Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 20, 1993 TAG: 9307200457
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They began a dig Monday at the site along Gainsboro Road, in the block between Harrison and Patton avenues, and expect to be at it until late summer.
The work is part of the city's plans to run a controversial four-lane road from Second Street downtown along Gainsboro Road to U.S. 460.
Three years ago, archaeologists with Preservation Technologies, a Roanoke company, sifted through the site where the Burrell Drug Store began 100 years ago. They decided it warranted further excavation before road construction.
According to a history compiled by consulting engineers Mattern & Craig, a four-story frame building that stood on the now-vacant lot a century ago also housed a barber, an assembly hall, a trade school and a Knights of Pythias lodge. The block was at the center of a black commercial district for decades.
Other tenants in Davis Hall at the turn of the century were an undertaker, a shoemaker, a restaurant, a repair shop, the United Aid Insurance Co. and the Big Lick Supply Company Grocery. The Mattern & Craig history says Davis Hall either burned or was torn down around 1900.
Of greatest interest to the archaeologists is the pharmacy that Dr. Isaac Burrell set up on the ground floor of Davis Hall in 1893. Mattern & Craig's report says it was the only black-owned drugstore in Southwest Virginia until around the first decade of this century.
Burrell moved the pharmacy to the nearby Davis Hotel when he bought it in 1897. That building also is gone. After he died in 1914, his wife, Margaret, an educator and social activist, operated the drugstore.
Gene Cress, an engineer with Mattern & Craig, said any artifacts found during the excavation will be turned over to the city or state for preservation.
He said discoveries would delay road construction until proper recovery and analysis are completed. A report on the dig probably will not be complete for five to seven months, he said.
Cress said he did not know when road construction, already three years behind schedule, would begin. Engineers with the city could not be reached Monday.
The Gainsboro Road project and another downtown traffic loop proposed for nearby Wells Avenue are opposed by some residents and leaders in Gainsboro, Roanoke's oldest black neighborhood and the first settlement in the city.
Cress said the state Department of Transportation decided to check for long-buried historic sites along Gainsboro Road and is paying for it as part of its 98-percent share of the road costs.
Plans call for a bridge over the railroad tracks at Second Street. Engineers say that without the construction, downtown traffic will be seriously congested by 2010.
The proposed widening and shifting of Wells Avenue, endorsed by City Council last year, still requires Department of Transportation approval. It will hold a public hearing on the project from 4 to 8 p.m. July 29 at Addison Aerospace Magnet School, Fifth Street and Orange Avenue.
by CNB