They give direction, illuminate and can range from commercial exhortations to politics and protest, from retail to restaurants, the utilitarian and the artistic. And, in the case of signs in The Valentine museum’s collection, they also provide wayfinding into history.
A Valentine Meat Juice sign advertises the firm that manufactured a popular supplement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Without the profits generated by the company, there probably wouldn’t be a Valentine museum. “This is likely from the factory at Sixth and Cary [streets], got moved to 1600 Chamberlayne [Avenue] in 1920, and was saved by the family after that,” says Christina Keyser Vida, The Valentine’s curator of general collections.
Another timeworn sign announces “The Crochet Bag Gift Shop,” its cursive lettering — crafted by professional sign maker Benjamin Carter Bethel — adding a touch of aesthetic pretense to the Short Pump gift shop of his mother-in-law, Gertrude (“Ge-Ge”) Proffitt Henley. She opened the business sometime during the 1950s on the family farm and offered crocheted items, antiques and unique gifts. At the time, a woman-owned business was uncommon in this area.
Some signs give mute but freighted reminders of Richmond’s racial and cultural history. Circa 1907 doors from the Richmond & Chesapeake Bay Railway Depot’s “Colored Men” waiting room were painted over, although outlines remain visible. The building at 1814 W. Broad St. was renovated in 2014 for Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts; the former dean, artist Joe Seipel, donated the doors to The Valentine.
Dated 1814, a placard for pewter maker Joseph Danforth’s shop is weather- and age-worn. It is the oldest known sign to survive the early 19th century, according to The Valentineʼs Vida.
During a layover in 1958 at Trailways Bus Center at Ninth and Broad streets (now the Library of Virginia), Bruce Boynton, a Black Howard University law student, was arrested for trespassing when he sought to eat in the “whites only” section of the station’s restaurant. His appeal led to the 1960 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public transportation violated the Interstate Commerce Act, which prohibited “unjust discrimination.”
Placards of protest in the collection include one reading, “Long Live Neighborhood Schools!” The sentiment expressed opposition to crosstown busing as a result of the 1972 ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr. to extend school busing across city-county boundaries. Confrontations followed, and in 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision.
An evocative cut and hammered copper sign from 1939 marked Virginia Withers’ Top Knot Nursery School at 6420 Roselawn Road in Westhampton. The piece depicts silhouette figures of a boy holding a rake, a girl on a hobby horse, and a block and hammer; the tools indicate useful trades. The school operated from 1939 to 1947, for children ages 2 through 7, at $13 a month.
A humble “Art Studio” sign created by Isabel Bingham Jones Mayo and once displayed at Linden Row signifies the artist enclave that evolved during the 1920s and 1930s near the then-new Richmond Public Library — an area once called “Richmond’s Greenwich Village.” Mayo, a painter, often made formal portraits of Black subjects at a time when this wasn’t done by white artists.
