Progress Dooms Another Landmark
Old Dispatch Building to be Razed for New Parcel Post Office;
Survivor of Paper's Scribes Tells of By-gone Fourth Estate
By Bruce Chesterman
A landmark identified with the newspaper life of Richmond 40 years ago will pass into memory when the old Dispatch Building at the corner of Twelfth and Main Streets is torn down to make room for the new parcel post building, part of which is to occupy the site.
The writer, the only member of the news or editorial staff of the Dispatch now living in Richmond, will view with many feelings of regret the razing of the old familiar yellow stucco walls, originally four stories high, but in later years reduced to three because the building was considered unsafe with the fourth floor.
When the Dispatch occupied the building the structure shook as though an earthquake were rocking the city when the paper came off the press, which was located in the basement in the rear. There were many ominous shakes of the head at this time, with the vibration of the walls, and I have a vivid recollection of my feelings when one day a great book case, filled with old and dusty volumes, crashed to the floor in the city room, shattering a desk at which I had only a few moments before been seated. As one humorist said of himself under somewhat similar circumstances, I only escaped by not being there.
My recollections of the building go back to the early days of my childhood, and I knew as a boy all of the newspaper men of Richmond of that period, as the Dispatch office was a general meeting place for them, even though they were not on the staff of the paper. My father was one of these latter, being Richmond correspondent of the New York Times, Boston Herald, Baltimore Sun and a string of papers from Boston to New Orleans, and there was seldom a Saturday that I did not accompany him down town, for on those days I nearly always received from my uncle, W. D. Chesterman, managing editor of the paper, a matinee ticket to a show.
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A familiar figure in the city room of the Dispatch was Eccles Cuthbert, correspondent of the New York Herald, who in those days was the almost inseparable companion of my father, as these two, and John Pizzini, Associated Press man, were practically the only newspaper men in Richmond who were not connected with any local paper, and there was more than the usual comradeship of newspaper men existing among them. Mr. Cuthbert, who came to this country from Ireland as a youth, and never quite lost a trace of brogue, was a striking figure with his long beard and fine physique. He placed into my keeping one entire summer his pet spaniel, and as delighted as I was, I remember the difficulties I had trying to harmonize the difference between this canine and my own Shepherd dog.
When the Charleston earthquake occurred, both Mr. Cuthbert and my father received wires to go to the scene of the disaster and cover it for their respective papers. But Mr. Cuthbert arrived at Byrd Street Station, just as the train was leaving, and though he ran some distance down the track, in an effort to reach the platform of the last coach, he could not overtake the train, and my father upon arrival in Charleston wired his own story to the New York Times, and another one to the New York Herald, signing the latter Cuthbert, of course.
Mr. Cuthbert in later years became the Washington correspondent of the Dispatch, and it fell to my lot, being then a cub reporter on the paper, to take from him a nightly news letter from Washington by phone, when I found the combination of beard and brogue almost too much for a clear understanding of what he was saying, so much to my relief the Western Union took that assignment from me.
Another newspaper man whom I knew in my boyhood was Peter Burton, whose police court reporting first brought to Judge Crutchfield the title he carried in all the years that followed, "Justice John of the White Chamber." Mr. Burton was a violinist of more than ordinary ability.
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Among other newspaper men familiar to me in the youthful days I frequented the Dispatch office, before I reported there myself one day for actual duty, were Dr. G. Watson James, Harvie Wilson, Ben Owen, William Archer, John Ryan, Jim Gentry (Truthful Jeems), Jim Wood and George Wild. The latter had the reputation of being able to write the most beautiful obituary notice of any man in Richmond.
The city room of the Dispatch was on the ground floor, the third room back. The business office, or counting room, as it was more often called, was at the front, and back of it was the office of the owners of the paper, Colonel C. O. B. Cowardin and Mr. Ellyson. A passer-by on Twelfth Street had only to stop a moment at the iron-barred window to get a full view of the city room. A copy chute, with a rope and pulley, and not the pneumatic appliance of today, connected the city room with the composing room and the managing editor's office, both of which were on floors above. And there was also a speaking tube.
I recall as a boy when the compositors worked before a case "sticking type," before the days of the linotype machines. When they was talk of the latter being installed, and later when they were, there was much discussion as to whether women might not succeed men, and there was not a little uneasiness among the latter, but while there are women operators all over the country today, their proportion in newspaper offices is not large enough to seriously effect male operators.
In the same building with the structure which is to be torn down, next door to the Dispatch, was Chris. Evenson's restaurant, a saloon and restaurant combined, of course, and it was the midday gathering place of newspaper men, as well as their eating place at night. It was famous for its Brunswick stew. Each year Chris. Evenson gave a supper to the newspaper men of Richmond, and the event was quite an elaborate event.
Just opposite the Dispatch building was the American Hotel, the name of which was later changed to the Lexington. The latter some years ago was destroyed by fire and a number of lives were lost. The American was quite a stopping place for theatrical people, and Thespians and newspaper men mingled a great deal in those days. As a boy I met many of these troupers, "off the stage and on," and in later years renewed acquaintance with them--no longer being patronized by them and patted on the head--in many capacity as theatre editor and drama critic.
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Of the newspaper men on the Dispatch at the time I was a reporter on the paper, many have died, and while several are living, they are not now located in Richmond. Death has called those in the "editorial room upstairs," W. D. Chesterman and Dr. G. Watson James. Of those in the city room, Solon B. Woodfin, city editor, retired from newspaper work a number of years ago, and now resides in Ashland. Charles Graves is on the New York Times; Clyde West, with Universal Service, New York, and Walter Edwards Harris is editor of the Progress-Index, Petersburg. "Thirty" has sounded for Clarence Boykin, Herbert C. Duce, and Evan R. Chesterman, the latter, who was my first cousin, being known as the "Idle Reporter."
Charlie Graves succeeded me in covering Manchester, now South Richmond, when I was taken from that assignment a few months after going on the paper, in order to cover the Legislature, which I did jointly with Clarence Boykin. The Legislature met annually then, and we alternated at different sessions in the House and Senate. Charlie had the misfortune, or good fortune, to be required to live in Manchester during the period he covered it, but I only made a daily trip on the trolley car across Mayo's Bridge, have plenty of other assignments on this side of the river. While I only had Manchester three months, and was never again put on that assignment, as it always fell to the newest man on the local staff, I enjoyed the neighborly atmosphere of the town, the post office then being the general meeting place.
We were all pencil pushers on the Dispatch, and the first man to use a typewriter in the city room of a Richmond newspaper was Clarence Boykin. He came in one day with a typewriter and was asked, "What are you going to do with that?" "Write on it," he said, and he did. He was the father of the present executive city editor of the Times-Dispatch. The advent on the scene of young Clarence Boykin is still fresh in my memory, for his father received the usual good-natured bantering in the city room upon his announcement of the event. And the youngster proved quite a precocious infant, according to the elder Clarence's own statements, but that is another story.
But while Clarence Boykin was the first man to use a typewriter in a Richmond city room, he was not the first Richmond newspaper man to turn out copy on a typewriter. Ten years before Clarence Boykin came into the Dispatch city room that memorable day, with a typewriting machine in his hands, a Remington salesman from Baltimore made his appearance at my father's house, and took from his buggy a No. 2 Remington, and delivered it. My father had purchased the machine because of all the newspaper men in the city, his handwriting was considered the most difficult to read, and when his dispatches went to the Western Union, they sometimes proved illegible to the operator who was to send them. At State conventions, and wherever my father went to cover some big news event in the State, the Western Union sent a special operator from Richmond to that point, because they knew the local office would not be able to decipher his stories. Mr. Woodfin often told me that I was a pretty close second to my father as to illegibility of handwriting, but the foreman of the Dispatch composing room said that there was one operator who liked to set my copy, and would ask for it as his "take," and he was not joking either.
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 There was a great deal of comradeship among all of the newspaper men in the period of which I am writing, and despite some rivalry, and the ambition of each man to get some big "scoop" they were all upon the most friendly terms. Among those who were on other papers, and whom I worked with side by side in covering many events, were Bob Golden, Harry Tucker, Horace Hawkins, all three now on the Times-Dispatch; Henry D. Perkins, now managing editor of the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch; Watkins Norvell, Joe Wheat, Clarence Werner and P. R. Noel.
Harry Tucker and I sat together on many a platform during the meetings in the Bryan free-silver campaign, and he was the subject of a lot of good-natured "razzing," for his paper, the Times, was not on the popular side of that issue, while the Dispatch was. So I took my own seat with a great deal of complacency, while Harry much preferred to come up the back stairs whenever he could, and he came very near getting a ducking at the hands of the populace at one of these meetings down at Old Market Hall. We both covered the mass meeting at Gibb's Opera House in Manchester, the night of the greatest cyclone ever recorded in this section, when there was a near-panic in the hall, as the window panes were smashed, and the lights blown out. "Cyclone" Jim Marshall was the speaker that night, and to him was jokingly attributed the real cyclone which did a great deal of damage in Richmond. Harry and I half crawled back across Mayo's Bridge when the storm abated somewhat, battling a wind that nearly swept us off our feet, as of course the trolley cars were not running, all wires, both light and power, having been blown down. But we got our stories to our respective papers.
Bob Golden's "panning" of Lillian Russell brought him into national prominence when he was covering the theatres. The fair Lillian became so incensed at his notice, that she gave orders that he was not to be admitted to the theatre on the night of the second performance. Of course this made a good story for the wire, and it went all over the country. Bob did go the second night, but he bought his ticket.
Horace Hawkins covered the General Assembly every session, and had a wide acquaintance with members of that body. There is no man in Richmond today perhaps, certainly not among newspaper men, who can speak with great authority upon the proceedings of past Legislatures, and the lawmakers who made up those bodies, than can this genial veteran of the legislative halls. |
