THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504280695
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
While enjoying coffee and a bagel recently at an outside table of the bistro at the southwest corner of Granby Street and City Hall Avenue, it suddenly dawned on me that I was sitting on the site of the Old Stone Bridge, a former Norfolk landmark.
The bridge spanned the entrance to Town Back Creek from 1819 to 1905. Before it was built, the greater part of Norfolk was still confined to the narrow irregular peninsula between the Elizabeth River and Town Back and Dun-in-the-Mire (later Newton's) creeks, on which the town was originally laid out in 1680-81. At that time, and for many years thereafter, only a small neck of the land at what is now City Hall Avenue and St. Paul's Boulevard connected the first Norfolk site with what was then known as ``the Fields.'' Over this narrow isthmus ran a country road (later named Church Street) that was referred to throughout the 18th century as ``the street that leadeth into the woods.''
The town's original site was expanded just before the borough was destroyed by bombardment and fire in 1776. After the Revolution, landowners north of Town Back Creek began offering their farmlands as choice building sites. Soon, wealthy citizens, eager to escape the crowded and unhealthy area on which pre-Revolutionary Norfolk was built, began building handsome homes in the new area. Now, only four remain - the Moses Myers, Willoughby-Baylor and Taylor-Whittle houses on Freemason Street and the Allmand-Archer House on Duke Street.
To commute to and from the new area, residents had to use the isthmus near the present southeast corner of St. Paul's Churchyard or take a shortcut across a narrow plank bridge connecting Talbot Street south of the creek with Catharine (now Bank) Street on the north side. Both routes were unsatisfactory: The deeply rutted road was a quagmire in wet weather, while flooding made the footbridge frequently impassable.
Realizing something had to be done, the borough council authorized the widening of Concord Street (now the first two blocks of Granby Street) in 1807 as a first move toward using it as an approach to a proposed bridge that would hook it onto already existing Granby Street on the north side of Town Back Creek. Named for John Manners, marquis of Granby, a popular British 18th-century general, Granby Street, from the creek northward, had been laid out just before the Revolution and quickly became a fashionable residential area.
To make it easily accessible, the borough council took two further steps. First, recently widened Concord Street was renamed Granby Street. Second, in 1816, the council authorized construction of a stone bridge at its northern limit to connect it with the original Granby Street north of the creek's mouth. The bridge was built of stone with an arched rise in its center by William H. Jennings between 1818 and 1819 and cost $9,000. It became popularly known as the Old Stone Bridge and was used until its demolition in 1905. By then what was left of Town Back Creek had been filled in to create what is now West City Hall Avenue, an area extending from the present MacArthur Memorial to the Elizabeth River.
The bridge unwittingly became a social arbiter in 19th-century Norfolk. No man who considered himself a gentleman dared cross it on his way downtown until after 9 a.m. Otherwise, he was stigmatized by the gentry as a member of the working class.
Many changes have taken place in the City Hall Avenue-lower Granby Street area since 1880, when the picture illustrating this column was taken. To the left of the cut is the former Cincinnatus Newton homestead, now the site of the Law Building. On the right of the bridge, the Royster Building was later built, while the brick wall on the extreme right marked the southern boundary of the garden of the home of former U.S. Sen. and Virginia Gov. Littleton Waller Tazewell. The area at the top of the picture, behind the southbound schooner, is Hospital Point in Portsmouth; the lower right area, then a favorite sport for crabbers, was where the old Monticello Hotel later stood.
The Old Stone Bridge was one of the town's showplaces during the 86 years it was in use. In his eulogy on the death of Gov. Tazewell in 1860, Norfolk historian Hugh Blair Grisby recalled: ``I remember our fathers were so proud of it (the bridge) that they invited strangers to see it. It for a time took the shine from the navy yard.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
COURTESY OF THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM
This 1880 photograph depicts the Old Stone Bridge, a former Norfolk
landmark.
by CNB