Tag Archives: Beaux Arts

Main Street Station

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Architect: Wilson, Harris and Richards
Dates: 1901
Address: 1500 East Main St

Known simply as The Clock Tower to many passing its ornate tower on Interstate 95, the Renaissance Revival train station in Shockoe Bottom stands as an historic and current icon of Richmond. Built in 1901 as the city’s premiere railroad destination servicing Seaboard Air Line and Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, the station was designed by the Philadelphia firm of Wilson, Harris and Richards, who were experienced in train station designs. The station stood as Richmond’s gateway for 50 years, before train lines switched to the former Broad Street Station in the 1950s.

During the years that train service was absent from Main St Station, the building passed through many hands and potential uses, including a mall, nightclub, and offices for Virginia Department of Health. Flooding in 1972 and fires in 1976 and 1983 only helped deter a developer’s long term commitment to the site. However the architectural value of the building didn’t waver, and it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. Extensive renovations starting in 2001 modernized and secured some structural systems (such as lack of a steel skeleton supporting the second story and some of the headhouse floors being made of coal ash) with the vision that the station would be utilized in the near future.

For those pedestrians walking under Interstate 95 or drivers passing the building on Main Street in Shockoe Bottom, it is not the clock tower but a grand staircase that welcomes them to the station, lifting the heavy stone base. A Pompeian brick body rests above, seven bays wide with terra cotta accentuations. The loggia, complete with Corinthian capital columns and carved roses on the lower face of the arches, is capped by a steeply pitched red clay tile roof with two rows of dormers. The bright orange and red colors of the building’s skin announce its presence vibrantly in Richmond’s downtown collage. The train shed behind the station is also of significant engineering merit for being one of the last gable-roof train sheds in America as well as one of the first to employ the widespread steel truss system and boasts the largest intact train trestle system in the country, upon which the platform rests.

In 2003, Amtrak resumed train services to Main St Station, and there are currently plans to develop the stop along the high speed Northeast Corridor. There are also tentative plans for a retail intervention in the train shed with an exterior plaza.

M.F.A.

Sources:
Revitalizing America’s Train Stations. (n.d.). Richmond – main st station history. Retrieved from http://www.greatamericanstations.com/Stations/RVM

Science Museum of Virginia

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Architect: John Russell Pope
Dates: 1917-1919
Address: 2500 West Broad St

Now known as a primary educational and cultural feature of the city, the inscribed words  “Union Station of Richmond” upon the Science Museum’s facade underneath a grand clock recall the honored past of the proud neoclassical edifice as a beacon for transportation, a gateway to the city. Prior to its use as a train station however, the site was used for Civil War military encampments, state fairs, and grounds for professional baseball teams. Purchased by Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Rail Lines, the company originally envisioned a leisurely commuter station for the site, but an international competition in 1913 gave way to a design by the famous architect John Russell Pope, his only commission for a commercial building.

Pope emphasized the grandeur of the station by placing it back from the street, creating a promenade up the slight slope. Similar to many neoclassical buildings of the same scale, a monumental doric colonnade of Indiana limestone is symmetrically organized by a 100 foot high dome. This is balanced with steel and cast iron canopies and bracings, forming a grand yet refined composition.

Train services boomed during World War II, with 57 trains passing through the station every day. But ridership declined, and train services eventually migrated to Staples Mill Rd. The building was sold to the state of Virginia in 1976, who planned to demolish it with intentions of building a new office park, before successful preservation efforts intervened and the Science Museum of Virginia found a permanent home.

Major draws of the museum include a massive pendulum suspended from the domed rotunda and an attached IMAX theater to the west of the building. Notable instances of architecture also occur outside the building proper, with the grounds in front boasting the world’s largest Kugel as well as the site for each annual Solar Decathlon House designed by Virginia Tech architecture students. Behind the museum, a small part of the original train yard remains with a small car, used mainly for parties and events, a vestige of the building’s former life.

Sources:
Mebane, L. (2009, December 30). History of broad st station. Retrieved from http://sciencemuseumofvirginia.blogspot.com/2009/12/history-of-broad-street-station_9387.html

nps.gov. (n.d.). Broad st station. Retrieved from http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/richmond/BroadStreetStation.html

The Jefferson Hotel

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Architect: Carrère and Hastings

Dates: 1892-1895


Address: 101 West Franklin Street, Richmond, VA

The Jefferson Hotel is one of the finest examples of Beaux Arts Richmond architecture and certainly one of the grandest. Conceived and funded in 1892 by Gilded Age Richmond business leader Lewis Ginter, the design was carried out by the very best from New York, Carrère and Hastings.John Mervin Carrère and Thomas Hastings were both trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Both apprenticed with the firm of McKim, Mead and White, the most influential and sought after firm in America in the Beaux Arts period. Carrère and Hastings founded their own firm and designed projects such as the New York Public Library main branch and the Standard Oil Building. In addition to work in New York, the firm designed across North America and in Europe.

Even given the scope and scale of their works, The Jefferson Hotel was by no means a minor project. Carrère and Hastings drew largely from Italian Villa typology especially on the building’s north facade. This faces Franklin Street which is largely composed of brownstones and townhouses with projecting bays and turret elements. The tuscan towers of the Jefferson’s north facade break up the monotony of the broad Street frontage and relate to the composition of Franklin Street.The building’s south face is perhaps even more grand though certainly less inventive. Columns and entablatures frame massive arched windows to grand interior ballrooms. Ornamental swag and massive, exuberant cartouches (a trademark of the firm) decorate the face.  Above the first few levels the detailing falls sharply which makes the upper facade appear unresolved. Even so, the Jefferson is a more than a valuable asset to Richmond’s urban fabric and history.Unfortunately, the Jefferson is currently fronted on almost three full sides by surface parking lots. Nowhere is this condition more egregious than on the south facade (facing Main Street) where the grand columned facade is met with an entire block of parking. This block is one of the places most needing of thoughtful infill in all of Richmond. While many structures surrounding the hotel have been destroyed the Jefferson itself was saved; demolition was considered in the 1970s.

Today, the Jefferson remains the finest hotel in Richmond, holding both the coveted AAA Five Diamond rating and the Mobil Five Star rating. There is little doubt that it will serve as a key anchor point for the development of the surrounding Monroe Ward and as a Richmond landmark for decades to come.

D.OK.