Markers of History

Municipal Historical Marker?
Fort Tar

Location: Monticello Ave (US-460) just north of Virginia Beach Blvd (US-58), Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 4:15pm

Transcription of marker: This is the site of Fort Tar, built to guard the approach to the city from the west, sit­u­ated on the out­skirts of Norfolk, near Armistead’s Bridge, which spanned Glebe Creek nearby. It served with Forts Barbour, Norfolk, and Nelson to pro­tect Norfolk and Portsmouth from inva­sion by the British in the War of 1812.

Owen Mfg. Corp.     Norfolk, Va.

My impres­sions: This, like yesterday’s Four Farthing or Town Point marker is of unknown type. It’s listed in the Markeroni data­base (as it was in pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Virginia marker guide­books) as an un-numbered state marker, but it is not in the cur­rent book and when one looks at the marker, one finds the seal of Norfolk where the seal of Virginia is nor­mally found and the name of the man­u­fac­turer where the name of the state body erect­ing the marker is usu­ally found.

This is one of those that almost devolves into laundry-list mode. We find out that the fort was built to guard the west­ern approach to the city. After that it goes into the local geog­ra­phy briefly before list­ing var­i­ous other forts in the area. It does seem incon­gru­ous to think of a fort at what’s now a busy inter­sec­tion, though.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

Update (7/16): After some dis­cus­sion, I’ve decided to con­sider these mark­ers as city mark­ers, so have changed the head­ing and cat­e­gory tag to match that. As there are not enough of these City of Norfolk mark­ers out­side the Cannonball Trail series to form a list, I have included them in the par­ent cat­e­gory “Municipal Historical Markers.”

Cannonball Trail
Granby Street

Location: Granby St (as you might have guessed), on the west side of the street between Main St and Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 4:00pm

Transcription of marker:

Granby Street was named in 1769 to honor Englishman John Manners (1721 – 1770), Marquess of Granby. The orig­i­nal street ran three blocks from Bute Street south to Town Back Creek, a semi-navigable stretch of marsh­land run­ning the length of today’s City Hall Avenue. Town Back Creek was a bar­rier to devel­op­ment in the north­ern por­tion of the Borough until a bridge was built in 1818 to span the creek at Granby. As it became more acces­si­ble, Granby Street was trans­formed into a res­i­den­tial area of stately homes.

The elec­tric street­car debuted in Norfolk in 1894, and neigh­bor­hoods were estab­lished along the route. Many Granby Street res­i­dents moved to the new sub­urb of Ghent, and busi­nesses of every kind replaced their for­mer homes. By 1910, Granby Street sur­passed Main Street as Norfolk’s busiest shop­ping dis­trict. From 1976 to 1986 part of Granby was closed to vehic­u­lar traf­fic and renamed Granby Mall. Granby Street declined through the 1990s, but with the open­ing of Tidewater Community College and MacArthur Center it has been revi­tal­ized with res­i­dences, the­aters, and restaurants.

My impres­sions: I think the big sur­prise to me in this marker is how hon­est a por­trayal it appears to be of some very recent events. I mean, to only one decade later, refer to an area as declin­ing, as this describes Granby Street through the 1990s, shows a will­ing­ness to face harsh realities.

Going off the topic of his­tor­i­cal mark­ers, I find it inter­est­ing that at one point part of the street was closed to vehi­cles, but that it didn’t work to attract peo­ple. It reminds me of the Sparks Street Mall in Ottawa, which never seems to live up to its poten­tial (although part of the prob­lem there may be the num­ber of gov­ern­ment build­ings in that area).

It’s also inter­est­ing for me to see how recent some things I take for granted are. I mean, I just moved to the area six months ago, so it stretches my mind to think of the area with­out the MacArthur Center, despite how recently it’s been built.

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting inclusion.

Cannonball Trail
The Customhouse, 1859

Location: W Main St (oppo­site the foot of Granby St), Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:55pm

Transcription of marker: Construction of this cus­tom­house began in 1852 and was com­pleted in 1859, replac­ing an 1819 cus­tom­house located at Water and Church Streets (now Waterside Drive and St. Paul’s Boulevard). This build­ing was designed by Ammi B. Young (1798 – 1874), the first super­vis­ing archi­tect for the United States Treasury Department, who estab­lished high archi­tec­tural stan­dards for fed­eral build­ings. During his career Young designed some 70 gov­ern­ment build­ings around the coun­try, includ­ing the cus­tom­houses in Richmond and Petersburg. Departing from his more cus­tom­ary Tuscan designs, Young devel­oped a rich Classical Revival design for this gran­ite struc­ture. Adapting a new mate­r­ial to tra­di­tional forms, both the inte­rior columns and the cap­i­tals of the exte­rior columns are made of cast iron. All of the Federal agen­cies in Norfolk, includ­ing courts on the upper floor and the post office in the base­ment, were housed in this build­ing until space needs prompted the con­struc­tion of a new Federal cour­t­house and post office in 1900. The exte­rior of the build­ing has not been sig­nif­i­cantly altered since its construction.

My impres­sions: This is one of those moments when I con­fess to a bit of fear. Unfortunately the draw­ing on the marker is the clos­est I came to tak­ing a photo of the build­ing, largely because I believe it is still (in part) a fed­eral build­ing, and while I’m still await­ing my per­ma­nent res­i­dency sta­tus, I still feel funny about doing things that might invite scrutiny. So I exer­cised cau­tion, per­haps more than war­ranted. So, this 2005 photo, posted to Flickr by Tom Hammond under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, is your chance to see the glowingly-described building.

“U.S. Customhouse,” © 2005 Tom Hammond. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. The marker is vis­i­ble in the lower right of the photo.

All that out of the way, I love the way this build­ing looks. It seems to me to be a typ­i­cally American style; by that I mean that it isn’t a style that I saw nearly enough of back in Canada. I’m not quite sure what that says, but it’s a dif­fer­ence I think I’ve noticed.

Markeroni sta­tus: I have a request in about the Cannonball Trail mark­ers, because most of them that I’ve found have not been in their data­base yet. This one might be in the data­base already under a slightly dif­fer­ent name and I’ve sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on that.

Municipal Historic Marker
Four Farthing or Town Point

Location: Wall of S side of build­ing, W Main St & Granby St, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:55pm

Transcription of marker: Here at a cedar tree was the west­ern limit of the fifty acres con­sti­tut­ing the orig­i­nal town of Norfolk. The land was bought in 1682 as a port for Lower Norfolk County from Nicholas Wise, Jr. for “tenn thou­sand pounds of tobacco and caske.” It was deeded to Capt. Wm. Robinson and Lt. Col. Anthony Lawson as feof­fees in trust for the county.

Owen Foundry Mfg Co Inc     Norfolk VA

My impres­sions: Well, this marker is unusual com­pared to those I’ve seen around here for sev­eral rea­sons. For one, it doesn’t have a post: it is built into the wall of the build­ing. For another, I’m not exactly sure how to clas­sify it. Markeroni has included it as a state marker. My copy of Virginia’s Historical Markers does not include it, it doesn’t have a num­ber, and it has a seal of the city of Norfolk instead of the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia. However, in search­ing I found (thanks to Google Books) a pre­vi­ous edi­tion of the book which did include it and oth­ers (pre­dom­i­nantly in Norfolk, I think) in a sec­tion of unnum­bered state mark­ers (although it erro­neously titled it “Fort Farthing or Town Point”). I’m not sure what the ratio­nale is behind drop­ping them from the cur­rent edi­tion. Did they fall through the cracks because they didn’t have num­bers? Was it deter­mined that these were actu­ally mark­ers from cities or coun­ties instead of the state? I don’t know the answers to these ques­tions, but they’re ques­tions that are get­ting into my brain.

As for the marker itself, it seems strange to me today to use a tree (which could be cut down or destroyed by fire, etc.) as a bound­ary marker for a town. But when I read this marker, along with one I found about 10 days later, this cedar tree was it.

And then there’s the vocab­u­lary ques­tion. Is feof­fees a word or did the foundry start a word too close to cof­fee break and then get dis­tracted part­way through the word? It actu­ally is a word. According to Wikipedia:

Feoffee, or more cor­rectly within this con­text feof­fee to uses, is a his­tor­i­cal term relat­ing to the law of trusts and equity, refer­ring to the owner of a legal title of a prop­erty when he is not the equi­table owner.…

The mod­ern equiv­a­lent of a feof­fee to uses is the trustee, one who holds a legal and man­age­r­ial own­er­ship in trust for the enjoy­ment of the beneficiary.

I guess trustees were more impor­tant for pub­lic access to things before gov­ern­ments were as strong as they are today.

Markeroni sta­tus: I logged my visit yesterday.

Update (7/16): After some dis­cus­sion, I’ve decided to con­sider these mark­ers as city mark­ers, so have changed the head­ing and cat­e­gory tag to match that. As there are not enough of these City of Norfolk mark­ers out­side the Cannonball Trail series to form a list, I have included them in the par­ent cat­e­gory “Municipal Historical Markers.”

Path of History
The Elizabeth River

Location: Elizabeth River, at the High St ferry land­ing, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:20pm

Transcription of marker: The Elizabeth River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay, runs between the cities of Portsmouth and Norfolk. The river was named “Elizabeth” in honor of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, the eldest daugh­ter of King James I of England.

The river was first called “Chesapeake,” after the tribe of Native Americans who lived on its banks. They were an Algonquin-speaking peo­ple who depended on the land and water for exis­tence. When John Smith explored the east­ern area in 1608, he saw their “golden plots” and other indi­ca­tions of Native American habitation.

My impres­sions: I can get all caught up in the dif­fer­ences between Canadian and American his­tory that I can some­times for­get about the sim­i­lar­i­ties. And as I come to the end of the pho­tos from this trip to Portsmouth (a city with a name that would be at home in England), along a river named for Elizabeth (ditto), and pre­pare to cross back to a city named Norfolk (ditto), this (espe­cially cou­pled with the pho­tos you’ll see in today’s bonus third post) reminded me that we share a lot of his­tory from before our paths diverged.

Markeroni sta­tus: When Path of History data entry is com­plete, I’ll be log­ging this visit on Markeroni.

A word of expla­na­tion about the blog over the next cou­ple of days.

This post will be the only one today, and it will be fol­lowed tomor­row with a spe­cial history-related (but not historical-marker-related) post. On Thursday, I’ll resume look­ing at mark­ers I found on a recent trip to Portsmouth, VA in a mega-post about Fort Nelson Park, which con­tains roughly a dozen mark­ers from Portsmouth’s Path of History, which I’ll com­bine in one post so we don’t have an entire week or two on the his­tory of the Portsmouth Naval Hospital.

Now on to the marker about Collier’s Raid:

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8-G
Collier’s Raid

Location: Crawford Pkwy & Washington St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:55pm

Transcription of marker: A British fleet under Commodore Sir George Collier sailed up the Elizabeth River and shelled Fort Nelson in May 1779, dur­ing the Revolutionary War. A land­ing force of 1,800 infantry­men led by Brig. Gen. Edward Mathew cap­tured the fort on 10 May after a brief resis­tance. The British occu­pied Portsmouth, Gosport, and Norfolk, and burned Suffolk and the Gosport ship­yard. Collier also cap­tured or burned 137 ves­sels in Hampton Roads and dis­man­tled Fort Nelson. The British force then embarked and sailed to New York.

Department of Historic Resources, 1998

My impres­sions: As some­body from out­side the US, from a coun­try that peace­fully moved from colony to coun­try, it takes me aback to think that this was hap­pen­ing in 1779, three years after that “magic” date of 1776. Reading the marker it seems almost ran­dom: the British forces did a lot in this area and then the one cryp­tic sen­tence: The British force then embarked and sailed to New York.

It almost sounds like “Nothing left to destroy here, we might as well move along…want to catch a Broadway show?” This is actu­ally a tan­ta­liz­ing taste to me. That one sen­tence on its own seems so incon­gru­ous that it leaves me want­ing to research what actu­ally hap­pened. WHY did they leave here and sail to New York?

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

Path of History
Craney Island

Location: Crawford Pkwy, just west of Court St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:40pm

Transcription of marker:

Craney Island played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the War of 1812, fly­ing the Flag of 1795, with fif­teen stars and stripes. American defend­ers held off over­whelm­ing British forces there on June 22, 1813.

Two hun­dred British sol­diers were killed, thir­teen taken pris­oner and forty deserted. There were no American casu­al­ties. This suc­cess­ful bat­tle saved Norfolk, Portsmouth and the Gosport Shipyard from British occu­pa­tion and destruction.

The USS Merrimack (1856 – 1861) was at Norfolk Navy Yard in 1861, when Virginia seceded from the Union. The Federal forces burned and sank the Merrimack as they with­drew from the Navy Yard.

The Confederates sal­vaged the ship and con­verted her to an iron­clad. She was com­mis­sioned the CSS Virginia in February 1862.

In May of 1862, as the Confederates aban­doned the Norfolk area, efforts were made to lighten the Virginia enough to allow her to move up the James River. Unable to do so, she was destroyed by her crew off Craney Island on May 11.

My impres­sions: More War of 1812. And I’ll con­fess that about all I remem­ber from what I learned of that war in his­tory class was “We won.” Oh yes, “and the Americans think they did.” I know the def­i­n­i­tion of “win” is what is impor­tant in fig­ur­ing out what one believes about the war, but as usual, I lack the knowl­edge of what hap­pened to even begin to under­stand it. Maybe a library trip is in my future, so I can pick up the his­tory that isn’t con­densed into only a few para­graphs on a marker here and there.

Given my under­stand­ing of the geog­ra­phy, this seems like a strange loca­tion for a marker about Craney Island, pre­sum­ably there because of the desire for the Path of History to be a walk­a­ble path.

I also received word, via a Flickr com­ment, that next month a his­tor­i­cal marker will be unveiled com­mem­o­rat­ing the Battle of Craney Island. (From fur­ther research, I believe that this will be a state his­tor­i­cal marker, but can’t con­firm that detail yet.) Unfortunately, it appears that my sched­ule won’t per­mit me to attend the unveil­ing, but I def­i­nitely hope to get there in the days after it’s unveiled.

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting response on inclu­sion of Path 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.

I have to admit to a certain…uncertainty about what to feel when I come across his­tory of the American Revolution. I come from a coun­try which was peace­fully granted its gov­er­nance grad­u­ally and peace­fully. Canada doesn’t really have any sto­ries of war­ring with those who gov­erned us (those same Brits). In fact, Canada still looks to the Queen as our head of state, though the posi­tion is almost exclu­sively cer­e­mo­nial today. But when in Rome and all that…

Unknown his­tor­i­cal marker
Revolutionary War at Portsmouth

Note: This marker is of a sim­i­lar form to the Virginia state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers, but is not num­bered and does not appear to list a depart­ment and year, as do all state mark­ers I have seen to date. I hope to inves­ti­gate this side of things fur­ther. Hopefully, if it’s a state marker, it will be listed in my copy of A Guidebook to Virginia’s Historical Markers, cur­rently on its way from Amazon. Otherwise, I may try some of my own research into the place­ment of this marker.

Location: In front of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum, High St & Water St, Portsmouth VA 23704

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:20pm

Transcription of Marker: In October 1775, Virginia’s last royal gov­er­nor, the Earl of Dunmore, made his head­quar­ters at Gosport, one mile south of here. After his defeat at Great Bridge and the destruc­tion of Norfolk, he entrenched at Hospital Point, one mile north, but was again dri­ven out in May 1776. Portsmouth was again invaded by the British: Sir George Collier in 1779, General Leslie in 1780, the trai­tor Benedict Arnold and General Phillips in 1781. Here, on this Portsmouth water­front in August 1781. Lord Cornwallis embarked his 7000 troops and sailed to Yorktown where he sur­ren­dered to the vic­to­ri­ous American and French forces, 19 October 1781.

My impres­sions: I think that this is one of those that I’m not qual­i­fied to say a whole lot about right now. I know far too lit­tle about the American Revolution and thus lack the frame­work to hang these names and dates on. It doesn’t do much to inspire me to want to learn about it, but I won­der if my reac­tion would be dif­fer­ent if I’d learned about some of this stuff in his­tory class when I was in school.

Markeroni sta­tus: This has not yet been sub­mit­ted to Markeroni, await­ing more infor­ma­tion on the source of the marker (if I can find it) as well as a low­er­ing of the “whelm” level.

My inner proof­reader is scream­ing at this one. Because I’m 99% sure that they messed up on word choice in the sub­head­ing of this marker from the Path of History and I cringe to see so promi­nent an error on a marker about history.

Path of History
Naval Shipyard Museum

Location: High St & Water St, Portsmouth, VA, 23704 in front of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum.

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:00pm

Transcription of marker:

Naval Shipyard Museum
Formally Norfolk County Ferries Maintenance Building

Constructed in 1919, this build­ing was used as a main­te­nance build­ing for the Norfolk County fer­ries. From 1636 to 1955 the fer­ries pro­vided ser­vice for pas­sen­gers and their var­i­ous modes of trans­porta­tion across the Elizabeth River between Norfolk and Portsmouth. The fer­ries were dis­con­tin­ued in 1955, but were re-established in 1983 for pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion only. The build­ing has been home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum since 1963, when the orig­i­nal museum was moved from inside the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The museum researches, pre­serves and pro­motes the his­tory of the City of Portsmouth, Norfolk Naval Shipyard and the armed forces in Hampton Roads.

My impres­sions: HIRE A PROOFREADER!!! (Sorry, was I yelling?) I mean, there’s a minis­cule chance that the build­ing is “offi­cially named” based on its prior func­tion, but I do want to assume that 99% chance that it’s the wrong word, take some white-out and change the word to Formerly. But since I’d pre­fer not to be arrested, I’ll restrain myself.

There’s a lot of over­lap with the ferry marker I vis­ited in Norfolk ear­lier in the day, of course, because the for­mer func­tion of the build­ing relates to the same ferries.

Notes for future snar­fers: This is very close to the High Street ferry land­ing. Note that there are two other mark­ers in front of the museum: one for the Blue Star Memorial By-Way (right next to this one, in front of the museum) and another for the Revolutionary War at Portsmouth (fac­ing Water St, par­al­lel to the side of the museum).

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Path of History before sub­mit­ting to Markeroni.

One meta note: Having filled up the front page with plenty more left to come, I’m going to slow down the pace of post­ing, so you’ll hope­fully see two or three posts per day, until I catch up with all the sights I saw yes­ter­day, so come back tomor­row for more marker fun!