Markers of History

Cannonball Trail
Armed Forces Memorial

Location: West end of Town Point Park beside Elizabeth River, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: July 3, 2009, 2:25pm

Transcription of marker:

The Armed Forces Memorial is located here on a river that has for more than 200 years car­ried ser­vice­men off to war and returned them home to loved ones. Within the Memorial are 20 inscrip­tions from let­ters writ­ten home by U.S. ser­vice mem­bers who lost their lives in war. The let­ters have been cast in thin sheets of bronze and are scat­tered across the Memorial as if blown there by the wind. From the Revolutionary War through the Gulf War each con­flict is represented.

Revolutionary War 1775 – 1783 • War of 1812 1812 – 1815 • Civil War 1861 – 1865 • World War I 1917 – 1918
World War II 1941 – 1945 • Korean War 1950 – 1953 • Vietnam 1962 – 1975 • Gulf War 1990 – 1991

Caution: The Memorial con­tains bronze let­ters pro­trud­ing from the walk. Please watch your step and show appro­pri­ate respect. Adults should accom­pany chil­dren, and no pets please.

Examples of bronze letters

My impres­sions: This is quite the unique mon­u­ment and it is very touch­ing. There is some­thing about let­ters between peo­ple who know each other. And I’m not sure it has trans­lated as well into the e-mail and instant mes­sag­ing age. Reading these let­ters feels quite inti­mate, and that we are get­ting to hear from these peo­ple as they really were.

I also have to admit to some sur­prise that the Memorial, with its curls of bronze “paper” on the ground was ever approved. It seems that so eas­ily some­body could trip and fall (though I believe there is ample space around them for wheelchair/walker access). I won­der if the fact that it’s sur­rounded by water on two sides (and there­fore is not a “con­ve­nient short-cut” to any­where, as well as only hav­ing two entrances in the brick wall that sur­rounds the memo­r­ial helped.

I am glad that it is there, because I think it ful­fills excel­lently its func­tion of help­ing us to remem­ber the sac­ri­fices made by those who have served and those who were left behind by fam­ily mem­bers who served their coun­try (and those who could not return).

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged.

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.”

State Historical Marker
Virginia K-265
Fort Nelson

Location: Crawford Pkwy, west of Court Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:50pm

Transcription of marker: On the site of Portsmouth’s Naval Hospital stood Fort Nelson. There, Virginia’s Revolutionary gov­ern­ment late in 1776 con­structed the fort of tim­ber and rammed earth. Three years later, the British fleet com­manded by Admiral Sir George Collier con­fis­cated its artillery and sup­plies and destroyed most of the para­pet. In 1779 – 1781, Lord Cornwallis and General Benedict Arnold occu­pied the fort. It was recon­structed in 1799 of earth lined with brick, fol­low­ing a design by archi­tect B. Henry Latrobe, and aban­doned after the War of 1812. The Confederate gov­ern­ment strength­ened Fort Nelson, but on 10 May 1862 the Union army occu­pied Norfolk and Fort Nelson.

Department of Historic Resources, 1997

My impres­sions: It is some­times inter­est­ing to think about forts that do this, pass­ing from one set of hands to another mul­ti­ple times. It seems that if it wasn’t good enough to pro­tect the other side, why would you want it to save yours? Or is it just the invin­ci­ble assump­tion of the vic­tors that they are supe­rior to the van­quished? Or is a fort only as strong as the peo­ple who defend it?

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.

You can cer­tainly tell that I was excited to get out and around after my cold! I missed the bus to start my trip. Rather than wait an hour for the next bus in that direc­tion, I decided to cross the road, catch the bus in the other direc­tion a few min­utes later, and then see if I could fig­ure my way there on my own.

Four bus trips and a ferry trip later, I was in Portsmouth (though I ended up arriv­ing there about the time I had planned to start head­ing home!)

The first mark­ers I saw (not count­ing the three I saw from the bus…and yes, I kept track of their loca­tions so I can go back for them) were three mark­ers between Crawford Pkwy and the Elizabeth River: two state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers and this Civil War Trails marker about Portsmouth Naval Hospital

Civil War Trails
Portsmouth Naval Hospital

Location: Crawford Pkwy (between Harbor Ct and Court St), Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:30pm

Transcription of marker:

Portsmouth Naval Hospital
* * *
Administering to Both the  Union and Confederacy

This is the site of the Portsmouth Naval Hospital which served both the Union and the Confederacy dur­ing the Civil War. The Portsmouth Naval Hospital, the U.S. Navy’s first hos­pi­tal, was founded in 1827 by Secretary of the Navy Samuel L. Southard. Architect John Haviland cre­ated Building No. One’s impres­sive Greek Revival design which fea­tures and embell­ished Doric por­tico of 10 columns. The facil­ity opened in 1830. The hos­pi­tal was built on the site of the Fort Nelson of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 era, which was a for­ti­fi­ca­tion made obso­lete by the con­struc­tion of Fortress Monroe across Hampton Roads on Old Point Comfort. Materials sal­vaged from the fort’s demo­li­tion were used in the con­struc­tion of the hos­pi­tal building.

When Virginia left the Union the hos­pi­tal was used by the Confederacy until Portsmouth was aban­doned by Southern forces on May 10, 1862. The Union main­tained the hos­pi­tal through­out the remain­der of the War sup­port­ing the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

In the hos­pi­tal grave­yard is a memo­r­ial to the 337 dead of USS Cumberland and USS Congress killed when these ves­sels were sunk on March 8, 1862, by the CSS Virginia. Fifty-eight Confederates are also buried there.

My impres­sions: This is an inter­est­ing place­ment for this marker, with the hos­pi­tal vis­i­ble across the water. I won­der if this is an attempt to “future-proof” the loca­tion, so that, if the naval hos­pi­tal were to expand at some point in the future, it wouldn’t be caught inside the new gates. it was also fun to have such a scenic loca­tion for a clus­ter of three mark­ers. Was a nice way to get the excite­ment up after the crazi­ness of the morn­ing!  I also have to say that this marker does a remark­able job of con­dens­ing a whole lot of his­tory into a small area.

Markeroni sta­tus: I direct-logged my visit ear­lier today.

National Register of Historic Places
Commodore Theatre

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:50pm

Location: 421 High St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Transcriptions of markers:

Marker #1:

The Commodore Theatre

built 1945

has been placed on the

National Register of Historic Places

by the United States Department of the Interior

Marker #2:

The Commodore Theatre

Opened on November 14, 1945, the Commodore Theatre was designed by noted Baltimore archi­tect John J. Zink and built and oper­ated by William S. “Bunkie” Wilder, a Portsmouth native, as his flag­ship the­atre. It is named for Commodore James Barron, vet­eran of the War of 1812, who is buried in the church­yard next to the theatre.

The Art Deco the­atre has a nau­ti­cal theme and two large murals depict­ing local and national history.

The Commodore showed motion pic­tures and hosted com­mu­nity stage pre­sen­ta­tions until 1975, when it closed for twelve years.

In 1987, Fred Schoenfeld pur­chased the the­atre and spent two and a half years restor­ing it. He re-opened the Commodore on December 21, 1989 as a first-run movie the­atre with full-service din­ing — the first such cinema-eatery in the United States.

Meeting strin­gent exhi­bi­tion cri­te­ria for sound, image, and audi­ence expe­ri­ence, the Commodore Theatre earned THX-certification for excellence.

Marker #3:

The Commodore Theatre

has been reg­is­tered as a

Virginia Historic Landmark

Pursuant to the author­ity vested in the Virginia Board of Historic Resources

My impres­sions: This is a very eye-catching build­ing. The church­yard men­tioned in Marker #2 is that of Trinity Episcopal Church, which is also on the National Register of Historic Places. I do like that there are very promi­nent mark­ers at the front to alert one to the his­tory, and to explain why it is impor­tant. It’s also the type of his­tory that I think can be far too easy to ignore: it doesn’t have to do directly with politi­cians or mil­i­tary men, but with local history.

I am always find­ing inter­est­ing tid­bits when I look up the paper­work sub­mit­ted for the reg­is­ter list­ings (Virginia has those on a web site arranged by city/county). In this case, I find the theory:

…that mate­ri­als were made avail­able for for the con­struc­tion of the Commodore despite grave wartime short­ages. The Commodore’s loca­tion in Portsmouth meant that it would pro­vide enter­tain­ment to the many sailors sta­tioned there…

There’s also one fact that is glossed over in the plaque on the front of the the­atre (prob­a­bly because it wouldn’t make com­mer­cial sense to high­light that part of it his­tory). Why did the Commodore close for a dozen years?

Despite the fan­fare of its open­ing, the the­ater declined and became an X rated movie house before clos­ing its doors in 1975. [Emphasis added.]

Ah, yes! One last thing, as a Canadian (who grew up with mostly British English spellings), I always like when places use the –re spellings I grew up with!

Notes for future snar­fers: The the­ater is on the south side of High Street, next to Trinity Episcopal Church, though with the over­hang of the mar­quee, you prob­a­bly need to be on the north side of the street to take most photos.

Markeroni sta­tus: When I fin­ish blog­ging about my Portsmouth snarfs (which should be in the next day or two), I’ll sub­mit info on those not already included in the Markeroni database.