Nov. 29, 2009

DON’T YOU LOVE THIS PICTURE? I found it in The Virginian-Pilot’s files under “latest beachwear.” Just kidding; the photo was taken in 1896 at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. My guess is the spot was close to the old Princess Anne Hotel, where there was a small enclave of nearby houses. It doesn’t look like they’re having fun, but posing for pictures was a serious matter in those days, I imagine.
It was a time when the Beach was just beginning to catch on as a resort destination. Up until then, the lifeblood of Princess Anne County had been the port of Norfolk, with farmers making the long haul to market over shell roads by horse and wagon.
That was all about to change; what would one day truly drive the economy of this sprawling county was not so much its farms but its coastline.
A little background. When one canal company president remarked in 1871 that the area that would one day become Virginia Beach was “one of the most lovely, healthy, and attractive places in the world for a summer resort,” it was one of the first public signs that anyone knew this, according to Stephen Mansfield in his book on Princess Anne history.
It was then just six years after the Civil War ended and the region was still reeling. Needless to say, Confederate money was next to worthless. Jobs were scarce and farms, now without slaves, were failing. Residents were packing up and heading west. But some were imagining a different world, now within their grasp, and it wouldn’t take long for the beginnings of a new dawn to glow on the horizon.
Still, the Atlantic shoreline was mostly farmland that ended in pine forests and dunes. And except for life-saving stations, built six miles apart, there was barely a house or building.
In the 1880s, however, the newly formed Seaside Hotel and Land Company started buying several thousand acres along five miles of oceanfront. The company had close ties to another enterprise, the Norfolk and Virginia Beach Railroad and Improvement Company – and the two ultimately merged. In January 1883, work was begun on a rail line that would run from Norfolk over a trestle bridge at Broad Creek and through farmlands and timber stands to the beach.
By July, the first of several thousand visitors were dancing on the floor of a new pavilion, wading into the ocean and eating at picnic tables. The name “Virginia Beach,” then only a footnote in the railroad company’s charter, soon took hold.
The following year, 1884, saw the opening of the 60-room Virginia Beach Hotel. With newfangled gas lighting and such, it was considered one of the most luxurious hotels in America. It soon offered a host of outdoor activities, including golf and tennis, band concerts and operettas.
It wasn’t long before the rich, famous and powerful, like Alexander Graham Bell and President Benjamin Harrison, were disporting themselves at the seashore and wealthy Norfolk families were buying up lots and erecting summer retreats. One of them, with 22 rooms and 14-inch-thick walls, would eventually be called the DeWitt Cottage, which stands today as the Atlantic Wildfowl Heritage Museum.
By 1897, there were a few dozen year-round residents and they began lobbying for town status. Finally, in March 1906, a charter was granted. The town council met in what had been the Virginia Beach Hotel, refurbished and renamed the Princess Anne.
Sadly, in 1907, a kitchen fire burned the hotel to the ground. Heroic efforts, including a bucket brigade, by property owners and hotel guests saved nearby houses like the ones in the photo.
It would be 20 years before a comparable hotel, the Cavalier, was built. But it was clear that the region was gearing up for a new century – and one day slightly more stylish beach attire.

Photo:These beachgoers, at the Oceanfront in 1896, were probably having more fun than they let on. Virginian-Pilot photo.

Nov. 22, 2009

Lithograph showing 148th New York Volunteers at “Camp Naglee” on the grounds of Norfolk Academy in 1863. Chrysler Museum of Art. (Click to enlarge)

It’s a curious sight, a building that looks like a Greek Temple, brooding over, but surely not quite approving, the nearby modern buildings and a shopping mall in downtown Norfolk. A sign says Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, but another identifies it as the future home of the Hurrah Players.
And therein lies a fascinating transition from one life to another for this world class structure on Bank Street.
The story begins with Norfolk Academy. The school was burned out of its original 1728building by the British. The academy rebuilt, then in 1804 bought the Bank Street land.
The school hired one of the nation’s top architects, Thomas U. Walter, who would later design the dome of the U.S. Capitol, as well as the House and Senate wings. At the time, he was one of the most prominent figures in the Greek revival movement. So guess what he came up with?
The building, which opened in 1840, takes its form from the Temple of Theseus in Athens. It’s surrounded by heavy Doric columns and topped by a graceful triangular pediment. It was quite a statement, and the city seemed overjoyed by its splendor. In the spring, when the cornerstone was laid, politicians, naval officers and public figures of all stripes led a parade that snaked through town while residents cheered from their windows and threw confetti.
According to Toy Savage, a history teacher at the school and author of Norfolk’s Academy: The Heart of Tidewater, the school was “just about the only game in town. By virtue of the size of the community and the lack of an alternative, Norfolk Academy was central to life in that part of the world.”
It quickly morphed into a military academy and feeder school for places like VMI and West Point. Among its graduates was Walter Taylor who would become Robert E. Lee’s chief of staff.
It had other lives. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1855, the school became the city’s post office. During the Civil War, after the fall of Norfolk, the grounds hosted for a Union encampment and the building served as a hospital for Union troops, a galling presence in the city.
The building also served as the forerunner of the Norfolk Public Library. Beginning in 1870, the school allowed the Norfolk Library Association to use shelves in its study hall for its small collection of books.
After Maury High School opened and downtown business began to slump with the approach of World War, the academy temporarily closed in 1915 and left the building. The school would reopen, close again and finally reopen again at its present location on Wesleyan Drive.
Meanwhile, the Bank Street building went through a couple of other lives, including a juvenile court. In 1970, the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce bought and renovated the building for office use. “It was a real showpiece,” says Jack Hornbeck, executive director of what became the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce as the individual chambers of five cities merged in 1984. With the merger, the chamber outgrew the building and began looking for a buyer. The problem was the building could be sold only to a non-profit entity, and that seemed unlikely, especially in a deep recession. What was needed was a Greek-like godsend.
Enter the Hurrah Players, a performing arts education and training organization founded 26 years ago by Hugh Copeland, the current artistic director. As it happens, the Bank Street location has become central to performing arts venues, including Chrysler Hall, the Wells Theater and, now under construction, a headquarters building for the Virginia arts Festival.
“It’s an opportunity to be in a beautiful historical building that’s an ideal location for what we are and who we reach,” says General Manager Katie Stone.
Recently, construction crews began renovating Norfolk’s Theseus Temple, with plans to add a 100-seat black box theater, two rehearsal studios and offices.
Just before, I got a quick tour of the old building with Sarah Martin, the chamber’s vice president for development and marketing. The walls are probably as thick as the Greeks once made them, and the tomblike storage area in the basement might have held the Minotaur that Theseus slew. There are surely high ceilings, but drop panels cover them. On the outside there are a few cracks in the mortar but the place still looks impressive.
“This building is going to be the old glory that she should be,” Martin says.
One role the building has never played, until now, is something the ancient Greeks might have appreciated: serving as a theater. The fit seems perfect.
Hurrah!

Nov. 15, 2009

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW about old Portsmouth, you can stop by the Wilson Memorial Room at the Portsmouth Public Library, get hold of some excellent local history books, wander the streets in Olde Towne reading history markers or ... check out the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum.
It amazes me that this little museum at the foot of High Street, once a ferry maintenance building, covers so much ground: not just the history of the sprawling shipyard a few blocks away but also the lives and times of those who live in the city.

There could be no better example than the current exhibit, “The Wheels of Progress: Portsmouth and the Navy Yard, 1881 - 1920.” It was a period, as museum curator Corey Thornton puts it, that pushed the city “full speed ahead into modernity.”
In many ways, the shipyard drove the city’s growth as the drumbeats of war were heard. The Spanish-American War in 1898 and World War I less than 20 years later brought thousands of workers to town, many of them immigrants. From 11,390 residents in 1880, the city grew to a mindboggling 54,387 by 1920.
Imagine all those people – shipyard workers, carpenters, blacksmiths, brick masons, house painters. carriage makers, ditch diggers, dock workers – teeming into the city. Imagine drug stores, department stores, open air markets. Trains converging on the city, steamships and ferries calling at the docks, trolleys, carriages and horseless carriages crisscrossing. And imagine a war going on with a growing and powerful navy next door.
This is the Portsmouth the museum has captured with photos, displays and stories that bring things down to human scale.
One of the new faces in town belonged to Joseph Didio, a young shoemaker who had immigrated to America from a small town in Italy. Shortly after moving to Portsmouth in 1898, he was naturalized and set up shop on First Street, offering “Ladies and gentlemen’s fine shoes made to order.” A photo obtained from his descendants shows him proudly displaying a boot as he stands with wife and children outside his First Street store.
Beneath the large black and white photo are his workbench and a variety of cobbler’s tools: a large and small last, a heal burnishing tool, a button and buckle clamp, sole knife, brushes and, last but not least, a bunion stretcher and a fudge wheel, a tool for ornamenting leather.
“Good people always want good shoes,” he once said.
The surge in immigrants is striking. According to city directories for Norfolk County – of which Portsmouth was the seat at the time – immigrants increased from virtually zero in 1890 to thousands by 1920. They arrived from Italy, France, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Russia and China. Among the institutions in the city were an Italian Hall and a number of Orthodox Jewish meeting places.
There were also unexpected immigrants.
What must have been one of the most curious communities in America sprang up at the shipyard. It was the result of two German ships seeking refuge in Hampton Roads in 1916 while the U. S. was still neutral.
Six hundred German sailors were interned at the shipyard and allowed to build their own village. Houses, a church, a school, a gymnasium and even fire and police departments were included in the makeshift town dubbed “Eitel Wilhelm” (a marriage of the ships’ names).
At first, the sailors were free to patronize taverns. One of the photos at the exhibit shows dozens enjoying themselves at a pub. Some were entertained at dinner parties. They were curiosities, and sightseers came by steamboat, trains and any other way they could to gawk at them. But their village was quickly dismantled as the shipyard expanded and, when war was declared, the temporary visitors were sent to POW camps.
To meet the workforce expansion, the federal housing authority approved construction of two planned communities near the shipyard: Cradock and Truxton (named for naval officers), the first for white shipyard workers, the second for blacks. By the time they were built, the war was over, but the two communities served to meet the continuing housing needs of the growing city.
Among the other striking pictures are those by photojournalist Louis Hine, who documented the abuse of child labor. One shows men, women and children leaving a local knitting mill, shielding themselves from the sun with large black umbrellas.
“I went through the mill several times while they were working,” Hine wrote, “and saw a number of boys and girls who were surely under fourteen.”
Portsmouth and its “historic sibling,” as Corey Thornton describes the shipyard, marched into the new century together, and the museum has captured this fleeting moment.

Photo of Joseph Didio and family outside his establishment at 506 First Street in about 1907. Courtesy of Portsmouth Naval History Museum.

Nov. 8, 2009

ONE OF THE NEAT THINGS about writing a weekly column is that one story often leads to another. For example, the recent one about Keely Smith, the sultry singer from Norfolk who made it to the big time after being discovered by bandleader Louis Prima.
Now bear with me as we go back to the Great Depression.
It was 1934 when an out-of-work clothier got a job as bartender for the Elks Lodge at 112 College Place in downtown Norfolk. James Prince rose to become manager of the club at a time, the 1940s, when it was a busy gathering spot, maybe even the social center of downtown.
Judges, lawyers and politicians all belonged. It was a place to have a drink, so long as you brought your own booze to mix with set-ups. It had a good restaurant (which managed to get black-market beef during the war), game rooms, slot machines and, on Saturday nights, the best dances in town.
Prince’s son William, now a retired federal magistrate judge, did odd jobs at the club, including, on those Saturday nights, checking coats and hats. He remembers watching, fascinated, as one of his Maury schoolmates, Dot Keely – her name then – belted out tunes for the Earl Bennett Orchestra. At age 14, it was the future star’s first paying job as a singer.
The Elks Lodge building’s still there, home to the Weisberg and Zaleski law firm and the Primm advertizing agency. But not that long ago, it was a swinging downtown club. Built in 1912, when the Elks moved from their quarters at the Academy of Music, it attracted widespread membership. At its pinnacle in the 1940s, the lodge had about 1,200 members. An addition was built out back to accommodate a sizable dance floor. In the front yard, a magnificent bronze Elk presided over the street.
"One of the stories I heard of, but I certainly did not witness," Prince says, "was at one of the dances, one of the guests who was in her cups, with some assistance from somebody, climbed on that elk and sat on it, and it was so cold she froze to it."
He does not say how the lady was freed.
Then there were the slot machines.
"They would get a call from someone in the police department that there was going to be raid, say at 10:30 this evening, so they would roll all the slot machines and put them where they wouldn’t be found."
The Elks Lodge was still popular in the late 1950s when Bernie Kofira moved here with his family from Binghamton, N.Y. He had an office as a claims adjuster nearby and the lodge was a great place to go for lunch. And a great place to dance.
"There were dances every Saturday during fall and winter, and if you didn’t get your ticket by Tuesday, you couldn’t go; it filled up so quick," Kofira says. "It was a dancing crowd."
But Kofira, still a member and the club’s historian, says by the mid-60s, downtown had deteriorated and so had the building. In 1966 the Elks moved to the Commodore Maury – more recently the Madison – Hotel for two years while building a clubhouse on Typo Road on the eastern edge of the city. The elk was moved to the Norfolk Botanical Garden during the transition, but now stands watch at the new location.
The Elks building went through several phases. Kofira says it was sold to a downtown business group and reopened as the Servicemen’s Club of Norfolk. That was short-lived after liquor-by-the-drink passed and service people were free to go where they pleased. It was bought by Donald Lewis, who opened "Auslew Gallery of Fine Paintings. The Virginian-Pilot speculated that it "may be the most imposing art gallery in the South."
Ron Primm, whose company now occupies the second floor, says there were several other tenants, including a Scandinavian furniture store, a bar known as "Shrieve’s Backyard," an establishment reached through a back entrance, a press club and a fine French restaurant called Le Charlieu.
Primm and the restaurant owner bought the building in 1982. He still has the 1912 blueprints: "Club House for the Norfolk Lodge, No. 38 B.P.O.E."
We went up to the third floor attic where some kind of entertainment venue was added – there’s still a stage there. There had been tin over the windows and when the wind got behind them they’d moan. "We thought we had a ghost, until we opened them up."
Now in its 97th year, the building is a small treasure of historic downtown.
"It’ll be ready for its next hundred years," he says.

Illustration: Postcard for Elks Lodge on College Place. The Elk is now in front of the Lodge’s present location. Sargeant Memorial Room, Norfolk Public Library.

Nov. 1, 2009

This is a story about a church that has risen from ashes and rubble. With a sea tragedy and the saga of a federal courthouse thrown in for good measure.
You could start the story with the founding of one of the first churches in the colonies, Elizabeth River Parish in 1637.
The lineage of the modern Christ & St. Luke’s Episcopal Church goes back that far. A lot of fires and name changes and finally mergers take us to the present and the church’s celebration last week of the 100th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone.

The parts of any story are layered with joys and sorrows, and this has a full measure of both.
It was Good Friday morning, March 27, 1891, when the Norwegian barque Dictator foundered off Virginia Beach, with the loss of seven passengers and crew, including the captain’s wife and son. Along with the debris that washed ashore was a full load of longleaf pine.
At the time, St. Luke’s Episcopal, then under construction on Granby Street in downtown Norfolk, needed wood for its interior. The church bought the salvaged wood and made good use of it within its classic structure of granite and brownstone, dedicating its new building the following year.
Meanwhile, Old Christ Church at Freemason and Cumberland streets was looking for a change. The 1828 building, in which Gen. Robert E. Lee once prayed, was considered too far from many of its members who had moved to the growing neighborhood called Ghent. On Oct. 28, 1909, the cornerstone for a stately Gothic church on Olney Road and Stockley Gardens was laid. In short order, the church was completed and on Christmas Day, 1910, the first service was held. “The signal for the call to worship,” this paper said, “was rung out by the old bell which for so many years had sounded the call to service.”
Fast-forward to May 23, 1921 when one of the worst electrical storms in anyone’s memory hammered the city.
“The telephone wires at Fire Department headquarters were literally buzzing with frenzied calls from all parts of the city,” the Pilot reported. “Each thunder clap was the signal for a fresh alarm.” At least a half dozen blazes were reported, one of them at St. Luke’s Church. Lightning struck the cupola, and fire quickly spread to the church’s wooden interior. By the time it was over, the young church had burned to the ground.
Eventually, this Granby Street land would be occupied by the Walter E. Hoffman U.S. Courthouse, and a battle would ensue over its expansion.
But back to 1921. St. Luke’s built a temporary wooden church on Colonial Avenue, expecting to rebuild downtown. But it never did and in 1935 the two churches merged. It was a good match: Christ Church had the building; St. Luke’s had a large congregation and was flush with money because of the insurance collected from the fire.
It was a wonder for 10-year-old Alex Grice. He had been baptized in 1925 when St. Luke’s was in the small, comfortable wooden building on Colonial Avenue. “It was such a contrast. St. Luke’s was anything but Gothic. It was sort of overwhelming to go into that big, big church.”
Meanwhile, the old downtown Christ Church endured through a series of owners, both Greek Orthodox and House of Prayer for All People. But it suffered from termites and neglect and, furthermore, stood in the way of progress. The Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, which had taken it over, offered to sell it to anyone who would commit to restoring it. But even at a price tag of $1, there were no takers.
The Pilot editorialized that losing the church would be “nothing short of a disaster,” but the general consensus was that it was beyond repair. Even columnist George Tucker, who had been a choir boy there, concluded that razing the building “will be doing it a favor.”
One of the saddest photos in any newspaper archives is one showing a historic building being demolished. Under a headline “Going Down” in January 1973, the church is shown succumbing to a wrecking ball.
The more you dig into history the more you realize there are stories within stories within stories.

Illustration: sketch of Christ & St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, from the original program for the cornerstone laying, Oct, 28, 1909. Sargeant Memorial Room, Norfolk Public Library.