THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 18, 1996 TAG: 9604180031
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 134 lines
THE RELEASE OF plans for the new downtown Norfolk mall has spurred reminiscing about the way downtown Norfolk used to be. A new exhibit of Kenneth Harris paintings makes those recollections a concrete vision.
Watercolors depicting pre- and post-urban renewal Norfolk went on view Monday in the hallways of The Ballentine, a Norfolk retirement home. The show of 32 works celebrates the home's 100-year anniversary.
From 1949 until his death in 1983 at age 79, Harris was widely considered the area's most popular painter. He painted thousands of local scenes. Through the years, his straightforward pictures documented the region's changes.
Many of the images at The Ballentine were painted in the 1950s, before so much of the character of old Norfolk was lost.
A 1950s image of Main Street places the viewer atop a building, looking past the Confederate Monument west toward the Elizabeth River where Nauticus now stands. The old ferry ticketing house and terminal are visible at the end of a street lined with old buildings and shops.
Just a few years later, in 1963, that view changed drastically. Harris' ``Sunday Morning'' focuses on the old ferry house, its function pre-empted by the new Portsmouth-Norfolk tunnels.
By 1963, the ferry terminal had been torn down. Grass had grown up around the ferry house, which has since been moved to the Ghent neighborhood and restored as a relic of early Norfolk.
``I've been looking at his pictures a long time. Aren't they nice? And he was such a down-to-earth man,'' said Dorothy Carroll, a Ballentine resident who was acquainted with the artist. She was born in 1912 in Norfolk and lived in the city all her life.
She gazed at the earlier picture of Commercial Place in downtown Norfolk and said: ``I remember there were shops all along here. And they had been there for a good long while.''
Carroll recalled that there were feed stores on Main Street when she was a young girl. She pointed to the iron fence around the Confederate Monument, saying, ``That's where they used to tie up their horses.''
She indicated a 1950s painting and said that it depicted the old ``Roanoke docks'' along the downtown waterfront. It was a block from the old ferry terminal, where farmers used to set up produce stands on Saturdays, she said.
``My grandmother used to row from her home on Willoughby Spit to the market. She swore it was true. She was a right big, healthy woman,'' said Carroll, her eyes sparkling with good humor.
Every picture seemed to spur a memory. A 1960 painting of a Market Street overrun by flower stands reminded her of downtown trips to that site with her grandmother - ``when the Mennonites were there,'' selling fruits and vegetables raised in the Kempsville area of Virginia Beach, she said.
And, who would ever guess that the 1957 painting of Mattie and Maynard's Grocery was painted on a site now occupied by Scope. The grocery once was at the corner of Bute and Bank streets.
Harris said in 1981 that the grocery, if standing today, would be smack dab in the middle of Scope's ice hockey rink. Ironically, since the occasion was a show of 250 works by Harris held at Scope, the painting hung in what might have been Mattie and Maynard's produce section.
Kenneth Harris caused a sensation from the time he moved to Norfolk in 1949. Days after he arrived with his wife, Irene, a psychiatrist, and their two young children, Harris was out on the street with his easel, painting Norfolk from every angle.
Two weeks after his arrival, the old Ledger-Dispatch newspaper reported that ``there's at least one person living in Norfolk who's here because he thinks the city has a lot to offer. He's Kenneth Harris, and if he has anything to do with it, there will be many more who will be admiring the beautiful scenes in and around here.''
If it wasn't raining, Harris was out and painting. He averaged two watercolors a day, each one taking four to five hours. Of those, about one a week was worth keeping, the artist once said.
A decade later, as the iron ball came down on Norfolk structures with increasing frequency, Harris came to be viewed by some as a precursor of doom.
In 1981, Harris recalled how, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, tenants of decrepit apartment buildings began noticing that many of the buildings he painted later vanished.
``It was sort of sad, really,'' Harris said. ``They had a notion that the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing people had sent me around to paint their house before they tore it down.
``Twice, women came running up to me, crying and saying, `Mr. Harris, please don't paint my house, 'cause they'll come and tear it down.' ''
Harris would promptly pack up his easel, if only to squelch their fears.
The works at The Ballentine were borrowed from various collections, including The Chrysler Museum of Art. The Chrysler's predecessor, the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, commissioned Harris in 1950 to create a series of 30 paintings called ``Portrait of a City.'' The series was paid for by the ``Norfolk Newspapers Art Trust Fund.''
``Portrait of a City'' became the museum's first traveling exhibit. In 1952 and 1953, it was shown at nine Southeastern museums, including the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., and the University of Georgia at Athens.
Harris was a true people's artist. Wherever he'd set up his easel, clusters of passers-by would gather.
``People are hungry for pictures,'' he told a reporter in 1950. ``Whenever I paint, taxi drivers, tugboat captains, housewives and laborers are attracted to what I am doing.
``They like to watch me paint, and they like to see the paintings. These people are real art lovers. True, they've never been to the museum here, but they would like it if they went.''
Decades later, it was evident that he had crafted a valuable record of life in Norfolk in those times. No other artist in the '50s and '60s had attempted to document the city as did Harris.
This pleased him, though he hadn't actually intended to be a documentarian.
``I wasn't trying to record Norfolk,'' he said in 1981. ``I was just trying to make a living.'' ILLUSTRATION: COURTESY OF THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM
Kennsth Harris' "Commerrcial Place" shows a downtown view of the
city in the 1950s.
FILE PHOTO
ABOVE LEFT: Harris paints MacArthur Memorial in 1964.
FILE PHOTO
Harris at work in the early 1950s. ``I wasn't trying to record
Norfolk,'' he said in 1981. ``I was just trying to make a living.''
COURTESY OF THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM
Mattie and Maynard's Grocery, painted by Kenneth Harris in 1957,
stood at the corner where Bute and Bank streets once met, on a site
now occupied by Scope.
THE EXHIBIT
Where: The Ballentine, 7211 Granby St., Norfolk
When: 1 to 4 p.m. daily, through May 12
How much: free
Call: 440-7400
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB