Broad Street Station

The postcard above is from VCU’s Rarely Seen Richmond Collection, which includes over 600 scans of postcards, mostly from the 1900-30 era.

The first train pulled out of Broad Street Station at 1:07 p.m. on January 6, 1919. Designed by John Russell Pope, what was originally known as New Union Station was constructed on the site of what had been the Hermitage Country Club. A partnership of the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad and the Atlantic Coastline built the station to satisfy the growing city’s needs.

Directly across the street the William Byrd Hotel, at 2501 West Broad Street, opened in 1925. The twelve story hotel catered to travelers heading north and south. At the other end of the block the Capitol Theater opened for business a couple of years later. It was the first movie theater in Richmond to be equipped for sound.

Boasting a first class train station and the neighboring new businesses, the area soon became a cosmopolitan and fashionable part of town. After all, residents of the Fan District then lived within easy walking distance of direct access to the entire East Coast. During the station’s peak use, the years of World War II, an average of 57 trains passed through Broad Street Station on a daily basis.

During the ensuing decades rapid outward growth of the city combined with the withering of America’s passenger rail system to change the character of the neighborhood. In 1975 Broad Street Station was no longer the hub of metropolitan life it had been; the last passenger train left the station at 4:58 a.m., on November 15 of that year.

In 1977 the distinctive building’s second life as the Science Museum began.

The William Byrd’s barber shop open in 1927. Legendary barber Willie Carlton began looking out of the barber shop’s windows at Davis Avenue in 1948. He bought the business in the 1950s. Carlton still works at that same barber shop, when he’s not playing golf. He usually comes in on Fridays and Saturdays.

Recalling that for many years automobiles parked on the 800 block of Davis at a 45 degree angle facing the barber shop, Carlton chuckled as he described a visit by singer/songwriter Hank Williams, who was asleep in a convertible when it was time to open the barber shop.

“Well, he was taking a little nap, out there in his Cadillac,” Carlton chucked.

Apparently, after the hard-living country music great finished sleeping off his road weariness, he got out of his snazzy ride and came inside for his haircut. Carlton says the price of a haircut in those days was 60 cents. Lunch in the hotel’s busy dining room cost about the same.

This post is the first of what will be a series on the history of my neighborhood, Richmond's Fan District.