Tag Archives: Monument Avenue

Architects of Richmond: The Davis Brothers

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the Greenwood and the Seminole 1918


Article and photographs by Robert P. Winthrop.

As part of a continuing series we are featuring an essay from a guest writer, Robert Winthrop. Winthrop is partner at Winthrop, Jenkins, and Associates, a Virginia based architecture firm specializing in historic renovation. Historic buildings have also been his focus in numerous writings and lectures. As author of The Architecture of Jackson Ward, Cast and Wrought: The Architectural Metalwork of Downtown Richmond, Virginia, and Architecture in Downtown Richmond, Winthrop has established himself as an authority on the city’s architectural history.

The Davis Brothers (Charles Waddy Davis, Oswald J. Davis, and J. Lee Davis) were building contractors, building material suppliers and developers. They were also involved in banking and thus had a potential to profit from all aspects of a construction project.  They were not architects, but they had in house or freelance talent to design their multiplicity of projects. They produced a huge number of houses and apartments in the old West End in the first decades of the twentieth century. Most of their work is in the Fan, West of the Boulevard and Randolph areas.

Davis Brother’s buildings show a range of different styles and it is tempting to see the hands of several designers for the firm’s production. From building permits, it appears L. Otis Spiers was one of their designers from the 1920 onward, but from the variety, it seems several designers were involved.

A major portion of the firm’s work appears to be in the Craftsman-Arts & Crafts styles. These styles were modern and modest, two characteristics not normally associated with Richmond. These styles were well suited for smaller houses and cottages, but the Davis brothers used the style for larger apartment houses too.

The typical Craftsman house is ideally a bungalow. It is small, modest and sensible. It was created by combining aspects of the English Arts & Crafts movement and some aspects of American design, such as the informal Adirondack Camps or the California mission style as well as incorporating some features of Japanese wooden architecture.  The Craftsman Style’s European origins were intellectually artistic and often socialist and were directly in opposition to the excesses of Victorian capitalism and the industrial revolution. The style rejected pretention and exuberant display in favor of simple and handsome houses well suited for persons of modest means.

The Davis Brothers created a style that integrated the taste for simplicity of the Craftsman ideal with large, multi-story apartments. They created a style that was dignified, simple and handsome.

They also experimented with other more exuberant styles.  Some have a hint of Spanish or Mediterranean design overtones.  They also created buildings with slight Tudor overtones. Typically, the stylistic elements in Davis Brothers buildings are modest.  The Davis Brothers were not interested in revival styles or academic correctness. They were little interested in artiness.

They marketed to the rising middle class. They only rarely did mansions. The major exception to his was J. Lee Davis’ mansion on Hermitage Road. Their choice of clientele was fortunate for the Davis Brothers.

In the 19th century Richmond had an almost Marxian social order with a well-established upper class and a large industrial proletariat. In the early 20th century, the middle class of office workers, government employees, teachers and professional workers expanded greatly. The middle class was made up of bookkeepers, government bureaucrats, telephone operators, teachers, clerks, typists and nurses. They filled the new high-rise office buildings of downtown Richmond.  The Davis Brother’s addressed this new market.

The new middle class grew at the expense of two traditional labor groups, the servant class declined as did agricultural laborers. While the romanticized images of olden days made working on the farm an ideal, it was backbreaking work often done for little pay on isolated farms. Unmarried women had few options before the industrial revolution.

By contrast, living in a big city like Richmond and working in a clean environment as a telephone operator or typist was a great opportunity. At night one could go to one of the new movie places such as the Empire, the Colonial or the National, or you could shop at one of the stylish department stores.

An apartment on Monument Avenue, the Boulevard or in the new West End was a vast improvement on the attic rooms or a bunk house, as was the lot for housemaids or laborers. While Richmond still needed heavy manual labor, there were new skills needed for the modern age. Electricians, plumbers, streetcar operators and store clerks were all in demand. The Davis Brothers marketed to this new middle class. They produced housing that was respectable and modestly stylish.

The Davis Brothers were indeed brothers.  They were carpenters and set up C. W. Davis and Bro. in or before 1905. Charles Waddy Davis and his brother Oswald J. Davis were the original partners. J. Lee Davis joined in and became the president in 1915.  The firm had then become the Davis Brothers. J. Lee Davis seems to have been the driving force in the firm. He was also the President of the West End Bank, the Davis Land Company founded in 1908, and the Wellington Brick Company.

It is not clear how many Davis Brothers there were, not to mention Davis uncles or cousins. Records also mention George K. Davis, L. Thornton Davis and E. Leslie Davis. The family relationships played an important role in the firms operations.

Incidentally, a second family group was their only large rival in development. The Ruehrmund, Lindner and Phillips families were inter related and became the major West End developers in the twenties almost equaling the Davis organization. Max Ruehrmund, Carl Max Lindner and Charles Phillips were cousins. Given the financial uncertainties of real estate development, family ties were preferable to partnerships in the building trades.

The Davis Brothers claimed to build a hundred houses a year in the earlier years of the firm. They mass produced housing. As much of their work is now a century old, and given the pace of construction, the firms work is well built and has unexpectedly held up well. Their stylistic tastes have also been reevaluated. The simple and massive detailing of the Craftsman style had seemed ordinary at twenty or thirty years ago, but now the Davis Brothers’ work seems impressive.

Two buildings show the range of their stylistic tastes. The Wilmarth of 1916 is a bold and aggressive composition, with a dramatic color contrast between the white stucco and brick decorative details.  It seems the Davis’ designers took every chance to articulate the façade.  Two-story Ionic colonnades support an upper level balcony.  Large windows and French doors flood the front apartments with light.  While the building has a slightly Spanish or Mediterranean air, it scrupulously avoids academic purity.

The Dorchester, a few houses away from the Wilmarth, was built in 1918. It is larger, more sober and dignified that the Wilmarth. It is similar to Monument Avenue’s Greenwood and Seminole Apartments built in 1917. The Darlington and Rosaleigh on the Boulevard share similar detailing. These buildings have triple tiered front porches. The porches make use of brick piers and stumpy classical column in varied compositions. French doors connect all the apartments to the porches.

Sulgrave Manor at 2902 Monument is a courtyard apartment house was simplified Tudor half timbering. Built in 1921, it clearly owes more to the Craftsman Style than to anything seen during the reigns of Henry VIII or Elizabeth I. They produced some more elaborate designs such as the Abbyview Apartments behind Battle Abby built in 1922. Linden Terrace on the Boulevard is a similar design.

While some cities repeated the identical designs many times, Richmond had a taste for variety and often meaningless variety. Meaningless variations may be functionally insignificant, but it can be very interesting visually. Complex combinations of piers, columns, porches and decks create intriguing streetscape.

Richmond Building Permits list 63 apartment houses designed by the firm. With this quantity, the Davis’ had an ample opportunity for design experimentation. The Davis Brothers’ were masters of this sort of design.

Even given the Davis Brothers’ taste for the comparatively simple and economical, the end results can be impressive.

A later essay will discuss L. Otis Spiers, the most talented of the designers associated with the Davis Brothers.

Robert P. Winthrop

Architects of Richmond: William Churchill Noland

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Davis Monument


Article and photographs by Robert P. Winthrop.

As part of a continuing series we are featuring an essay from a guest writer, Robert Winthrop. Winthrop is partner at Winthrop, Jenkins, and Associates, a Virginia based architecture firm specializing in historic renovation. Historic buildings have also been his focus in numerous writings and lectures. As author of The Architecture of Jackson Ward, Cast and Wrought: The Architectural Metalwork of Downtown Richmond, Virginia, and Architecture in Downtown Richmond, Winthrop has established himself as an authority on the city’s architectural history.

Winthrop has adapted these essays from a lecture series at the Virginia Historical Society. The series, entitled “Sophisticates and Wild Men,” followed the interaction between the exuberant Victorian architects and the sober classicists at the turn of the twentieth century.

*   *   *

William C. Noland (1865-1951), the son of Callender St. George Noland and Mary Edmonds Berkeley, was the last of ten children, five of whom did not survive infancy. Through his mother he was related to the Carters, Spotswoods and Wormleys.  Born on June 4, 1865, two months after the end of the Civil War, his family retained its property, but not its wealth. 

In 1871 the family moved to Ashland so the children could be educated.  His father died in 1878 when William was 13.  William went to a private school in Richmond and then to Episcopal High School of Virginia in Alexandria.  He graduated in 1882 and then went to work in an architect’s office in Philadelphia. He was 17 years old.

Noland was deeply attached to his family and their correspondence survives.  While many persons of his social status went to a University, Noland’s family could not afford it.  His family had relations in Philadelphia, explaining the reason for the move to the prosperous Northern city.

Philadelphia was a thriving industrial city.  There he worked first for Theophilus P. Chandler.  While Chandler was known for Gothic inspired buildings, he was educated at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and had been in the Atelier of Vaudremer, one of the leading lights of mid-century French architecture.  Chandler’s wife was a member of the DuPont family.  This connection was helpful.

Chandler was the founder and head of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Architecture.   We do not know if Chandler operated his office in the manner of a Parisian atelier, but his interest in educating men for the profession could only have been good for Noland.

In 1886 Noland left Chandler and went to work for the young firm, Cope & Stewardson.  Both Cope and Stewardson had studied at the Cole.  They would become best known as creators of the Collegiate Gothic style. The most important of their buildings, the work at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton were done after Noland left the firm. Noland could have worked at the firm’s earlier work at Bryn Mawr College, Radnor and Denbigh Halls. Noland seemed to have done well at the firm and may even have traveled in Europe with Cope.

In Philadelphia Noland joined the T-Square Club. It was a social and educational club for young architects.  The Club had competitions for architects modeled on the École, and thus gave young architects without formal architectural education a chance to gain experience.

Noland next looked for work in New York but was unable to get a position with a top of the line firm.  He had the misfortune of looking for a job when a university education and a stint at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris were desirable.  Noland had moved out of his old boy network. He was a poor son of a FFV.

Noland returned to Virginia in 1891, first to Roanoke and then moving to Richmond in 1893.  In 1897 he formed a partnership with Henry Baskervill.  Henry Baskervill was a native Virginian and Cornell University graduate with a degree in electrical engineering.  When he established his own firm, his first project was the restoration of the White House of the Confederacy.  He became known as an architect rather than as an engineer.

Fortunately for Noland, Baskervill had a knack for finding talented partners.  First with William Noland, and later with Alfred Garey Lambert, Baskervill found two gifted and skilled men who were able to produce high quality designs for his upper class clientele.

The Baskervill firm did little developer or commercial work, unlike the two other early, large Richmond firms, Carneal & Johnston and Marcellus Wright.  Baskervill tended to do one-of-a-kind landmark buildings for socially important clients. Noland’s designs tended to be sophisticated, and well suited for style conscious clients.  It is clear he was up to date in his architectural taste.  The Baskervill firm later developed a specialty in medical buildings due to their long term relationship with the Medical College of Virginia. This became very important in the depression and post war periods.

Noland was also lucky fortunate to be designing in the early twentieth century Richmond.  The city was booming and growing rapidly. Several of his building had particularly visible sites in new neighborhoods.  Stylish Franklin Street provided the sites of Second Baptist Church, Temple Beth Ahabah and St. James Episcopal Church.  Beth Ahabah closes the vista down Ryland Street.  Today Ryland Street is a minor street.  In 1906 it was the entrance to Richmond College.  The handsome home to Rabbi Calish’s prosperous Jewish congregation must have caused some smiles as it framed the entrance to the Baptist School.

St James’ steeple in on axis with the east bound lane of Monument Avenue. His monument to Jefferson Davis is the architectural focus of the central portion of Monument Avenue and Davis Avenue. Noland took full advantage of the scenic opportunity.

Joining these distinguished institutional buildings on Franklin were the impressive homes of Frederic Scott, Eppa Hunton and other local luminaries.  The Scott Mansion was one of the few Richmond houses that could Rival Major Ginter’s home of a decade later.  Scott’s house came complete with a charming carriage house.  A similar Noland designed house appeared at Major Dooley’s Maymont estate.    At Maymont Noland also designed the stunning Italian gardens with their spectacular waterfall.

Noland designed summer houses for both Major Dooley and Frederic Scott on Afton Mountain. Dooley’s house, Swananoah, is a version of the Villa Medici outside of Rome.  The Villa Medici was the model for the Jefferson Hotel. Scott’s house, Royal Orchard, is a medieval styled castle.

Noland & Baskervill was also one of the co-architects for the expansion of Jefferson’s Capitol.  Part of a team consisting of John Kevan Peebles from Norfolk and Fry & Chesterman from Lynchburg, the roles of the individual architects in the design is not clear.  Noland’s Jefferson Davis Monument dates from the same time.

These building were sophisticated essays in stylish early 20th century classicism, and are largely without Victorian leftovers.  It is easy to recognize the influence of Jeffersonian Classicism in many of these buildings.  Jefferson used the ancient Roman temple, the Maison Carrée, as the model for his Virginia State Capitol.  Noland used the same model, but he made it closer in appearance to the Roman Temple. Noland used the Corinthian order as the French temple.  The limited skills of American stone carvers led Jefferson to use the simpler Ionic order, rendered in stucco.

It is easy to see that Beth Ahabah is inspired by Robert Mills’ Monument Church of 1814.  Both are octagonal domed buildings in the Doric order.  Noland’s building is less daring and imaginative than the Mills’ structure, but the temple is sophisticated and beautifully designed. A year later, Noland designed the terminal for the Richmond & Chesapeake Bay Railway at Laurel and Broad Street.  It closed the vista toward Broad on Laurel Street.

The firm was the associate architect of the Chesterfield Apartment house, the oldest high rise apartment in the city. They designed or altered several houses and an apartment on West Franklin in addition to the institutional work. Most of the work was in the new Colonial Revival mode.  Curiously they seemed to have had a minor specialty in converting genuine ante-bellum houses into Colonial Revival mansions. They stripped the Italianate Ritter-Hitchcock house of its Victorian detail and did the same to the Kent-Valentine house.  By 1900 the image of the ante-bellum house was classical rather than Victorian.  The renovations converted the actual pre-war building into the new stereotypical images of a Southern mansion.  Fortunately, Noland’s skilled and sophisticated renovations are quality works in their own right.  They well illustrate the change in attitudes about the South.

The YWCA Fifth Street is a handsome essay in the Italianate mode. The Dooley Hospital that once sat next to the Egyptian building was similar stylistically.  Across  the street from the YMCA, the firm designed the Virginia, a combination office building, apartment  house and the chapel of Second Presbyterian Church.  The Virginia was what we would now call a mixed use building, almost a century head of its time. The chapel is a charming and beautiful space. It is simple, elegant and just Gothic enough.

Baskervill built his own house at the corner of the Boulevard and Byrd Park in the Italian style. This house almost rivals the Scott house in size and imposing character. It is a sophisticated Italian style villa with a beautiful, arcaded entrance. One assumes Baskervill played a role in the design, but the fine detailing is typical of Noland.

The later work of Baskervill & Lambert will be covered in another essay.  Much of the early biographical information was uncovered by Christopher Novelli in his fine Master’s thesis on Noland.

Robert Winthrop

Architects of Richmond: Claude K. Howell

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November Theater

Article and photographs by Robert P. Winthrop.

As part of a continuing series we are featuring an essay from a guest writer, Robert Winthrop. Winthrop is partner at Winthrop, Jenkins, and Associates, a Virginia based architecture firm specializing in historic renovation. Historic buildings have also been his focus in numerous writings and lectures. As author of The Architecture of Jackson Ward, Cast and Wrought: The Architectural Metalwork of Downtown Richmond, Virginia, and Architecture in Downtown Richmond, Winthrop has established himself as an authority on the city’s architectural history.

Winthrop has adapted these essays from a lecture series at the Virginia Historical Society. The series, entitled “Sophisticates and Wild Men,” followed the interaction between the exuberant Victorian architects and the sober classicists at the turn of the twentieth century.

*   *   *

C. K. Howell (November 27, 1869 – ?) had an active architectural practice in Richmond between 1906 and the early twenties.  He moved regularly and while he had a large practice throughout the South specializing in theaters, his work in Richmond included a number of impressive houses on Monument Avenue as well as the Empire, Lyric and National Theaters.

Born in Donaldsville, Louisiana; his father, Percy Howell, was a hotel proprietor. Howell wrote a biographical sketch in a South Bend Indiana promotional book in 1901.  At age 11 he trained with Toledo architect, L.L Stein for four years (approximately from 1880 to 1884) and then worked in Lexington and Covington Kentucky. He also worked for Samuel Hannaford & Son for two years in Cincinnati. Hannaford was that city’s premiere architect.

Howell then moved to Chicago where he worked for Burnham and Root, one of Chicago most progressive and modern architectural firms. At the time, Burnham and Root had a reputation that rivaled Louis Sullivan. When John Welborn Root’s brother, Walter C. Root (1859-1925), moved to Kansas City in 1886, Howell went with him.  Walter Root soon established a major architectural firm in Kansas City.

Howell returned to Chicago to serve as a construction superintendent at the Columbian Exposition of 1893.  While Burnham and Root were noted progressive architects, the Columbian Exposition, (The Great White City) marked a new interest in classicism in the United States.  In 1893, Howell moved to South Bend, Indiana and established his own firm. He seemed to have been moderately successful there.  In 1904, Howell opened his office in Richmond.

Howell designed a number of homes on Monument Avenue. This is a bit surprising since Howell was new resident of the city.  This may be partially due to one of his earliest clients, O. H. Funston and to Howell’s business partner F.W. Scarborough. Howell designed a Monument Avenue house for O.H. Funston a realtor. Funston was associated with Henry Harwood, one of the most active land traders on Monument, before joining with James B. Elam and founding Elam & Funston. This became one of Richmond’s major real estate firms for the rest of the century.

Howell’s business partner, Francis Winthrop Scarborough, was born in Cincinnati in 1865. He was the bluest of the bluebloods and his family was noted for its connection to Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools as well as noted governmental figures. His father was William Woolsey Scarborough, a merchant in Cincinnati. His mother was Sarah Van Buren.

The Scarborough’s were related to the Hoadley family. Francis’ uncle, Cincinnati resident George Hoadly, became the governor of Ohio. His son, Edward Mills Hoadly and Francis attended Renssellaer Polytechnic Institute at the same time.  Both men received degrees in Civil Engineering. Scarborough graduated in 1888; Edward M. Hoadly graduated in 1889. Both men came to Richmond to work for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad after graduation. We do not know if Howell became acquainted with the Scarboroughs and Hoadlys in Cincinnati or in Richmond.

We do know C.K. Howell designed a house on Monument Avenue for Edward Mills Hoadly in 1906.  This house cost $18,000.00, so it is clear Hoadly was doing well. F.W. Scarborough left his position at the C & O Railroad and formed a partnership with Howell in 1908. Scarborough had multiple business interest in coal mines, the New River Company and other ventures in addition to the engineering and architectural firm. He was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Institute of Mining. The firm name, Scarborough & Howell, Engineers and Architects, suggests that engineering was to be the primary focus of the firm. Scarborough was the managing director.

Edward M. Hoadly’s sister Laura also moved to Richmond. She was born in 1864.  Her first husband was F.W. Scarborough’s cousin, Theodore Woolsey Scarborough. He died at age 33 of typhus. Laura remarried in 1906 to Dr. Philip Edward Johnson and moved to Seattle. Dr. Johnson was attacked by thugs and murdered three months after the wedding. The widow then bought property on Monument Avenue in 1907 and built an impressive house there also designed by Howell. One assumes she moved to Richmond to be nearer to her brother, Edward and her cousin, Francis.

When Howell came to Richmond in the early twentieth century, the Scarborough cousins had been there for over a decade and were associated with the C&O Railroad. One assumes being related to the Governor of Ohio made up for their northern ancestry. They were well established as the house on Monument Avenue indicates.

Howell and Scarborough & Howell designed and built fourteen houses on Monument Avenue, making them one of the most prolific architects on the street.  While the firm thrived, F.W. Scarborough withdrew from it in 1912.  The residential commissions seemed to have vanished at about the same time.  By 1910, Howell’s theater design business was underway and soon was thriving.

Scarborough died in New York City on Christmas Eve, 1914. His death was described as “after a brief illness.” It is possible Scarborough needed to spend more time on his extensive personal investments and ventures. It also is possible he had an earlier diagnosis and he could have withdrawn from the partnership for health reasons. Mrs. Johnson left her house on Monument after Francis’ death and died in 1915 in British Columbia.

Most of Scarborough & Howell houses’ are elaborate examples of the Colonial Revival. While some appear to be quite conventional, when studied in detail they are both eccentric and skillfully designed.

Monument Avenue was a high prestige street. It was created to be the site of impressive houses. The standard Richmond urban lot size was not conducive to designing full size Colonial Revival mansions. The lots were narrow and the development was expected to be filled with twenty-five to thirty foot wide town houses. The ideal Colonial Revival mansion would have been symmetrical with a central entrance with flanking rooms.  This could not be accommodated on the original lots.

In the Funston house Howell designed an impressive central entrance feature with only one flanking wing. This made the house completely asymmetrical. However, since traffic on the street was parallel to the house and your view oblique, it was possible to drive by the house and not note the missing wing. Funston’s house gave the impression of being a full sized mansion, but was missing a wing. This arrangement was a success and two variants were commissioned by other clients. Howell also did a symmetrical mansion and several residences in the form of a traditional town house.

The Binswanger family, who owned Richmond’s largest glass supplier, had three houses on Monument; one was designed by Howell.  This house is original in composition. Like most houses on Monument was designed to express the owner’s prosperity.  The house has very fine art glass, as one would expect, given the family business. Approximately a third of the houses on Monument were built by persons in the real estate, development, building and building supply business.  The Binswanger house is a full scale illustration of Binswanger products. A few years later another Binswanger family member built a house with even finer glass.  D. Wiley Anderson designed this house.

Laura Hoadly Scarborough Johnson’s house did not fit the normal pattern.  It is stylistically Tudor, but the interior is a sophisticated essay in the progressive Arts and Crafts movement. One enters from the side into a spectacular central hall that features a cantilevered stair. Recently restored, the house has a superb interior.

As far as I have been able to determine, the Empire, now the November Theater, was Howell’s first theater. It was designed to be a variety-burlesque theater, but quickly transitioned into a movie theater.  Howell became the architect for the Keith Circuit. The Keith organization was a burlesque, variety theater chain that made the same transition.  Movie theaters were a new building type and Howell was the right man at the right time.

He designed Keith Circuit theaters throughout the south. His most notable works outside of Richmond are the Academy of Music in Lynchburg (1911), the Imperial in Augusta (1917-18), the Jefferson in Charlottesville (1917), the Lucas Theater in Savanna (1921), and the Rylander in Americus, Georgia (1921).  The Lucas Theater is of particular interest since it is similar to the design of the National in Richmond. Howell used Richmond sculptor Ferruccio Legnaioli for the decoration in the Empire and the National.  It appears he may have used him for both the Lucas Theater and the Academy of Music.

Legnaioli was Italian sculptor who came to the United States and arrived in Virginia to do the plaster ceiling of McKim, Meade & White’s Garret Hall at the University of Virginia in 1906. McKim, Meade & White were the best known architectural firm in the nation and could pick and choose their craftsmen.  Legnaioli moved to Richmond and had a successful career here. While he did a number of free standing sculptures, his strong suit appears to have been in architectural decoration. He was good at Renaissance inspired decoration, but had a particular knack for tasteful, semi-nude nymphs and youths that seem to frolic on cornices. The nymphs play a role in the decoration of the November and  National theaters.  In addition to Howell’s theaters, Legnaioli designed the architectural decorations of the Colonial, Byrd and the now demolished Colonial theaters.

While the National exterior is well preserved, the Empire was subject to a particularly brutal modernization in the mid-twentieth century. As part of its reincarnation as the November Theater, the façade has been partially restored and now represents Howell’s intentions.

Howell left Richmond and seems to have moved regularly. He lived in Charlottesville in 1917, Savanna and Charleston. In each city he had a major commission. His last major commission in Richmond was the National Theater of 1923.

Robert Winthrop

Architects of Richmond: Albert F. Huntt

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Stern House


Article and photographs by Robert P. Winthrop.

As part of a continuing series we are featuring an essay from a guest writer, Robert Winthrop. Winthrop is partner at Winthrop, Jenkins, and Associates, a Virginia based architecture firm specializing in historic renovation. Historic buildings have also been his focus in numerous writings and lectures. As author of The Architecture of Jackson Ward, Cast and Wrought: The Architectural Metalwork of Downtown Richmond, Virginia, and Architecture in Downtown Richmond, Winthrop has established himself as an authority on the city’s architectural history.

Winthrop has adapted these essays from a lecture series at the Virginia Historical Society. The series, entitled “Sophisticates and Wild Men,” followed the interaction between the exuberant Victorian architects and the sober classicists at the turn of the twentieth century.

 *   *   *

Albert Huntt is a problematic architect in many ways.  While modern Americans admire imagination, many would regard Huntt as being too imaginative. The line separating daring, imaginative and eccentric from downright crazy seems to be blurred in Huntt’s case. When looking at his more exuberant works, it is tempting to see a naïve and untrained wild man who was unaware of the “right” way to do things.

This is a complete misunderstanding of Huntt and his architectural approach. Huntt had the misfortune to be an adventurous and imaginative classicist.  The Twentieth Century has tended to admire the academically correct approach to classicism. Bold and imaginative tendencies have tended to be regarded as incorrect in the world of modern classicism.

Albert Huntt was a Richmond native and the great-grandson of Otis Manson, one of the bolder designers in early Richmond.  A New England native, Manson came to Richmond in the first decades of the nineteenth century and designed a number of sophisticated buildings. He seems to have been in tune with Jeffersonian Classicism in its more imaginative forms.  This was clearly important to Albert Huntt who went so far as to mention on his tombstone in Hollywood Cemetery that he was the descendant of Otis Manson, Richmond’s first architect.  It is tempting to see some of Albert Huntt’s more daring essays in the Colonial Revival as an effort to continue Otis Manson’s bold approach to architecture.

Otis Manson’s son, Dr. Otis Manson, became a distinguished doctor and professor at MCV.  His daughter married Albert Lee Huntt, the father of Albert F. Huntt.  Dr. Manson’s obituary mentions his charitable work for the employees of the Allan & Ginter Tobacco Company.  This may have played a role in his grandson’s architectural career.

The first academic program in architecture in the United States was established in 1865 at M.I.T., three years before Huntt’s birth.  Huntt went to school at the Pennsylvania Military Academy in Chester, then an outer suburb of Philadelphia. The PMA is now Widener University.  Architectural education was not standardized to any degree in the later 19th century.  The PMA architectural program was small. Fortunately Huntt kept a scrapbook of his years at the college that is preserved in the Widener University library. The architectural classes at the PMA were taught by Silas Gildersleve Comfort Jr. (1863-1910).

The Comfort family played an important role in American art and architectural education in the post-Civil War period.  Silas was the youngest son of Silas Gildersleve Comfort (1808-1868) who died five years after Silas Junior’s birth.  The elder Comfort was a noted abolitionist and a prominent Methodist minister.  Silas G. Comfort Jr.’s oldest brother, George Fiske Comfort, and his wife Anna Manning Comfort raised him as their son.  George was an author, educator and artist. He wrote a series of text books on modern languages and studied art abroad. In 1870 he was a founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He remained involved with the Metropolitan until his death in 1910.  In 1872, he was elected Professor of Modern Languages and Aesthetics at Syracuse University.  There he founded the Fine Art College and afterward founded the Syracuse Museum, now the Everson Museum of Art. He was a pioneer in art and architectural education. 

Silas Comfort Jr. took his degrees in engineering and architecture from his brother’s program at Syracuse and then received a Master of Architecture degree, one of the first in the nation.  He then began his 25 year teaching career at PMA.  We know Silas wrote his own textbooks for the architectural course.  He was interested in structural engineering and was much involved in steel design.  Given the intellectual and artistic tastes of the Comfort family, there is a good chance the courses at the P. M. A. were modern and up to date.  

In the later 19th century, the eccentric master Frank Furness dominated Philadelphia’s architectural profession.  Furness’ architecture is now was regarded as being bold and imaginative in excess. The young Louis Sullivan was so impressed by Furness he went to work for him.  While Furness was eccentric, he also attracted prestigious commissions from the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Philadelphia Academy of Art and the University of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia art scene included gifted eccentrics such as the architect Wilson Eyre, the painter Thomas Eakins and Walt Whitman, America’s greatest 19th Century poet.

Albert Huntt married Georgiana Bartram Hathaway of Chester after graduation.  She was the descendant of John Bartram, America’s greatest early botanist. Bartram was a friend of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and was a co-founder of the American Philosophical Society. Her distinguished ancestor must have helped his career.  In 1902, Georgiana was the secretary of the Art Club of Virginia.   Major Dooley was the President of the Art Club. She was much involved in the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

After his graduation and marriage Huntt returned to Richmond and worked for German born architect, Carl Ruehrmund in 1893-94 and went out on his own in 1894.

Huntt had a broad ranging architectural career and produced industrial, commercial, institutional and residential buildings.  One assumes his grandfather’s association with Allan & Ginter led to factory and warehouse designs for the American Tobacco Company, Allan & Ginter’s successor firm. Albert Huntt was the architect for the American Tobacco Company and designed the impressive Climax warehouse of 1900 on Tobacco Row.

Three large brownstone and brick houses survive from his first years after returning to Richmond.  1501 and 1503 Grove Avenue are fine examples of the Richardson Romanesque. Both built in 1895, they perfectly represent the architectural tastes of the Brown Decades. There is a third house on Franklin Street and a row of townhouses on Grove Avenue form this period.  

Huntt transitioned from the substantial Romanesque to the newer Colonial Revival styles in the next decade. In 1907, he designed a fine residence for Cary Ellis Stern at 1700 Grove Avenue.  While it clearly inspired by the century old John Marshall house, it is not a copy. With its well-detailed Doric porch, it is both up to date and respectful.

Two years earlier he designed the George house at 1831 Monument Avenue, his first house on the street.  This house has the substantial feel of the Romanesque combined with Georgian details and composition.  While Huntt could be restrained and correct, he rarely chose to be so. He wasn’t interested in antiquarian reconstructions.

By 1913 the Lafferty house on Monument Avenue displays a baroque approach to classicism. The front is divided into two bays; one is larger than the other. The entrance porch uses a mixture of Ionic and Corinthian columns. The entablature features triglyphs from the Doric order.  Thus, he used elements from all three of the classical orders in this remarkable creation.  To say that the porch disobeys classical rules hardly begins to express the composition of the house.

The Sorg House of 1914 on Monument is a classical, theatrical fantasy on Classical themes. Sorg was the vice president of the Millhiser Bag Company, and Huntt had redesigned a house at 1100 Grove Avenue into an apartment house for the Sorg family in 1912. 

The Sorg residence has a bowed front porch with the central stair flanked by triple Ionic columns, two of which step down the stair. The façade behind the porch is asymmetrical with an off center entrance.  This asymmetry is typical of Richmond town house design.

The upper level of the house features two bay windows flanked by Ionic columns and crowned by broken pediments. A grand total of 14 Ionic columns embellish the house. It is a dazzling composition obeying no Classical rules or conventions.

Hunt designed other, tamer houses on the street, but all are of interest. At 2300 Monument Avenue, Huntt redesigned Richmond’s typical step gabled Greek Revival, townhouse of the sort designed by Otis Manson.  Manson was the designer of the Elmira Sheldon house on Church Hill. The Monument Avenue house is bigger and more monumental, but clearly reflects Huntt’s awareness of Richmond’s architectural history.  

At 2500 Monument, Huntt rethought Richmond’s Greek Revival mansion designs such as the Barrett House. The basic composition is Greek Revival with a central porch flanked by triple windows. The massiveness of the house also recalls Richmond’s taste in the 1840s and 1850s as can be seen in the Glasgow or Barrett Houses.  The architectural embellishment is all-new and all Huntt.

One of Huntt’s later commercial designs was for a car dealership on Broad Street. Here his inspiration was the light, elegant 18th Century classicism of the Adam Brothers. Here Hunt was bold, imaginative and almost delicate in his detailing. The building is both modern and classical. His library for the St, Andrews Association is one of the few buildings showing a strong Art Nouveau influence in Richmond.

His final buildings on Monument Avenue, the Kenilworth and Stratford Court apartments feature four triple-tiered porches supported by triple Corinthian columns. Well preserved, these illustrate Hunt’s work well. If Bernini were designing apartment houses on Monument Avenue they might look like this. The entrance design breaks the Bernini fantasy. Again, the doorway breaks every classical rule.

Huntt lists the young Richmond architect, Bascom Rowlett as the associate architect for these apartment houses and several other buildings in the later teens. It is tempting to attribute some of Huntt’s later works to the imaginative Rowlett. However Rowlett’s independent work doesn’t resemble Huntt’s work.  Rowlett was interested in exotic styles and while he produced a number of Classical apartment houses, they never approached the exuberance of Huntt’s work.  Huntt died in 1920.

Huntt’s work does not fit into the stereotype of the conservative southern architect.  His designs were bold, imaginative and a bit eccentric. He was also successful, and had many successful businessmen as his clients. While he worked in a classical style, there is little antiquarian in his works. 

Robert Winthrop

Architects of Richmond: Bascom J. Rowlett

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Rowlett on Monument


Article and photographs by Robert P. Winthrop.

As part of a continuing series we are featuring an essay from a guest writer, Robert Winthrop. Winthrop is partner at Winthrop, Jenkins, and Associates, a Virginia based architecture firm specializing in historic renovation. Historic buildings have also been his focus in numerous writings and lectures. As author of The Architecture of Jackson Ward, Cast and Wrought: The Architectural Metalwork of Downtown Richmond, Virginia, and Architecture in Downtown Richmond, Winthrop has established himself as an authority on the city’s architectural history.

Winthrop has adapted these essays from a lecture series at the Virginia Historical Society. The series, entitled “Sophisticates and Wild Men,” followed the interaction between the exuberant Victorian architects and the sober classicists at the turn of the twentieth century.

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Bascom Joseph Rowlett was born in Richmond in 1886. His father, James Bascom Rowlett, worked for the Tredegar Ironworks. James died while Bascom was young and he was raised by another family. He graduated from the Richmond High School in the 28 members of the class of 1906.  High Schools were new to Richmond and was the only High School for whites in the city.  It did not have a building as yet.

Rowlett received his architectural education from the Virginia Mechanics Institute. The Institute was for the education of skilled labor, including drafting. A major portion of the Institute’s classes were taught at night. In the 1890s, C.P.E. Burgwyn was the Superintendent.  He was Harvard graduate who designed the original plan for Monument Avenue.

By the time Rowlett attended the Mechanics Institute the superintendent was Frank M. Duke, a mathematician. Duke had taught at Hollins College and then returned to Richmond and was the superintendent from 1906 to 1918.  His father was the treasurer of the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad and lived in a house designed by noted architect, Albert Huntt, at 1502 Grove Avenue. Duke’s brother became the General Manager of the RF&P and in 1918 Frank Duke joined the RF&P Railroad as the chief accountant. We do not know of the Duke’s association with Huntt resulted in the young man’s association with Huntt.

We don’t know when Rowlett began working with Richmond architect Albert Huntt, but in 1916 Huntt listed the thirty-year-old Rowlett as an associate in the design of the Kenilworth and Stratford Court Apartments on Monument Avenue. Huntt also listed him as the associate Architect on several commercial and industrial projects before 1920.  Rowlett does not appear to have had any notable family connections, and one assumes he had been working with Huntt for several years before 1916 and his architectural ability alone resulted in his promotion. At that time, the associate architect title and partnerships were often due to a person’s skills as a real estate developer, at marketing or because of social connections, rather than architectural ability. Rowlett was the exception to this rule.

In 1920, Rowlett was the associated architect with Carl Lindner on the design of St. John’s Church on Stuart Circle.  The two architects worked on the project in several phases until completing it in 1926. Carl Lindner (1895-1973) also attended the Mechanics Institute.

By 1921, a year after Huntt’s death, Bascom J. Rowlett was a sole practitioner and completed his first solo building, the Westhaven Apartments on the Boulevard. This was the first of series of large apartment houses erected on Monument Avenue and the Boulevard. While some of these were in a restrained classical style, others were in a more exotic Mediterranean mode. The first work in this more exotic style was the exceptional Cannon apartment house at 1110 Grove Avenue of 1922.  This building included a large apartment on the main floor for the owner and several apartments on the upper floors. The main level was detailed elaborately in a medieval-Italian Renaissance style and was originally furnished in antiques.

In 1924, Rowlett created a more modest Mediterranean pastiche on Allen Avenue. He designed Rixey Court on Monument Avenue in the same year.  The design of Rixey Court is memorably imaginative, sophisticated and clever.  It is essentially two buildings. The Monument Avenue front has three large apartments, one apartment per floor. These units are the size of modern homes complete with three bedrooms, multiple baths and a maid’s room. To the rear of the front units are six, more modest apartments. They are entered from the side street. This scheme allowed the building to accommodate both upper and middle class residents. Since the building served two markets, it had a cushion against swings in customer demand.

In 1926, Rowlett designed the English Village, an architectural fantasy on Tudor themes. The attached houses wrap around a central green that faces Grove Avenue.  The complex is charming and well detailed. While it broke with Richmond’s standard town house approach, it provided the high density needed in Richmond’s urban housing while appearing to be spacious.  There were several other experiments with middle-class group housing in the 1920s in Richmond. All were architecturally successful, but they did not become the prototype for future projects they deserved to be. The depression ended these imaginative approaches to housing.

Two years after the design of the English Village, Rowlett designed the Tuscan Villa, one of the largest and most attractive apartment houses of the 1920s. The Villa occupies the entire block between Park and Kensington on the Boulevard. The building wraps around three beautifully landscaped courtyards that face the Boulevard. The detailing is Italian and is both restrained and elegant. While it provides for very high-density housing, the quality of the design has paid off.  It has avoided the decline typically seen in garden apartments.

A half block away from the Tuscan Villa on Kensington Avenue, Rowlett designed two restrained Classical apartment houses for the Johnston Willis Hospital. While these buildings were not extravagant, they do provide a dignified and handsome home for middle class Richmonders.

In the early 1920s, Rowlett designed four apartment houses for developer M. D. Palmore at 111, 218-220, 103 South Boulevard and 2832 Monument Avenue. These are more modest than his Mediterranean essays but handsome. There is an identical copy of 218-220 S. Boulevard on Monument (there is no building permit for this building), and another Rowlett designed building at 3010-12 Monument facing the Maury Monument.

It appeared Rowlett’s career was hitting stride in 1928-29. He designed his last apartment house in 1929.  After the crash, the 44 year old architect had a permit for a single house in 1931 and his next Richmond permit was in 1940. There were no more permits in Richmond except for a store renovation in 1946. He worked as a building inspector on federal projects to make ends meet. In 1936, he designed the Warren County Courthouse in Front Royal, a WPA project. This building still shows his personal approach to Classical architecture. It is intimate and charming, characteristics rarely found in WPA architecture.

Bascom was a gifted, imaginative and skilled architect who created a series of memorable buildings in the 1920s. Sadly his skills weren’t admired in the frugal and utilitarian 1930s  and 40s.  His architectural career ended just as he reached maturity. Bascom Rowlett died in 1947 and is buried in Orange, Virginia.  His son, Bascom Rowlett Jr. attended VPI and became an engineer.

Robert Winthrop

Virginia Center for Architecture

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Architect: John Russell Pope
Dates: 1919
Address: 2501 Monument Avenue

One of the most impressive mansions on the already extravagant Monument Avenue, the Branch House was commissioned in 1916 by John Kerr Branch, a wealthy stockbroker and bank president, with enough space to house his extensive collection of Italian Renaissance items, including tapestries, furniture, woodwork, and armor. A popular style for the wealthy in the early 20th Century, the Tudor Jacobean mansion’s brick and sandstone castle-like exterior shields an impeccably preserved interior, from the elaborate furniture and lighting fixtures to the carefully crafted wood detailing. Other examples of thoughtful handiwork are found all over the building: the three uniquely laid brick chimneys, fireproof concrete floors, and exterior sculpted stone motifs to name just a few. A generous amount of light permeates the building through large warped glass bays, from the back gallery space to the cozy library on the third floor, so that the building maintains a warmness even through its imposing size. A brick wall lining the other side of the lot contains a courtyard, stepped down from the back gallery space in a private retreat, overlooking Fan houses through a screen of trees.

The 27,000 square foot mansion was designed by John Russell Pope, most well known for the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art in D.C, but whose work is also found two blocks north at the Science Museum of Virginia. Unlike the architect’s other well known classical style buildings, the Branch House employs a Tudor Jacobean style, influenced by the famous Compton Wynyates mansion in Warwickshire, England.

After passing through other owners twice after the Branch family, the house found a well suited occupant in the Virginia Center for Architecture, one of the few architectural museums in the country, whose exhibitions and event hosting allow the architectural prize to be observed and celebrated. Located along the already historic Monument Avenue, it was independently listed on the National Register of Historic places in 1984.

M.F.A.
More information about the Branch House and the Virginia Center for Architecture’s events and galleries can be found at:
http://www.virginiaarchitecture.org/vca_index.html

Sources:
nps.gov. (n.d.). Branch house. Retrieved from http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/richmond/BranchHouse.html