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Stores

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300–200 blocks of E. Grace St.

The city's best examples of small-scale Art Deco are located in the 300 and 200 blocks of East Grace Street. Number 306 (1928, Carl Linder) and number 304 (1930, W. H. Pringle) were originally designed as women's clothing stores, and they look like it—direct from the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. Number 306, with its tall piers and incised ornament, is probably the wildest Art Deco building in the city. Drawings for numbers 308–312 (1927–1932, Carl Linder) were published in American Commercial Buildings of Today (1927), but by the time they were built, the ornament was considerably reduced. The Broad and Grace Street Arcade (1929, John Eberson; 216 East Grace Street, at the corner of 3rd Street) is a very restrained and delicately detailed part of Eberson's Art Deco tower that faces on Broad Street. It was designed to connect the two streets and contained some of the most exclusive shops in Richmond. It narrowly escaped demolition in the 1970s, but fortunately Central Fidelity Bank renovated it, and it is now used as offices. Number 208 East Grace Street (1930, Henry Carl Messerschmidt) is a lavishly decorated Art Deco jewel. Three vertical piers and recessed panels and balconies carry a wealth of vines and grapes.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Richard Guy Wilson et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Media General (Richmond NewsLeader Building, Richmond TimesDispatch Building)
W. T. Grant and Company
Central Fidelity Bank (Central National Bank)
Miller and Rhoads Department Store (former)
Centenary Methodist Church

Citation

Richard Guy Wilson et al., "Stores", [Richmond, Virginia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-01-RI179.

Print Source

Buildings of Virginia: Tidewater and Piedmont, Richard Guy Wilson and contributors. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 226-226.

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