Richmond Mayors, Motors & Municipal War (dual mayors, State Capitol collapse, car manufacturing, etc) — Unscripted #063

You're invited to FWD:RVA on Monday, October 5th, 6 to 8 p.m. at VPM x Style Weekly Headquarters, Richmond. Style Weekly and VPM are hosting us for a live conversation about podcasting, building an audience, and creating community in Richmond. Free to attend, limited capacity, so RSVP early. Tickets and details: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fwdrva-podcasting-tickets-1999052500843 Vera Creative Club Merchandise: https://verahouse.co Subscribe to the audio podcast: https://verahouse.buzzsprout.com Follow us: instagram.com/verahouse.co Hosted by Myke Metzger & Perri Young:  instagram.com/mykemetzger instagram.com/planetperri In this episode of Vera House Unscripted, we discuss a range of Richmond topics including a Reddit post asking whether to move to Gilpin Court, the car company Richmond used to have and the single car that survived it, the 1870 Capitol collapse that killed 62 people while the city had two mayors at once, the 1886 schoolhouse on Lombardy Street being turned into an event venue, Flock cameras being walked back across Virginia, and the Arts District finally getting city money. We start with a Reddit post from someone considering a move to Richmond who circled Gilpin Court on a map and asked for intel. The comments do the usual thing, and the conversation underneath is really about how to tell a stranger the truth about a neighborhood without writing it off, plus the Tiger Mart regulars and how fast Northside has changed. Later in the episode we get into Richmond's two simultaneous mayors. In 1870 George Chahoon refused to leave office after Henry K. Ellyson was chosen to replace him, and for about two months the city had two governments and two competing police forces. When the Supreme Court of Appeals finally took up the case, hundreds of people packed into the Capitol to hear it. The gallery supports gave way and the floor collapsed, dropping the crowd about twenty-five feet into the House of Delegates chamber below. Sixty-two people died and 251 were injured, among them Patrick Henry's great-grandson, a Black state senator who had taken his seat the year before, and the city's fire chief. The youngest was a thirteen-year-old page. The ruling arrived two days later, after Richmond had already spent those days burying its dead. The second half is about what Richmond used to make and what it stopped noticing. The city once had its own car company. James Allen Kline's plant on North Boulevard, on the site that later became the Greyhound bus station, sat across from a mile-long dirt track where they raced the cars they had just built. Henry Ford's mass production finished the company by 1924. One Richmond-built Kline survived anyway, bought by A.D. Price, a Black funeral director in Jackson Ward, whose family stored it instead of scrapping it. It is on display at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture today. We also get into the 1886 schoolhouse on Lombardy Street that almost nobody has noticed, the Arts District getting a city grant after decades, and why it took both of us this long to care about any of it. Topics include Gilpin Court, Tiger Mart, Richmond's Northside, Chamberlayne Avenue, gentrification, Flock Safety cameras, surveillance in Virginia, the 1870 Capitol disaster, Richmond's Municipal War, George Chahoon, Henry K. Ellyson, April 27 1870, the Virginia State Capitol, Thomas Jefferson, the 15th Amendment, J.W.D. Bland, John Turner, the Melungeon people, the Kline Motor Car Corporation, the Kline Kar, James Allen Kline, the Greyhound bus station, North Boulevard, the Diamond, CarMax Park, A.D. Price, the A.D. Price Funeral Home, Jackson Ward, the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, 3 North Lombardy Street, the Stonewall Jackson School, the Arts District, Sixth Street Marketplace, Broad Street streetcars, Brown's Island, Mayo Island, Short Pump, and FWD:RVA (Style Weekly x VPM). Quick interjection to invite you to Vera House Studios. If you are a local Richmond business, entrepreneur, brand owner, or service provider—and you know you need to create better content to get your products and services in front of the right people—we can help. Support the show Get more info about our studio here. This podcast is produced by Vera House — a creative club and premium media studio based in Richmond, Virginia. Our studio exists to champion local brands, creative expression, rva culture, and produce high-impact content for founders, makers, and modern businesses. Follow the movement: instagram.com/verahouse.co youtube.com/@verahousepod verahouse.co Hosted by Myke Metzger & Perri Young: instagram.com/mykemetzger instagram.com/planetperri