The following is an extended version of the article that appears in our October 2025 issue.
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The Phillips-Lewis sign as it appeared circa 1970 (Photo courtesy VCU Libraries)
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Artist Michael Bradshaw in front of the Phillips-Lewis sign in 1993 (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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The present condition of the Phillips-Lewis commercial wall sign above the outdoor seating at The Benedict on Cary. One can barely see the vestiges of the dramatic display by late morning light. (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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The new door leading out to the terrace of The Benedict on Cary. The window, though, came as part of improvements made in 1930, when the city’s zoning board gave permission to Phillips-Lewis to install two windows in the wall, “opening on property of the Southern Railway Company.” Those rectangles remain. In 1917, the structures of 1329-1331 received upgrades from prolific architect Albert F. Huntt and his talented associate Bascom Rowlett. (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
Riding in the family car as we attended to our city errands, I’d catch a glimpse of her and wonder. The image kicked my overactive imagination into hyperdrive.
Sitting before a fireplace at her spinning wheel, she was, to me, creating the thread of history. A plinth of stairs led to her, and I considered how each tread represented an epoch.
The wall-sized painting covered — and, as of this writing, remains barely visible on — the South 14th Street side of 1331 E. Cary St. The expanse of the image seemed to my adolescent self far more important than the fact that the artwork was hawking the Phillips-Lewis line of Home Spun canned goods.
The allure of My Lady of South 14th endured for me even as she faded.
For the October 1993 issue of this magazine, I devised a tour of past and present commercial signage and adornment. I wandered the streets, took pictures and wrote about a dwindling niche of professionals known as “wall dogs.”
This pre-World War I job title defined outdoor commercial sign painters who often labored in the heat of the day and in vertiginous situations on scaffolds and ladders. Their work dressed up bare brick with sometimes elaborate advertising.
The “Old Hickory” furniture mural, revealed by the demolition of the Capitol Hotel in 1993 (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
The 1993 piece was partially inspired by yet another woman, revealed by the 1990 demolition of the grotty Capitol Hotel at the northwest corner of Eighth and Grace streets. She’d not seen full daylight since about 1910.
The central figure for Sydnor & Hundley and the Old Hickory line of porch and garden furniture relaxed in a woven wicker chair. She regarded this new world from under a sun-sheltering wide-brimmed hat. Auburn curls fell against her cheek, her eyes big and dark-lined in a manner that resembled some ancient Egyptian stylings I’ve since seen on fashionable young women in Carytown.
Artist Michael Bradshaw, who in 1993 marveled at her reappearance, observed that “her eyes are all messed up now. Somebody who didn’t know what they were doing tried repainting them.”
I could tell he wanted to get up there and fix the errant effort at eye care and perhaps brighten her up. It was a moot mission, though, because the Sydnor & Hundley lady went to rubble with the construction of the United States Eastern District of Virginia court building.
Bradshaw spoke as an expert because he created art on walls. His work included the iconic David C. Watson-designed Flood Zone sign in Shockoe Bottom (now the site of apartments), and he didn’t only make new signs; he sought to preserve old ones.
He saved signage on 1701 E. Main St. advertising the C.D. Kenney Co., distributors of teas, coffee and sugars, that proclaims Kenney’s products “Are The Best,” and urges consumers to “Try Our Special High Blend HIGH-GRADE Coffee — 25¢ The Cup.” The building’s owner appreciated these graphics, and this pleased Bradshaw. In his view, these antique reminders of extinct firms helped to provide identity to a neighborhood. What you know about the people who operated these local companies can unravel some community history.
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In 2014, Robert Volk donated to The Valentine museum his “Richmond Ghost Signs.” Among those he captured is the iconic “Uneeda Biscuit“ with “George W. Taylor Grocers” at 25th Street in Church Hill. (Photo by Roger Volk courtesy The Valentine)
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Photo by Roger Volk courtesy The Valentine
He gave as an example the “Uneeda Biscuit” ghost sign on 25th Street, which serves as a Church Hill marker, and Albemarle and Laurel streets’ Victory Rug Cleaning and Hollywood Cemetery direction signs in Oregon Hill. The latter wall also keeps alive the memory of a corner grocery store that operated from 1893 to 1915 by Jonas R. Price. A smidgen of surviving paint, too, addresses Thomas Carreras, who ran a confectionary there until he moved to 1600 Floyd Ave. in 1926.
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The Cherry Street wall of 821 Cafe in 1993 (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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The Cherry Street wall of 821 Cafe is a collage of advertising, preservation efforts and artistic expression from Richmond’s Mural Era. Separated by windows are Chris Milk’s 821 Bakery Cafe sign, Stormie Mills’ cartoony pugilist and a restored barber’s ad, all of which obscure a ghost sign for Toulouse Le Crepe, a short-lived restaurant. On the rear parking lot wall is a 2015 mural by Nils Westergard, “Icarus Fallen,” in which a wet-haired, downcast young woman contemplates a fallen bird. Westergard’s work covered a previous image of an allee of dark trees bordering sculptural fountains.
In 1993, Bradshaw lamented the state of the Phillips-Lewis imagery on 14th Street, the fixation of my youth. The big picture came from the paintbrushes of Ernest C. Tarcen, active from 1925 to 1933. Despite Bradshaw’s enthusiasm, he couldn’t reach an agreement with the building’s owner to revive Tarcen’s dramatic interpretation of the wholesale grocer’s business.
Almost indiscernible now is Tarcen’s theatrical scene with columns at either side and a pediment that resembles a framing proscenium. “Phillips” and “Lewis” unfurl on red banners serving as bannisters. The graduated risers lead to the woman forever seated at the spinning wheel. The list of goods to either side seem as ending credits of a film, the characters “Meats Canned” and “Tea Bails.”
As the Phillips-Lewis sign deteriorated, another emerged, this one for Imperial Coffee. This business grew in the 1910s from Edmund Archer Saunders Sr.’s booming wholesale grocery and import business across the street at 1330 E. Cary St. (today the site of The Valentine First Freedom Center). Imperial didn’t last, though, and the buildings of 1329-1331 underwent extensive improvements by well-known architect Albert F. Huntt and his talented associate Bascom Rowlett.
The wholesale distribution firm of Leslie Henry Phillips Sr. (1880-1942) and Willliam T. Lewis (1853-1937) operated from circa 1929 until 1949. They purchased 1329-1331 E. Cary St. in 1930. The city’s zoning board gave them permission to install two windows in the eastern wall, “opening on property of the Southern Railway Company.” The narrow rectangles remain.
The Corinthian column mural on the former Vatex building in 1993 (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
Back in 1993, I also spoke with painter and graphic designer Richard Patterson. One of his recent works at the time, for the Vatex building at Hermitage Road and Ownby Lane, produced an arched gallery of Corinthian columns. When new, and in the right light, the colonnade fooled the eye, appearing as a curious ancient remnant amid this industrial and warehousing corner of town.
Patterson used Keim, a silicate paint that bonds to brick and concrete. “I actually worked with the architect on this project,” Patterson noted. “The mural was in the plans from the start.” This year, the Vatex building was demolished for what renderings depict as a curvy, balconied five-story apartment building. A blade-style sign designates the place as The Porter.
Meanwhile, the former Phillips-Lewis warehouses are now designated as Shockoe Slip Plaza, with the bustling Irish-themed restaurant Siné on its western end and at the other The Benedict on Cary, which opened in August. This breakfast-lunch restaurant’s outdoor seating allows a view of the fading sign. In late morning light you can barely see My Lady of South 14th, seated at the wheel and still spinning her story.
