewis Mellon Wing, built specifically to house the sizable collections of Sydney and Frances Lewis of Richmond and Paul Mellon of Upperville, Va. Architect Malcolm Holzman, in designing the building, broke with the museum’s exterior red brick, Flemish bond surfaces and introduced Indiana limestone. The wing is a witty tour de force architecturally that combines modernism with such refined classical elements as the Tuscan order (at the entablature) and muscular blocks of rusticated stone at the ground level that recall Henry Hobson Richardson’s Allegheny Courthouse in Pittsburgh.

In 2010 the museum reoriented dramatically how visitors approach the museum by demolishing the former North Wing and sculpture garden and building the Frances G. McGlothlin Wing which is approached by a new motor court. Designed by Rick Mather Architects, the building is unapologetically modernistic in every way: It combines exterior surfaces of Indiana marble with large, deftly handled expanses of sheet glass.

Key to the spirit and success aesthetically of the McGlothlin Wing is how the building seamlessly connects with the museum grounds through large window openings. Happily, a former surface parking lot has been replaced by an expanse of lawn and vehicles are now relegated to a 600 space garage that is largely hidden beneath a dramatically sloping and handsomely-landscaped sculpture garden.

E.S.

John Tyler Building

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John Tyler 1

 

Architect: Odell and Associates
Dates: 1991
Address: 1300 East Main Street

On the corner of 13th and Main Streets rises the John Tyler Building. The building houses office space for the State of Virginia and lies only a block from the state capitol.
Facades are composed mainly of granite and glass with metal accenting. The John Tyler appears, at first glance, to be more corporate than governmental. No grand entrances, token statues, or unused set back plaza’s are found here. Instead it follows the cues of the neighborhood more literally than most recent high and mid-rise buildings in the city.

The most novel aspect of the John Tyler building’s site is its irregular shape. 13th Street, one of the major fronts of the building, predates Richmond’s grid plan and winds up capitol hill following the path of least resistance. 14th also defies the grid by bowing out to the west. The result of this is a site without a single right angle. The John Tyler hugs this sidewalk line for its entire footprint creating a more dramatic corner condition than one might have expected for state offices.

Still, the relationship with the neighborhood is not as kind as it could have been. The building cafeteria is on the 3rd floor despite being open to the public. One wonders if locating this on the ground floor might have made for a more inviting street presence. Parking entrances and high windows create a deadened sidewalk experience which is particularly troubling on Main Street.

In all, the John Tyler building does serve as a sensitive transition between capitol hill and the financial district. Perhaps its greatest gift to the neighborhood is the way in which its tower and spire accent the view up the winding 13th Street from Shockoe Slip.

D.OK.

White House of the Confederacy and Museum

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White House of the Confederacy 6


Architects: Robert Mills, Petticord Associates
Date: 1818, Museum and renovation 1976
Address: 1201 East Clay Street

The Museum of the Confederacy’s main building, completed in 1976, was built to house the institution’s collection of confederate artifacts, the nation’s largest. The institution is the oldest museum in Richmond, founded in 1890, and includes on its grounds the White House of the Confederacy, the home of Jefferson Davis from 1861-1865.

The vast collections were originally kept in the house but in the 1970’s the museum shifted its collection to the new building and restored the White House to its original state. The museum sits on the same block as the historic structure, deep within Richmond’s Court End neighborhood. Together, the buildings and the garden space in between form an intimate and urban museum campus.

The White House of the Confederacy was designed in 1818 as the home of a wealthy Richmond bank executive. Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument, designed the building. The newer museum, the work of Petticord Associates, is a sharply modern structure that sits back from the street and takes a “L” shape, forming a square courtyard space between it and the historic center of confederate power.

The Museum of the Confederacy is a worthy piece of architecture in and of itself, but it is the interaction between it and the neighboring White House of the Confederacy, the way in which the modern structure responds to the historic mansion, that makes it one of the most intriguing and thoughtful works of architecture in Richmond. Robert Mills’ design for the home’s exterior is a massive, weighty, and stark piece of neoclassicism in the vein of famous English purist William Kent. The vast, unadorned planes of gray stucco, heavy double-column pairs on the rear porch, and sparse iron detailing give the house a sense of monumentality and simplicity nearing architectural brutalism.

This is picked up and elaborated on by the new museum building. Coffers, cantilevers, and bands of concrete suspended off of the main faces create shadow lines and ceiling details that mirror the massive porch of the historic structure. A nearly symmetrical face with three equally sized bays sits opposite the garden from the White House, foils the building and creates a secluded garden that seems a different world from the bustle of the high rise medical structures of the surrounding neighborhood.

D.OK.

Second Presbyterian Church

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Second Presbyterian Church 6


Architect: Minard LaFever
Date:1845
Address: Nine North Fifth Street

When Presbyterian minister Moses D. Hoge commissioned a church design for his congregation, which was moving westward from Shockoe Hill toward Gamble’s Hill, he made a bold move. He eschewed classicism, which had been the architectural approach of most Richmond churches up to that time, and built a Gothic Revival edifice. Apparently, Hoge believed that the nooks, crannies and the romanticism of Gothic design allowed for sentiment and memories to find comfortable resting places. He selected the prominent New York architect Minard LaFever (1798-1854) as designer. LaFever never visited Richmond for this project but provided Hoge with plans from one of his pattern books (he wrote five).

Probably, in a nod to budget restrictions, brown-hued brick, rather than stone was used as the primary exterior material. Vermont sandstone was used as trim (in a recent exterior renovation, the stone was replaced with a similar material imported from Germany).

The sanctuary’s central front door hits hard along the North Fifth Street sidewalk, but if one looks up, a 100 foot steeple rises majestically. In the era before skyscrapers, it was one of the most imposing silhouettes on Richmond’s skyline.

Upon entering the sanctuary, plaster walls scored to look like stone rise to support a series of wooden arches and a ceiling of wooden planks stained a dark shade of brown. It is a tour de force of the carpenter gothic. Behind the pulpit at the front of the church, an impressive wooden reredos, apparently designed by Hoge, rises 40 feet to frame the lectern.

Today, the Gothic Revival sanctuary is joined via a glass and steel connector to the Virginia Building (1906) at the corner of Fifth and Main streets. Thought to be Richmond’s first high-rise apartment building, the Virginia Building now serves Second Presbyterian as a church house.

E.S.