Lewis Ginter’s Architectural Legacy

by Brian Burns

       To cigarette baron Lewis Ginter, fashionable architecture was a feast for eyes and soul. Creating it was one of his favorite obsessions.

       Ginter graced Richmond with his brick-and-stone Richardsonian Romanesque mansion at 901 West Franklin Street (1892), and the jaw-dropping, Beaux arts-style Jefferson Hotel at Franklin and Adams Streets (1895). But he also had a penchant for cute and charming. In 1895, laying the groundwork for his streetcar suburbs, he built a row of Victorian carpenter cottages. Six survive on Hawthorne Avenue. 

       Nearby, Ginter constructed a stylish “suburban villa” at 4016 Hermitage Road. Designed by D. Wiley Anderson and completed ca. 1897, it paired a Queen Anne silhouette with Colonial Revival detailing. An anchor for Ginter’s suburbs, the home was a gift for his handsome, young “companion and private secretary,” Anton “Tony” Thiermann. 

       Sadly, at least two of Ginter’s building projects have vanished: “Westbrook,” his one-of-a-kind Victorian Queen Anne country home at Brook Road and Westbrook Avenue, and the Bellevue Flats, a row of apartments at Fifth and Cary “finished up in the best manner.” But his philanthropic work reverberated long after his death, giving rise to some of today’s finest architectural icons.

       In the mid-1880s, Ginter was disheartened by Richmond’s shortage of skilled labor. He joined the campaign for a school of technology. He and other manufacturers needed skilled labor to compete with Northern cities. Besides, boys and men laboring ten-hour days in local factories could improve their lot with coursework in mathematics, physics, drafting, mechanical drawing and other technical skills. Because of the North’s industrial might, Richmond couldn’t attract enough skilled immigrant labor. Its economy languished. 

       A school of technology could attract Northern capitalists, thereby spawning new industries. “By opening new avenues of industrial enterprise, [such a school] will be a safeguard against idleness, which is the mother of vice,” remarked the Richmond Dispatch. The school could also foster revolutionary inventions. From every angle, the school fueled Ginter’s master plan of boosting Richmond’s prosperity and image on the national stage.

       In October 1884, advocates of the school organized the Virginia Mechanics’ Institute to “promote and encourage manufactures, the mechanics and useful arts, and the mental and social improvement of the industrial classes.” A board of directors was assembled in early 1885, which included Ginter. 

       A “practically-free” night school, the Institute’s first session began on October 1, 1885. To help defray its expenses, Ginter donated $500 (about $15,000 in 2020 currency). As enrollment swelled over the next few years, a huge heap of cash was needed to get the school out of cramped, rented quarters and into its own space. But fundraising didn’t go well. The Panic of 1893 threw the nation into darkness. 

       Meanwhile, ironically, Ginter was wealthier than ever, since he had joined the American Tobacco Company. He shifted his philanthropy into overdrive. In 1895, he donated eleven acres on today’s Brook Road for the Union Theological Seminary. The campus architect was Richmond native, Charles H. Read Jr., who incorporated a few of Ginter’s design suggestions. The Victorian Gothic style dominated Watts Hall (1896), Spence Library and Westminster Hall (1897). Faculty houses were rendered in a simpler, modified Queen Anne style. In time, the distinguished campus would lure homebuilders to adjacent Ginter Park.  

       When Ginter died in 1897, he breathed new life into the Mechanics’ Institute’s building fund. He left it a whopping $10,000 (around $300,000 in 2020 currency). Canvassers also collected for the “Ginter Memorial Fund,” which was earmarked for the same project. In March 1901, with the depression over, the cornerstone was laid with Masonic pageantry at the northwest corner of Broad and Eleventh Streets. A few items were placed in the time capsule. Reflecting white Richmond’s maniacal devotion to the Lost Cause, one item was a horseshoe made from the armor plate of the Confederate ram, Merrimac. 

       About November 1, 1901, the four-story Beaux Arts-style Mechanics’ Institute finally opened. Designed by Noland and Baskervill in the same white brick as Ginter’s Jefferson Hotel, it was proclaimed “one of the handsomest buildings in the city.” Unfortunately, some six decades later, it would vanish as well. 

      The Mechanics’ Institute was headed by civil engineer C.P.E. Burgwyn, the Harvard-educated designer of Monument Avenue. Doubling as instructor, he and his colleagues shaped thousands of men’s careers. Some became prolific local architects.

      One was the “important architectural designer,” Leon Otis Spiers (1897-1970). He received a long line of commissions from the Davis Brothers, a large architectural and construction firm that built homes throughout the city. Spiers’s designs include 2 and 4 S. Arthur Ashe Boulevard (1921), which renowned Richmond architect Robert Winthrop called “elaborate essays in the Arts & Crafts cottage style.” Spiers also created a parade of apartment buildings, including the handsome Tudor Revival at 3414-16 Monument Avenue (1927).

       Another scholar of the Institute was “developer’s architect,” Carl Max Lindner Sr. (1895-1973). Among his designs are the elegant Lord Fairfax Apartments at 3105 Monument Avenue (1923) and the ten houses to the immediate west. They boast Revival styles, ranging from Tudor Revival to Spanish Revival to Colonial. Heralded as one of Lindner’s finest designs, however, is the brick Georgian Revival mansion at 6 Ampthill Road (1929). It was built for tobacco executive Edward Victor Williams, who started out as an office boy at Ginter’s tobacco firm. Lindner also created the Spanish-Mexican commercial building at 4-10 East Grace Street (1927), currently home to a gay bar called Barcode. 

       Last, but certainly not least, was the “gifted architect,” Bascom Joseph Rowlett (1886-1947). He designed stylish icons like Rixey Court at the intersection of Monument Avenue and Strawberry Street (1924), and Tuscan Villa at 511-13 N. Arthur Ashe Boulevard (1928). He also designed the English Village in the 3400 block of Grove Avenue (1926), which Robert Winthrop called an “architectural fantasy on Tudor themes.” 

       Coming full circle, at least one Rowlett-designed residence graced Ginter Park. The grand, Tudor Revival at 3212 Hawthorne Avenue was built in 1929, more than three decades after Ginter was laid to rest in Hollywood Cemetery.