OK,
it was a little bit unfair.
Last
week, I quoted one historian who observed that after the Civil War, Norfolk
became “a roistering, carousing, gun-slinging, mining camp of a town.” And I
ended by quipping, “In other words. . . it’s old self.”
I’ve
been mildly called to task for this. After all, the city hasn’t always been that way.
It
hasn’t always been a noxious, odiferous, pestilential, malarial, swampy, slum-ridden,
slave-trading, sinful, god-forsaken place.
But darn-near.
At
least we had Thomas Jefferson, who on seeing Norfolk rebuilding after being incinerated
during the Revolutionary War, found himself to be “happy that circumstances
have led my arrival to a place which I had seen before indeed in greater
splendor, but which I now see rising like a Phoenix out of its ashes to that
importance to which the laws of nature destine it"
But that’s about it, at least as far as I can
find: no one with a kind word for the place. What we’re stuck with is gloomy
gusses like the duke de La Rochefoucauld Liancourt who in 1796 called it “one
of the ugliest, most irregular, and most filthy towns that can any-where be
found.”
Or Auguste Levasseur, the private secretary of the Marquis de Lafayette,
who commented that “Norfolk is the one that offers the least agreeable
appearance.” He added that the city was further marred by the “sad and
revolting spectacle” of slaves being forced to work for uncaring masters.
Maybe the unkindest cut came from landscape
architect Frederick Law Olmsted who, in a journalistic tour of the South in
1853, declared:
“Norfolk
is a dirty, low, ill-arranged town, nearly divided by a morass….It has all the
immoral and disagreeable characteristics of a large seaport, with very few of
the advantages that we should expect to find….No lyceum or public libraries, no
public gardens, no galleries of art…no public resorts of healthful and refining
amusement, no place better than a filthy, tobacco-impregnated bar-room or a
licentious dance-cellar, so far as I have been able to learn, for the stranger
of high or low degree to pass the hours unoccupied by business.”
And
then the Civil War just about shut the city down. Union occupation was like a
mailed fist for unreconstructed white southerners. But for others – as the
accompanying illustration by a German artist suggests – there was a lively
downtown marketplace. In some ways, the city appeared to be thriving.
Historians
point out that horseracing, an early form of bicycle racing and even yacht racing
took hold. Norfolk’s wharves almost sagged with the weight of cotton, peanuts
and lumber. Railroads and steamboats suddenly put the city on the map again.
Horse-drawn
trolleys and soon electric trolleys were introduced. Coal trains began
arriving. Some huge, lavish hotels, the Atlantic and Monticello, opened
downtown. Norfolk showed off its railroad prowess by building a downtown
station topped by an 80-foot clock tower. The Jamestown Exposition came to town
in 1907 and, a decade later, the Norfolk Naval Base opened.
So,
yes, things haven’t been all that bad. And the city didn’t really descend into
a carousing, wild-west kind of place. At least not until World War II. But
that’s another story.
All
I can say is, dogs and sailors keep off the grass. Oh, oh, was that another
over-statement?
Illustration:
The scene at Commercial Place in 1865, as captured by a
German artist. Courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library.
German artist. Courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library.
