Wagon Adams' Express at the Exchange Hotel (Now Jefferson Hotel)

The third stop on our tour is the previous location of The Adams Express Office. 1849 the office was located on the first floor of the Exchange Hotel at Fourteenth and Franklin Streets. According to Henry Brown, this location 'was about a mile distant from the place where I was packed.'" Samuel Smith's residence was noted to be a few blocks from the hotel. The Exchange Hotel was built in 1841 as a four-story Gothic revival building. The architect of this building was Isaiah Roger.  This hotel was a popular location prior to the Civil War. However, this hotel was later demolished in 1895 to build the Jefferson Hotel. The Jefferson Hotel is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Friday, 23 March 1849, Henry met with his friends Samuel Smith, and James Smith at 4 A.M., likely at the Smith residence or shop. The Smith residence was said to be a couple blocks from the shipping office. Wagon Adams Express Company had started in 1840 in New York City with two men and a wheelbarrow. It expanded to wagons and by July 1, 1854 had become incorporated. The company expanded from wagons to trains, then to boats and finally automobiles and trucks. The company is still in existence today. That morning in March 1849, Adams was commissioned to deliver the box was addressed to 'James Johnson, 131 Arch St,' Philadelphia, and marked 'This side up with care.' The box was loaded onto a wagon and taken to the Wagon Adams Express. Personal accounts reported, "Shortly after, the collaborators loaded the box onto a wagon. It is likely that a hired driver and team carried the box to the Express Office, and that the driver was given a note containing shipping instructions to present to the clerk. Although Samuel Smith said that he often shipped parcels by express, the note probably did not identify him as the shipper of this one. Nor did Smith give the driver money to pay the shipping charge; the box was shipped freight due. Since Smith had often shipped freight at the Adams office, this package did not raise suspicions at the time.

As mentioned in the introduction, the Exchange Hotel was very popular spot prior to the Civil war. Across the street from the Exchange Hotel, the Ballard Hotel, Italianate style, was built in 1855 and a foot bridge was built on the second floor of each building to connect them over the street below.

On the the current site stands the Jefferson Hotel built in 1895. The eclectic-styled hotel cost nearly $1.75 million to build and furnish. Opening day was one day earlier than anticipated, on October 31st, 1895. The opulent marble lobby of The Jefferson Hotel was one of the largest of its time. There were entrances on three sides of the hotel. Sculptor Edward V. Valentine designed the statue of Thomas Jefferson that stood inside the Jefferson Hotel. The statue faced north (toward Franklin St.) originally and was lit by a glass-domed ceiling in one of two courts. An arcade above one court, reached by a grand wooden staircase, was lined with Corinthian columns. Original paintings graced the walls of many of the public areas.

Thirty-four of the 342 guest rooms were reserved for hotel employees. Every guest room featured bowl sinks with hot and cold running water. There was a bathroom at the end of each floor, with one for men and one for women. Some of the rooms included fireplaces. A new invention called the "Herzog Teleseme" in each room allowed guests to turn a dial to signal what they needed. The dining room offered top-notch cuisine; opening night included bass with lobster sauce, oysters, venison, filet mignon, and lamb. Hotel guests were treated to musical performances on the roof garden; the hotel bar's wine closet held 1,000 bottles. The top (fifth) floor included a billiards room for the ladies plus meeting and ballroom spaces. Real alligators lived in marble tanks in the Palm Court for decades; they may have been donated by travelers heading north after buying them as souvenirs during a Florida vacation. The last alligator, Old Pompey, died of old age in 1948, but his life-size, eight-foot-long, bronze statue still graces the lobby.

Lewis B. Ginter died on October 2nd, 1897; his nephew, George Arents took over the running of The Jefferson Hotel. A huge fire in the hotel on Friday, March 29th, 1901 destroyed most of the interior. No one lost their life, but one guest suffered a broken leg. The Thomas Jefferson statue's head broke off while the statue was being dragged out of the building; the fancy furnishings of the Grand Salon were saved, and Jefferson later regained his head. Local Richmonders opened their homes to house the evacuated hotel guests who didn't find rooms at other hotels. The hotel manager, Mr. Fry, lost everything he owned, but his wife and two young children, wrapped in blankets, were saved. The fire was thought to have been caused by defective insulation of an electric light wire on the fourth floor. At first, the fire was thought to be extinguished, but the gas reservoir exploded, and the fifth-floor roof garden was found to be on fire. Water from eight fire engines was not enough to put out the fire on the windy night. The 1905 Sanborn map showed the middle portion of the hotel as being just a basement with a bar room on the first floor, with plans being drawn up to rebuild to nine stories high. The hotel didn't fully reopen until 1907. The rooftop gardens were not rebuilt after the fire. The hotel room wings on the southern end were rebuilt differently from the original plans, to run north-south (instead of east-west), to let in more sunlight.

Another fire, in March 1944, resulted in six guests dying, including the widow of a former Virginia Governor, Lillian (Mrs. James H.) Price, and Virginia State Senator Aubrey G. Weaver. A cigarette discarded into a hamper was thought to have been the source of the late-night blaze. The hotel's alarm was supposedly not set off soon enough, and many fire hoses were rotted and useless; the hotel was hit with a number of lawsuits and the hotel's quality began to decline. The Jefferson Hotel was one of a group of eleven historic buildings in Richmond chosen to be documented in the late 1960s as part of the Richmond Photo-Data Project, under the auspices of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission. In 1989, the beautifully restored hotel joined the Historic Hotels of America, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The luxury hotel is now known as "The Jefferson" and offers fine dining, a bar/lounge, Sunday brunch, and afternoon tea.

Anonymous. "Jefferson Hotel Fire Kills Six; 20 Hospitalized." Staunton News-Leader (Staunton, VA) March 12th, 1944. 1-1.

Anonymous. "The Splendid Jefferson Hotel Burned, But All the Guests Made Their Escape." The Times (Richmond) March 30th, 1901. 1-1.

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Herbert, Paul N. The Jefferson Hotel: The History of a Richmond Landmark. Edition e-book. Charleston, SC. The History Press, 2017.

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Historic Hotels America. The Jefferson Hotel, Historic Hotels of America. January 1st, 2024. Accessed February 7th, 2024. https://www.historichotels.org/us/hotels-resorts/the-jefferson-hotel/.

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Richmond Chamber of Commerce. Richmond, Virginia - Yesterday and Today. Richmond, VA. Whittet & Shepperson, 1913.

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https://yorkblog.com/universal/Adams-Express-Connected-York-County-With-The-Rest-Of-The-World. Accessed 4/6/2024.

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