our heritage: mid century storefronts

OUR HERITAGE

Mid-20th Century Storefronts: New Ideas and New Challenges

By helen ross

W.Woolworth Store, early 1960’ s I love to stroll and window-shop along the city's sidewalks among the mix of architectural styles. Lately, however, I've become more curious about the midtwentieth century architecture that is abundant but not as well understood. Last month, Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc., offered a walking tour that featured buildings built between 1953 and 1979.

Myriad themes influenced the physical appearance of Fredericksburg ' s mid-c century commercial architecture. Eyecatching architectural elements and signs were designed to attract passing automobile drivers. And Fredericksburg was not immune from the competition for square footage in the prime shopping areas, namely Caroline and William streets. Within a decade of the opening of the U.S. 1 Bypass in July 1946, downtown merchants were losing both tenants and customers as an increasingly mobile population ventured into outlying counties. As part of a last gasp effort, City Council members and the business community actively sought out the chain stores to keep people downtown as did chain operators eager to keep or expand footholds in not-yet-saturated markets.

National chains such as W. T. Grant, F.W. Woolworth, and Leggett, as well as local owners of downtown buildings, capitalized on consumers' pentup demands. Many of the new buildings were erected in the "colonial manner," exhibiting familiar features such as Flemish brick bond and slate covered roofs, while first-floor facades sported large expanses of plate glass windows secured with steel or aluminum frames to reveal abundant displays of goods and fashions. For additional attention, F.W. Woolworth's architects added NeoGeorgian style details with stone quoins, a cupola, and urns to their new variety store at the prominent corner of Caroline and William streets. Around the corner, up William Street, owners of the buildings that now house Raven Hi-F Fi and the Jewel Box renovated their storefronts to exemplify modern storefront styles. By the 1970s, outlying shopping centers such as Park and Shop and Greenbrier beckoned retailers and shoppers away from downtown. (Sears was the last to leave for the Spotsylvania Mall in 1980.) During the Bicentennial, many of the downtown commercial buildings and residences were shuttered. Shrewd developers razed obsolete and vacant structures, while the city chose to remove large chunks of buildings in the 700 blocks of Caroline and Princess Anne streets. In their steads rose the Public Service Building (1972), the Executive Plaza Building (1974), and the United States

Post Office (1979). The styles of the latter two steadfastly rejected the comfortable Colonial Revival style and jumped headlong into "brutalism," a style that emphasized raw materials that exuded texture. Mid-c century commercial buildings reflect American ' s unfettered thirst for new technology and materials. It is hoped that community members as well as preservation professionals come to recognize and appreciate these lesserknown buildings as important harbingers of change.

Helen Ross is an architectural historian with the Virginia Department of Transportation and a member of the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation Board of Directors.

Woolworth photo of the Harrisonburg Historical Society

Postoffice photo courtesy of the Virginia Department of Human Resources

US Post Office, AKA Samual E. Perry Building

The Central Rappahannock Heritage Center is a non-profit, all-volunteer archives whose mission is to preserve historically valuable material ofthe region and make it available to the public for research

900 Barton St #111, Fredericksburg, VA www.crhcarchives.org contact@crhcarchives.org 540-373-3704

Volunteers Wecome! Contact us about donating collections of documents and photographs