1 of 8
Image courtesy Cook Collection, Valentine Richmond History Center
2 of 8
Image courtesy Cook Collection, Valentine Richmond History Center
3 of 8
Image courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center
4 of 8
Image courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center
5 of 8
Image courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center
6 of 8
Image courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center
7 of 8
Image courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center
8 of 8
The Westmoreland Club occupies the Lyons-Stanard House (1882-1937). The organization's disbanding precipitates the building's demolition a few years short of its 100th anniversary. This 1927 image shows the 1902 additions to the back and of the house. Residences still stand all around the place.
The Westmoreland Club Reading Room, 1910s. Here a writing desk from the Southern Literary Messenger comes to rest. At that publication, Edgar Allan Poe perfected his craft. Poe visits the residence when the home of Robert Stanard. The two were boyhood friends. When the Westmoreland group departs, the desk first goes to the newspapering Bryan family and then to the Poe Museum where it is displayed today.
The residential quality in this 1930s image of the south side of East Grace street, across from the Loew's theatre (now Richmond CenterStage), at Sixth and Grace. The Westmoreland Club is at the right center.
By the mid-1930s, the downtown business and commercial district's expansion is taking with it many fine older buildings that are no longer thought viable or worth preserving. The Westmoreland Club is shown here to an encroaching parking lot that took out the next door brownstones. The Hotel John Marshall towers behind.
Here's the shape of things to come. The Westmoreland Club's large eastern porch by the mid-1930s faces a parking lot. Two uniformed valets await your bidding.
Gone. Ca. 1937
The Atlantic Life Building in the 1950s houses the insurance firm and opens with a May Company retail outlet and, on top, a parking deck.
The brusque modern construction that stood here is perhaps thankfully demolished in 2003 but replaced instead by a surface parking lot. Nothing about its storied past can be gleaned from the present site. This demonstrates that how in Richmond, you need to know what you're really looking at when you look at something.
