THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9511290036
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: OBSCURE TOUR
LOCAL LANDMARKS THE TOUR BOOKS NEVER MENTION
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
WARTIME East Main Street wasn't the antiseptic business district that Norfolkians know today: Fifty years ago, the street was lined with brothels, beer joints and burlesque houses, its sidewalks populated with rowdies.
So notorious were the goings-on there that Norfolk gained a reputation as the East Coast's Sin Capital, as the wickedest of port towns, a city out of control.
Norfolk's long-running urban renewal efforts have erased almost every trace of those years.
But not every trace. The Shinny Trees survive.
Sandwiched between City Hall and the municipal courts building in the Civic Center Plaza stands a large planter shaded by two towering magnolia trees.
The trees stood behind a mansion-sized brothel on East Main, which at the time ran from what is now Nauticus to Harbor Park. Legend holds that when brothel operators expected the police to raid the premises, they'd usher their customers out the building's back windows and into the trees, which they'd shinny to the ground.
This lore was familiar enough to locals that in the early 1960s, the City Council directed the Civic Center's architects to spare the magnolias, which had been earmarked for removal.
``We said, `We have to preserve these trees. They're an important part of Norfolk's history,' '' recalled Revenue Commissioner Sam T. Barfield, a councilman at the time. ``Nobody ever admitted the reason why.
``There's not a better shinny tree than a magnolia, with all the branches going every which way,'' Barfield said on a recent visit to the site. ``Now, of course, I never climbed this tree.''
Then, while peering up into the tangle of one magnolia, he added: ``I don't think that big limb used to be there.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
City official Sam T. Barfield knows the story behind these two
magnolias in Norfolk.
by CNB