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| Richmond Dairy, 1971 |
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| Richmond Dairy, 2017 |
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| Richmond Dairy, 1935 |
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| Richmond Dairy, 2017 |
Name of the Site: The Richmond Dairy
Date of Construction: 1914
Reason for construction: The Richmond Dairy was a company founded in 1890 by dairymen J.O. Scott, A.L. Scott, and T.L. Blanton. These men established the company to provide milk and other dairy products to the Richmond community. An architectural firm called Carneal & Johnston designed the building that they would use as a bottling plant for their products. The structure was constructed in 1914 as a location for the Richmond Dairy Company to bottle milk and transport it to homes and business in the Richmond area. The company found success in supplying dairy products to homes and restaurants because at the time it was established, refrigerators were not available to store perishable products. Fresh milk products required daily delivery, and the Richmond Dairy Company readily provided these services. The milk jug itself, replicated in the building’s structure, was introduced in the U.S. for the first time in the late 1870s. The sealed and sterilized glass bottle could guarantee the freshness of milk, as opposed to the earlier, less-hygienic method of delivering milk from a pail. The location of the bottling site was conveniently in the center of the Richmond market for milk products, among houses, restaurants, and businesses. The bottled milk products could be easily transported from the site to the surrounding customers. The 1914 Richmond Dairy was commissioned by the Richmond Dairy Company to work as a milk bottling/delivering plant.
Site History: This structure was built in 1914 after the Richmond Dairy Company was founded by three entrepreneurs in 1890. J.O. Scott, A.L. Scott, and T.L. Blanton each worked towards the establishment of this company. These men teamed up in the late 1880s in efforts to supply Richmond with dairy products. Because refrigeration was uncommon until the 1920s, people generally required daily milk delivery for their homes and businesses. The Richmond Dairy Company provided this service to much of the Richmond area, and hence it became very successful upon its establishment. The site became an extremely busy center of milk bottling and transportation, and generated great revenue from its services to the local community. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, this company saw a great decline in profits as the availability of refrigeration became far more common. In the 1930s, an early form of home-refrigeration arose when Dupont began to mass produce Freon-12. By the 1950s, the refrigerator had become a standard in the American home. People no longer required expensive daily milk delivery, and often opted to purchase dairy products from chain supermarkets. Another factor that contributed to the decline of the Richmond Dairy Company was its use of glass milk bottles. Initially, the glass bottles ensured sanitation of the milk, and were a hallmark of the company. Decades later, the bottles became a burden. Not only were they heavy and difficult to deliver, they broke easily and the safety of recycling them was questioned. Chain grocery stores and cardboard cartons forced the Richmond Dairy Company out of business in 1970, but the forty-foot tall milk bottles on either side of the building remained. The structure’s interesting architecture choices attracted hippies in the following years, who rented out spaces of this building to various artists and musicians, including local heavy metal band called “Gwar”. The building has served many uses over the years, including its current form as rental apartments. The Richmond Dairy is now an apartment complex located in Richmond’s Broad Street Arts District.
Surrounding Area History: Broad street has been a commercial center of the city since it’s inception. It was started in downtown but extended to reach into the suburbs outside the city. Until the late 19th century, the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad ran down the center of Broad Street, allowing for easy access of downtown Richmond. In fact, the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad relocated its center to Broad Street Station, whose building is currently occupied by the Science Museum of Virginia. Broad street also used to have streetcars running along the sides of the road, increasing the width of the road to 115 feet. The streetcars served to stimulate growth in the city, and resulted in Broad street being a center for restaurants and retail. From the late 1800s through the early 1900s, the buildings built on Broad were large, commercial buildings. One important building on Broad is the Empire Theatre, Richmond’s oldest surviving theatre.
What about the site has changed? This site has experienced numerous changes over the past century. From its initial use as a milk bottling/transportation plant, the site has served multiple uses during its lifetime. After the Richmond Dairy Company shut down in 1970, the machinery and equipment inside the building was auctioned off for the next few years. In the following decade the structure was abandoned and began disintegrating, until hippies entered and began renting out interior spaces. At this point, the building was cleaned and furnished on a small scale, so that it would attract musicians and artists to practice or live there. Now, the site has been completely renovated, and serves as a luxury apartment complex adjacent to Jackson Ward. While the famed forty-foot milk bottles on the outside of the building have remained over the decades, the interior has seen many changes because of its various uses.
What about the surrounding area has changed? Today, Broad Street remains one of Richmond’s prominent commercial districts, and remains a hub of activity, containing a variety of restaurants, stores, art galleries, etc. While there are no more streetcars, the city still provides public transportation in the form of the Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC), which provides bus transportation around the city. In addition, Virginia Commonwealth University, which was founded in 1838, has expanded it’s campus to include a large portion of the downtown area. Now ranked second in the nation for graduate arts programs (first if only public universities are counted), VCU has come to be a much more respected college. VCU and various businesses have also been buying up old buildings and abandoned storefronts on Broad and around Richmond and remodeling them. One example of this would be the Richmond Dairy Company building being turned into apartments.
Reflection: Through doing this project we mainly observed how buildings can be repurposed over time. Remodeling a building’s interior while keeping the same exterior is a common practice now, and helps to add an authentic feeling to the area that is being renovated. However, sometimes this process can be a little too close to gentrification, which can cause issues within a community as rising rent and property taxes can force lower income residents out of their homes. Unfortunately, this is often occurring when the middle class begins to describe an area as “up and coming.”
Sources:
Kappatos, Nicole. “Richmond Dairy Co”. Richmond Times-Dispatch. April 23, 2016. Accessed
February 13, 2017. http://www.richmond.com/from-the-archives/article_91a2b26c-f13
8-11e5-9cce-bb9462e7552.html.
Rupnik, Megan. “Historic Context for Richmond Area Dairy Barns, c. 1900-1955”. Virginia
Department of Transportation. June 2003. Accessed February 13, 2017.
"Broad Street Old and Historic District, Richmond, Virginia." VCU Libraries Digital
Collections. April 25, 2016. Accessed March 19, 2017. http://dig.library.vcu.edu/cdm/lan
dingpage/collection/bsb.
dingpage/collection/bsb.
Authors: Sydney Swanson and Meha Srivastava
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