The Nolde Bros.’ shipping department on 26th Street in Church Hill, prior to the 1926 art deco expansion (Photo courtesy the Cook Collection, The Valentine)
“Again a local firm has triumphed,” declared the Richmond Times-Dispatch on June 27, 1926. “Nolde Bros. is a Richmond firm, organized with Richmond capital, and by Richmond men, for the purpose of giving Richmond people the best and purest breads and cakes.”
The newspaper thus greeted the latest expansion of Nolde Bros. Bakery. The opening featured a week of public festivities coinciding with the 34th anniversary of the bakery’s founding, with tours of the 77,000-square-foot plant that employed 160 people and could produce 80,000 loaves of bread daily.
Nolde’s operations occupied a series of buildings in Church Hill in a block bounded by Marshall, Broad, 25th and 26th streets.
From 7 to 9:30 p.m., “well-informed guides” led visitors to “explain the myriad and interesting processes in baking Nolde’s breads.” These walk-and-talks received the accompaniment of the 11-member Club Southern Orchestra that specialized in jazz appropriate for the art deco design.
The paper extolled every aspect of the plant’s construction, from the architect (John Edward Hopkins of New York) and contractors (Richmond’s James Fox & Sons) to the flour blender (by the Glen Mixer Co.) and the “world-famous Petersen Traveling Oven, with its soapstone hearth.” Noteworthy, too, was the transport of bread racks via an overhead trolley system (made by Detroit’s Mechanical Systems Inc.).
This family baking business originated from immigrant entrepreneurial spirit.
John Henry Nolde was born to a stonemason family in the picturesque village of Niedenstein in central Germany. Five generations of the family produced a burgermeister, or mayor, of the town. Then at age 14, following the 1881 death of his father, and without speaking a word of English, Nolde left home to work in his uncle’s Richmond business, the Moesta Baking Co. at 111 E. Main St. Nolde soon brought over his mother, four brothers and two sisters.
During the summer of 1892, the Noldes purchased a small confectionery at 26th and Broad. They baked the first 40 loaves of bread using a modest basement oven. The loaves sold for a nickel apiece. Business, like the bread, rose.
By the next year, they required a second oven to meet demand. Deliveries began with a half-dozen large baskets carried by hand to customers, and with a small express wagon. Within four years, the bakery occupied half of the Church Hill block. In 1907, John and three of his siblings — William, August and George — established Nolde Bros. Inc.
Nolde Bros. famously sponsored the local “Sailor Bob” children’s television show, featuring host Bob Griggs, in the 1960s. (Photo courtesy The Valentine)
There were hardships along the way. John Nolde’s first wife, Mary B. Feitig, died in 1896. He later married Louise Fredericka Moesta, and they had eight children. A three-alarm fire in the early morning of Jan. 2, 1916, consumed the first two floors of the bakery building, destroying 3,500 pounds of flour and causing $55,000 in damages. They rebuilt.
By this time, five horse-drawn wagons delivered bread and other baked goods. During the 1920s, the wagons were replaced by a fleet of trucks that kept up with deliveries in a 50-mile radius around Richmond. An express and parcel-post component covered territory stretching to South Carolina. In 1922, Nolde’s Christmas cakes were shipped to 39 states.
Nolde’s offerings came to include whole wheat, rye, French and raisin breads and rolls. The company also made pies and other treats.
Nolde promoted its name by sponsoring events, from a Capitol Square Easter-egg hunt with prizes, a bowling contest for Christmas cakes and the bakery tours. For a time, Nolde also fielded an amateur baseball team.
By 1937, the company operated three plants in Richmond, Petersburg and Norfolk, employing about 300 people. Nolde became one of the nation’s largest independent bakers. When the wind blew, the scent of fresh bread wafted across town.
Nolde’s public service and commercial success couldn’t prevent a completely unfounded 1940 whisper campaign suggesting the company sympathized with the Nazi government and had ground glass or poison in its bread. The family took out a full-page newspaper ad disputing the lies. Richmonders rallied around the the bakery. Dunbar School Principal P.S. Murrill wrote to William Nolde of the “dastardly and scurrilous attack upon you and your noble brothers.”
A Nolde Bros. postcard, circa 1940 (Image courtesy The Valentine)
Nolde memorably sponsored Richmond’s 1960s “Sailor Bob” children’s television program. The host, Bob Griggs, grew up — like Nolde’s bakery — in Church Hill. Children who went to the show, attended Sailor Bob’s personal appearances or visited the plant received a miniature wrapped loaf of bread.
When “Disney on Parade” performed at the Richmond Coliseum in 1971 and needed a cake to celebrate Micky Mouse’s 43rd birthday with the children in the audience, Nolde Bros. got the call. The result: a 200-pound confection too large to fit in a regular delivery truck and big enough to feed 1,500 people. After the 30-minute show, the Mickey cake was consumed in a frenzy and polished off a half-hour ahead of schedule.
In 1974, Kansas City-based Interstate Brands Corp. purchased Nolde Bakery for $502,200. The Times-Dispatch described IBC as a multibakery concern that produced Dolly Madison cakes, among other brands, with plants across the country and $300 million in annual sales. IBC’s B.J. Hinkle told writer Elliott Cooper that IBC intended to “boost Nolde’s market share and put the Virginia bakery into a solid profit position.”
Carl William Nolde, a gregarious son of the company’s founder and a collector of antique clocks and old Richmond postcards, retired as executive vice president in 1975.
Soon, Nolde’s Norfolk plant closed. And in June 1977, IBC, claiming “an inability to operate profitably,” shut down the flagship Church Hill bakery.
The 250 remaining employees were transferred to other Interstate bakeries or to Flowers Industries, which absorbed the former Nolde delivery routes. The plant’s once-vaunted machinery was moved to Interstate sites. That year would’ve been Nolde Bros.’ 85th anniversary.
Appropriate for the family legacy of charitable giving and community good works, the Nolde building in Church Hill next housed Goodwill Industries. There, the organization operated a production plant for donated goods and a training shop for the disabled until 1999.
In 2005, the 120,000-square-foot building became one of the largest adaptive reuse projects in Church Hill as it underwent a $20 million conversion by Norfolk’s Marathon Development Group into 77 condominiums, with a 14-seat movie theater and a parking garage.
This article has been edited since it first appeared in print.
