Historic Hotels, which owns The Jefferson, has filed for demolition permits to tear down Second Baptist Church. (Photo by Jay Paul)
For generations, on the south side of West Franklin Street between Adams and Foushee stood a series of notable structures. At the eastern end was 1 W. Franklin, the Munford-Branch House, built in 1840, and at the other end was the Page-Anderson House, built in 1816.
The block’s western anchor became the Second Baptist Church sanctuary, which was constructed in 1903. Architect William Churchill Noland’s masterful rendition of Classical Revival complemented the grand architectural fantasia of The Jefferson Hotel. A row of town houses between the sanctuary and the Munford-Branch House gave way in 1926 to the church’s Educational Annex, designed by the busy firm of Carneal & Johnston to match Noland’s work next door.
But from the 1970s on, those remaining structures were sacrificed for surface parking.
And now Second Baptist, which avoided the bell tolling its destruction in 1993, is standing marooned amid parking lots and facing its own potential demolition.
Noland (1865-1951), a Hanover County native who apprenticed in Philadelphia, first opened a practice in Roanoke. But the 1893 economic collapse halted commissions, and Noland used the lull to tour Europe. Blazing with ideas, he returned to Richmond in 1895.
You’ve probably seen Noland’s work. Among his exemplary accomplishments: St. James’s Episcopal Church (1913), 1205 W. Franklin St.; Temple Beth Ahabah (1904), 1121 W. Franklin St.; the Scott House (1910), 909 W. Franklin St.; and the Hunton House (1916), 810 W. Franklin St., these latter two now offices for Virginia Commonwealth University. Noland also designed the Jefferson Davis Monument (1907).
We’ll return to this central subject after assaying what went missing in the picture on the opposite page.
The placard of the building at the front, 1 W. Franklin St., omits its prior life as the home of George Wythe Munford, a state official and author; his second wife, Elizabeth Ellis; and their 11 children. In his capacity as secretary of the commonwealth, Munford co-signed the Proclamation of Secession on June 14, 1861.
After the war, 1 W. Franklin housed the family of prosperous Petersburg businessman and banker Thomas Branch. A granddaughter, Mary-Cooke Branch Munford, became a women’s suffrage activist and education advocate in the early 20th century. John P. Branch succeeded his father as president of Merchants National Bank, and he and his wife, Mary Louise Merritt Kerr, modernized the house. The Branches’ daughter Effie lived there until 1935.
Thereafter, 1 W. Franklin variously served as a hall for the Acca Temple Shrine and offices for the YMCA, and after 1950, it housed administrative offices for Virginia Baptists and the Religious Herald.
It was in the basement of the Second Baptist Annex, or the Education Building, where my parents first met in 1959. Neither of them attended Second Baptist; Lorena Morris then went to Grace Baptist, which participated in a round-robin canteen for visiting servicemen. One of them was H. Edward Kollatz, a gangly 6-footer from Milwaukee who, courtesy of the U.S. Army, was learning to drive the big rigs at Fort Eustis. The young women served cookies and coffee and conversed. Of their meeting my mother recently recalled, “He came in to this canteen and started talking and got me backed in the corner, and he stood there running his mouth all afternoon.”
Sounds familiar.
The south side of West Franklin Street, circa 1962. Second Baptist Church (third building on the right) is one of the only remaining structures. (Photo courtesy The Valentine)
They were engaged the next March, and their marriage is now in its 62nd year. The Education Building didn’t last, however, instead receiving an ignominious 1993 demolition for — detecting a theme? — parking.
At the block’s other end, by The Jefferson, is 103 W. Franklin, designed by Robert Mills (Monumental Church, the U.S. Treasury Building) for Carter B. Page and acquired in 1880 by Archer Anderson, who succeeded his father, Joseph Reid Anderson, as head of Tredegar Iron Works.
Anderson sought for his house a contemporary upfit and hired his longtime friend Marion J. Dimmock, a prolific architect whose work included the mansions of physicians and 16 churches, among them the 1887 Confederate Memorial Chapel on the campus of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The house’s impressive river-facing elliptical rear verandas overlooked a walled garden. But neither 103’s pedigree nor its aesthetic qualities staved off its obliteration, which came on Oct. 20, 1972. During its 150th year, the building was converted into timber and rubble for, of course, parking.
Which returns us to the now-fenced-off monumental steps of Second Baptist.
Noland went all in for a direct address of the Virginia Capitol of Thomas Jefferson, whose inspiration came from his complete infatuation with the Maison Carrée in Nimes, France, a surviving Roman temple. But Jefferson’s vision, a revolutionary departure from Colonial and Georgian architecture, exceeded the abilities of the artisans in Virginia. His concept underwent real-time adjustments, nonetheless creating a “Temple of Democracy” repurposed for the new United States. For his version, Noland packed religion back into the pagan box and used all the available flourishes available to him.
“The eight slender and beautifully detailed Corinthian columns give the Second Baptist Church one of the most archaeologically correct porticoes in the city,” marvels architect Robert P. Winthrop in his book “Architecture of Downtown Richmond.”
“Unlike the Capitol, the columns here are classically proportioned with entasis and elaborately carved capitals,” Winthrop wrote. “The high podium and imposing flight of steps rise to the simple auditorium.”
Following a half-century of marriages, memorials, sermons and ceremonies, Second Baptist’s congregation left for River Road in 1967. The University of Richmond’s University College utilized the church for a time, and after that, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College used the buildings for its downtown campus.
The church received recognition in 1977 as a contributing structure to the Franklin Street City Old & Historic District that expanded in 1987. Yet its two buildings stood dormant.
The appropriately named Historic Hotels acquired The Jefferson, the former church and the annex in 1991. The late Beverley W. “Booty” Armstrong, the company’s president, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in November 1992 that parking a block away “for a first-class hotel, guests find that unacceptable.” Armstrong darkly warned that lack of additional parking jeopardized The Jefferson’s five-star rating, and without that, the “hotel might fail, costing the city 350 jobs.”
A coalition of preservationists led by the Historic Richmond Foundation protested and offered alternatives, even requesting purchase of Second Baptist. Armstrong refused all entreaties.
The city’s advisory Commission of Architectural Review decided against demolition of both buildings, but City Council acceded to the annex’s 1993 removal. This left the sanctuary stranded in a sea of parking and given over to dry storage.
Historic Hotels, affiliated with billionaire Bill Goodwin’s CCA Industries, applied in September 2021 for demolition permits that seemed to indicate backfilling the basement and landscaping the site. The requests must go before the CAR, which doesn’t possess regulatory power.
As before, the question will land in the collective lap of Richmond City Council.
