Markers of History

Cannonball Trail
Commercial Place

Location: NW of where Commercial Pl & E Main St meet, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 1, 2009, 2:55pm

Transcription of marker: When a sur­vey was done in 1680 to lay out the town of Norfolk, one of the few streets shown was “the street that lead­eth to the water­side.” The orig­i­nal loca­tion was just to the west of this site. It fanned out from Front (now Main) Street south to the Elizabeth River. As the new town devel­oped, this area became its com­mer­cial hub. When a mar­ket was built here near Front Street in the early 1700’s the area became known as Market Square. At the river’s edge a ferry dock and com­mer­cial wharves devel­oped. About 1900 the name changed again, to Commercial Place. This illus­tra­tion “Old Norfolk Evening” by artist John Morton Barber, recre­ates the south­ern end of Market Square/Commercial Place in 1887. Double-edged steam fer­ries shut­tle back and forth across the Elizabeth River to Berkley and Portsmouth. The English ship Carnarvonshire is being towed into the har­bor to load goods for her voy­age across the Atlantic, and the side-wheel steamer Luray is car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers down­stream toward Town Point.

My impres­sions: I’ve been near this spot before but hadn’t really paid atten­tion to the marker, nor the small strip of green around it in down­town Norfolk. This cir­cle is dom­i­nated by a Confederate mon­u­ment (which I’ll have to snarf at a later date, since my bus came before I could take a photo of it).

Markeroni sta­tus: My visit was logged on Sunday, after the marker was added to the database.