Bowers Brothers Coffee and Tea Building
104 Shockoe Slip
Richmond’s flour, milled here in Shockoe Slip, was known all over the world for its high quality. On their return from delivering flour and the popular Virginia tobacco, ships were laden with coffee, tea, and exotic spices, which were then sold by commission merchants here in the Slip. The Bowers Brothers Building takes its name from a coffee and tea processing and brokerage firm that occupied it from 1912 until 1956. This straightforward commercial structure, which usually housed leaf tobacco dealers and manufacturers of fertilizer, is also interesting because of its own evolution. After the 1865 Evacuation Fire destroyed an earlier structure, the first three floors of the current building were erected in 1870. The top two floors were added in the early twentieth century, attesting to the commercial vitality of this neighborhood at that time. Adapted for present-day use, the building now contains apartments and retail stores on the ground floor.
Marker is on Shockoe Slip south of East Cary Street (Virginia Route 147), on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
