Famed Valentine Studio and Poe Residence
Doomed By Plans for Atheletic Field

By Mary Wingfield Scott

Director William Byrd Branch, A.P.V.A
The square behind the John Marshall High School about to be acquired by the city for use as an athletic field consists for the most part in small houses of little interest the destruction of which will be no loss. Among them, however, are two buildings unique in their associations, which should be preserved if possible. Each has played a role far greater than its modest appearance would suggest.

On Leigh Street, near the corner of Ninth, stands the old studio of Edward Virginius Valentine, an art center for students and noted visitors to Richmond for more than 50 years; and on Clay Street, three doors from the corner of Eighth, is the only house now standing intact in which, during his various sojourns in Richmond, Edgar Allan Poe actually lived.

"Cannot the city, while providing a much-needed athletic field, preserve and utilize these two buildings--the studio for the school art classes, and the Poe house as headquarters for literary clubs and school publications?" ask historically minded Richmonders.

The latter house has literary associations, not only with Poe, but with his friend, Hugh Pleasants, editor of the Richmond Whig. It is a simple stuccoed dwelling with dormer windows, built between 1823 and 1833 when the lot--once the stable yard of the Swan Tavern--was the property of Maria Wiseham. An early tenant, possibly the first, was Dr. Lewis Webb Chamberlayne, a founder of the Medical College of Virginia, and also remembered as the father of John Hampden Chamberlayne. In 1833 Maria Wiseham sold this house, described as "her place of residence on K Street," as Clay was then called, to that Thomas Green who also owned the handsome Hayes-McCance mansion that once adorned the corner of Leigh and Eighth. Five years later Green sold the little house to Hamilton Loughborough. It was during his ownership, in 1848, that Poe and his friend, Hugh Pleasant, kept "bachelor's hall" here, thus rendering the house notable for all time.

The next owner, William Willis, sold the house to A. W. Nolting Jr., whom many older inhabitants remember as living there. Mr. Nolting's father had retired from business in Richmond to become a Hanover County planter and had lived at "Rocky Mills," the beautiful eighteenth century house that his great-nephew, Frederick Nolting, long after moved down to its present site on the River Road.

Studio Was Mecca for Foremost in World

The Valentine studio, set back from the street in a small brick-walled enclosure, stands on the site of what the old guide books called "French's Garden." The building was originally the carriage house of the Hayes-McCance mansion, whose garden filled with "heathen deities"--statuary now preserved in the Valentine Museum garden. Mr. Valentine bought the carriage house from Mr. McCance in August, 1871, in order, as he wrote a friend, to have a place with light and room for the work of the recumbent statue of Lee.

During the nearly 60 years that he worked there the studio was visited by every distinguished or art-loving visitor to Richmond. Edwin Booth came, and Joseph Jefferson was later photographed in the the studio, looking at the bust which Valentine had made of Booth. Oscar Wilde came, carrying a yellow umbrella lined with red. Old newspaper files give accounts of the visits of people as varied as Winnie Davis, Mary Anderson, the actress, then 21 years old, the Marquis of Lorne, General John Breckenridge, and Augustus Lukeman, sculptor of Stone Mountain. The Marquis of Lorne, then (1883) Governor-General of Canada, was anxious that his wife, the Princess Louise, should also visit the studio, since, "The princess is quite an accomplished artist." An amusing touch to this visit was that Governor Cameron was unable to wecome the distinguished guests: "His private secretary stated that the Governor had small-pox in his family and did not think that the Marquis would care to come in contact with him."

All the visitors recorded their admiration of the Lee statue and of the Andromache, now in the Valentine Museum. General Sykes wrote, after a visit to the studio during the Confederate reunion of 1896, that Mr. Valentine was inspired to do the Andromache by the sufferings and heroism of the women of the Confederacy, and that he planned to leave the statue to the women of Richmond "that their posterity may thereby be reminded of the sorrows, fortitude and endurance of the Southern women during their country's greatest trial."

Benign Disorder Reigned, But Sculptor Enjoyed It

The most detailed description of the benign disorder that reigned in the studio occurs in an article written in German for the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, translated in the Richmond State, March 21, 1891. Too long to quote in full, it gives an inimitable picture of Mr. Valentine and his setting: "His atelier is a curious omnium gatherum of the oddest objects, thrown together topsy-turvy, so that I could not understand how he could readily get at anything he wished. Mr. Valentine, however, assured me that he knew where everything was...and that he had accustomed himself so long to this confusion that he would be positively uncomfortable if order should ever be brought out of this chaos." Follows a tremendous list of all the objects he noticed--books piled in pyramids, busts mingled with hanging lamps "in which growing plants droop their graceful tendrils and twine them around the broad shoulders...of the hero." lathes, joiners' benches, clocks, complete skeletons, stuffed antlers, a violin, "on which he plays with considerable ability," and a number of his own poems "of which he is far prouder than he is of his immortal works in marble."

A cosmopolitan center of art and culture for so many years, the little glass-fronted building shadowed by old trees represents an epoch in taste and artistic activity. The scene where the recumbent statue of General Lee was created, it should be an inspiration to the art-classes of Richmond's youth.

The saving of the studio and of the house where Poe lived would follow the wise precedent set when the John Marshall house was preserved at the time of the building of the high school, and would surely be heartily approved by school officials as well as by many citizens who realize the short-sightedness of advertising extensively to attract tourists and at the same time destroying the very things the tourists are interested in seeing.