Tag: US Trip

This was the house that was the executive mansion of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis between August 1861 and 2 April 1865, purchased by the Confederate government from Lewis Dabney Crenshaw who had used it as his residence in Richmond. If history had gone differently and the United States had broken into two permanently, this could be where the President of the Southern States would be residing today (albeit with a lot more security).

Davis not only lived in the property, but he had his government offices on the second floor of the building. Colonel Burton Harrison, the private secretary to Davis, also lived in the property so that he could be close at hand. Two of Davis’s children, William and Varina Anne, were born in this property, and one, Joseph, died here on 30 April 1864 after suffering a fall.

On 4 April 1865, just two days after Davis had left the building for the final time (or more fled), US President Abraham Lincoln came to the building, which was just ten days before he was to be assassinated in Washington DC. Lincoln had been visiting to discuss with leading politicians from Virginia how to rebuild the damaged state, but had deliberately only visited the first floor as he felt it was inappropriate to visit the private residence of Lewis.

A heritage board about the building, which notes that it was nearly demolished in the late nineteenth century and it then became the Confederate Museum between 1896 and 1976. Today, the building is still a museum of the Civil War although the VCU hospital now surrounds it on all sides. I thought it was fascinating to see where the decisions were made on behalf of the Confederate states and also to known that Abraham Lincoln visited the property.

This is a bit like Charing Cross in London which is defined as the centre of London and from where distances are officially measured. This stone in Richmond was placed here in 1929 and it marks the measurement of distances for the roads in the state of Virginia.

Noting that it’s the zero milestone.

It was donated by Jonathan Bryan, the son of local newspaper editor Joseph Bryan and Isobel Bryan. It’s something different at least and he got a good location for his stone, right next to the Capitol building.

The Virginia Executive Mansion was constructed in 1813 to designs created by Alexander Parris and it was built by Christopher Tompkins. The first resident was Governor James Barbour and it’s the oldest occupied governor’s mansion in the United States.

The Capitol Building is conveniently just a thirty second walk away.

I poked my phone through the barriers to get the top photo, but the security team didn’t seem too concerned. Although, to be fair, they had a put a load of history signs up at the gate so they wouldn’t have been surprised to see someone standing there. Over time the building has been faffed around with, but in 1989 they decided to reverse some of the changes to make it look more like it did in the early nineteenth century.

One sign is slightly harder to read since it’s in the middle of a bush.

There are three identical versions of this statue, this one is opposite the main railway station in Richmond and the others are in Cotonou, Benin and Liverpool, marking the triangular nature of the slave trade. There’s more about this project at https://broadbent.studio/reconciliation-triangle.

They picked this location in Richmond as it’s opposite the former slave market at Shockoe Bottom where over 350,000 people were sold into slavery between 1830 and 1865. Richmond has previously dealt with this part of its past in quite a clumsy manner, with no original buildings surviving and the site long since turned into a car park. This statue is part of an attempt to correct that situation and to tell the story of the city’s slave past. There’s still more to be done though, there’s meant to be an informational sign at the former slave market itself, but that has apparently disappeared and its use as a car park isn’t really ideal.

They’ve also created a walking trail, of which this is one of the signs. I didn’t have time to walk it, but it’s three miles in length and there’s more information about it at https://www.rva.gov/media/21606.

The Confederate Memorial Chapel was built in 1887 and the architect was Marion J Dimmock. It was designed to be the place of worship for those in the RE Lee Camp Confederate Soldiers’ Home which was for those involved in the Civil War who had no other means of financial support. There were 1,700 funeral services here over the decades after each former soldier passed away, with the home not closing until 1941 when the last veteran died. That must have been an odd arrangement for him, especially if he had attended the other 1,700 funeral services with the number of attendees no doubt continuing to decline over the years.

The interior of the church, which was saved from the demolition of the rest of the complex in the 1940s and was restored in the 1960s. The church was originally constructed by Joseph Wingfield and it was funded by donations from Civil War survivors.

The altar which is all quite basic, with the church having two aisles.

Some of the stained glass in the church which dates to the late nineteenth century. I like that the building has been kept and it’s now in the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, so it gets a fair number of visitors from there who are wandering around the grounds.

And a reminder of the military connection.

I got a little enthusiastic in terms of the number of photos that I took at the Hollywood Cemetery and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, so my next priority on my Richmond tour was to find somewhere to charge my phone. And this looked like a suitable location on W Cary Street.

The service counter and I have to confess that ordering coffee in the United States is far more complex than in the UK. Coffee is just as often served cold as it is hot, so I have to remember to order a hot latte, then remember that regular milk is not a useful answer as there are multiple dairy and non-dairy options, with other questions usually coming in about how long I want things to be brewed for, whether I want something dripped and so on. Anyway, I ordered an Americano as that means I don’t have to answer lots of questions and potentially get muddled up.

One thing that I dislike, of which there are actually many, is when coffee shops ask for your name when taking the order. It constantly fails as a process and I like that many locations now have alternative ways of dealing with that. A number strikes me as far better, it gets rid of any chance of mis-spelling or mis-pronouncing names. And, of course, the system failed here with three of the five orders I saw having a disconnect between the name they called out and the name that the customer was expecting to hear. I never heard my name, so goodness knows what they’d been calling out. I stood and looked confused, in my best British way, and the server asked what drink I had ordered. That was a better system, she then found my drink.

There were charging points all over the place in the coffee shop, which was mostly busy with a slightly younger clientele reading, working or meeting with friends. The coffee was entirely acceptable, but I mostly pleased to have a full charge again. There were a variety of seating options including sofas, tables inside and outside as well as the high benches which I like. There was also wi-fi available to save my data and it’s the sort of laid-back and on-trend place that I could have stayed in for some time if I wasn’t mid-way through trying to rush around the museums of Richmond.

It was also handily located near to the bus stop so that I could get back into the centre of Richmond, all for free.

I always try and visit the Capitol building in each state if I can, although I’ve lost track a little which ones that I’ve been to over the years. The Virginia State Capitol is in Richmond, although it has in the past been located in the towns of Jamestown and Williamsburg. This one has the honour of having the oldest elected legislative body in North America, as it contains the Virginia General Assembly, once known as the House of Burgesses. I prefer the word burgess as it is a traditional British word, but that’s the exact reason they changed it in 1776, to mark a break from British rule (or misrule).

Although there are security checks, anyone can enter the Capitol building free of charge, which I think is a principle that applies to all of the states, notwithstanding the issues caused by the Trump uprising in the US Capitol. There are these display units showing all of the past members of the House of Delegates.

The central lobby of the building. I was just going to have a look around myself, but a lovely lady came over to talk to me and mentioned that she’d be doing a tour soon after. That proceeded to be a private tour that lasted over an hour and she was a marvellous representative of the state of Virginia, knowledgeable, welcoming and keen to engage. That dome looks like it should be visible from miles around, but it is sunken in and was a last minute addition.

The marble statue of George Washington is also important, it was created by Jean-Antoine Houdon in 1785 and it’s the only one that Washington posed for and he also took an oil impression of his face to ensure that it was life-like. It stands at 6 feet 2 inches, just as Washington did, and is thought to be the most authentic representation of the former President. The guide asked me if I had visited the copy of this statue which is at Trafalgar Square in London and I had to confess that I wasn’t entirely sure that I had ever noticed it. I will though look out for it next time I’m in London.

I took this photo a couple of days later when I returned to Richmond, but it shows the extensions on either side of the building. The Roman style architecture (actually a copy of the Maison Carree in Nimes) was an attempt by Thomas Jefferson in 1788 to build something that wasn’t British in design, although the guide explained that there isn’t much stone going on here, this is a brick building with plaster all over it. And, those columns had pine trees in them whilst they worked out how to deal with crafting them to make them look in keeping with the proportions, with those trees still apparently being in there.

There are plenty of important historic moments that have taken place in here, this was the Chamber of the House of Delegates between 1788 and 1904. It’s where the state agreed numerous constitutional changes and also, perhaps most significantly, it’s where in April 1861 the representatives of Virginia agreed to secede from the Union and they placed Robert E Lee in charge of the troops. Lee is a controversial figure, he supported the right of people to own slaves, although he was personally against the practice on moral grounds.

I’m not entirely sure why they have a mace, as it was one of the things that the Americans wanted to get rid of at independence. By 1774, they had flogged off the ceremonial mace that had been given to the Colony of Virginia in 1700 and they had initially intended to replace it with a new specially commissioned one, although they didn’t bother in the end. This new mace was presented to the House in 1974 and they seem to quite like it, apparently now wanting to foster links between the US and the UK.

How things used to look in this room. They stopped using this room in 1904 as that was when a new East Wing was added for the House of Delegates and a new West Wing was added for the Senate. The new rooms were opened for use in 1906 and these older rooms were partly repurposed for offices, although have been put back again to how they once looked. There was an extensive redevelopment project between 2004 and 2007 which saw the entrance reconstructed with a new underground lobby, but that’s closed at the moment as they’re modernising once again and also fixing some bits of the building which aren’t in great shape.

A brick from the first Capitol building in Jamestown, giving some continuity to the General Assembly.

The Speaker’s chair.

The Old Senate Chamber, although smaller in size than it once was.

Within the room is the Eugene Louis Lami painting of the storming of a British redoubt at Yorktown by American troops, not entirely ideal for us British visitors…. However, Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher have had tours of the building and I think it’s agreed now to let bygones by bygones.

The Jefferson Room, which was once part of the Old Senate Chamber, but it was sliced up in the early twentieth century to make way for new offices. That model on the left is an original one that was used in the planning of the building.

The House of Delegates, still in use today. I say “in use”, but they don’t exactly pour all their time into sitting here, they sit for 60 calendar days in even numbered years and 45 days a year in odd numbered years. I suppose that makes it easier to organise tours of the building though. As an aside, only Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia refer to this as the House of Delegates, with other states picking one of Assembly, General Assembly, State Assembly, House of Delegates, or House of Representatives.

The Senate of Virginia, also still in use today, on a similar sitting basis as the lower chamber.

I very much enjoyed my visit, although I was there a lot longer than expected and had to rush at quite a pace to my next location, the Holocaust Museum, to get there before it closed. This Capitol building has been well looked after and it was fortunate to survive the 1865 Burning of Richmond following the end of the Civil War, but it got through that pretty much unscathed. Back to today, I was very pleased to get such an enthusiastic guide who was knowledgeable about the building and had a conversational style of explaining the Capitol’s history. All very lovely.

I had to rush to this museum after a longer than expected visit to the Capitol and that meant I only had thirty minutes to look around. It’s difficult knowing how to pace a visit when having limited time and also not knowing how big the museum is, but fortunately I got to see just about everything other than a few temporary exhibits upstairs without rushing too much. The building is a former American Tobacco Company Warehouse which was given to the museum by the Virginia General Assembly.

This recreation of a concentration camp is certainly quite a dramatic first exhibit in the museum.

I think every Holocaust museum tries to acquire a concentration camp prison jacket, with this one likely being from Sachsenhausen concentration camp. A US military officer was able to visit East Germany following the end of the Second World War and he acquired a number of jackets, including this one. It has two prison numbers so was likely worn by two different individuals, but it’s not known what happened to them.

There’s a lot of powerful imagery throughout this museum, with this area representing the horrors of Kristallnacht. Unfortunately, there aren’t a vast number of original exhibits, but that’s not surprising as there aren’t that many still in existence and numerous institutions like to have items such as this to help tell the story of the Nazi hate.

There is a sad story behind these packing cases, which were received by the Jewel family in Richmond in 1940. They were sent from Austria by individuals trying to flee the worsening Nazi regime and it’s thought this was about the time of Kristallnacht. Unfortunately, the individuals who sent their items never managed to flee and there’s a final sadness that their possessions were damaged en route. It’s hard not to think of the care with which they likely packed these cases and their uncertainty about their own future, a story which unfortunately has no positive ending.

A recreation of the St. Louis debacle which I’m surprised I haven’t written about before as I’ve come across this appalling story in numerous museums. In short, the St. Louis boat set off from Hamburg in an attempt to get to Cuba and from there many hoped to enter the United States. Those poor souls were fleeing occupation, but other than for a handful of people, they then were refused entry into Cuba by the country’ President, even though they had the appropriate documentation. Then, the United States refused to accept them as well, even though they were sailing near to Miami and there was opportunity for them to disembark.

The forsaken individuals were accepted back in Europe by countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and France, but some went to areas which were overtaken by Nazis during the Second World War and they didn’t make it out alive. It’s thought that of the 936 refugees who tried to leave in early 1939, 227 died during the war. In 2012, the United States apologised for this travesty of justice and then in 2017, Canada did the same. Unfortunately, Canada’s general behaviour over many years in blocking Jews entering their country was horrific and one which they’ve struggled in many ways to deal with and there’s a powerful memorial about this in Canada called the Wheel of Conscience, with more information at https://pier21.ca/wheel-conscience.

Most photographs that I see at Holocaust and museums covering the Second World War are ones that I’ve seen before, as the Nazis tried to block evidence of their brutality and so there’s not that much out there in terms of media. These ones from Kovno, which is Kaunas in Lithuania, are ones that I haven’t seen before and are certainly horrific. Without going into excessive details, the idea of being forced to drink water is horrific and I can’t imagine what these people went through.

An armband originally worn by someone fleeing Kaunas.

These drawings are from Terezin, which I visited earlier on during the year.

This memorial marks the 1.5 million Jewish children who lost their lives during the Second World War.

Names of the many children who died are listed on the memorial.

There’s little let up on the imagery as these two photos show, but for many of their younger visitors, who are primarily from the US of course, I imagine much of this is new to them and it’s a useful way of explaining the narrative.

There’s a large section of the museum which focuses on the creation of Israel.

I was particularly interested to see how they dealt with the Nuremberg court rooms as I visited the real ones a few months ago.

It’s a fairly life like recreation of the court room to be fair within the limitations of the height that they had to play with.

This 50 rpm record has a recording of the judgements that were read out at the trials.

This is a recreation of a Jewish synagogue from Kaunas, with the area also being used for lectures.

The recreation of the synagogue was made more authentic as staff went to Lithuania to take measurements and photographs, with this reconstruction opening in November 2005.

I could have spent longer here than the thirty minutes that I had, not least as I didn’t get chance to visit upstairs, but I found it an interesting and well put together museum. Perhaps some of the imagery was a bit dramatic, and some broken lighting made a few areas quite spooky insomuch as I couldn’t see where I was going for a few seconds, but given it was free of charge to enter I have no complaints. Indeed, it’s very well reviewed by the vast majority of people who have visited, although a few did feel that the imagery was a bit too much at times. However, given the number of school visits that they get, it doesn’t seem inappropriate to tell the story of the Holocaust in different ways.

It’s clearly a well funded museum as it’s a large location which isn’t charging for admission and they’re also embarking on a modernisation as the permanent exhibits haven’t been substantially updated since they opened in 2003. Inevitably this museum isn’t as large as the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, but it still attempts to tell the story in the best way that they can. Definitely recommended though and best to take an hour or two to look around.