Richmond's Culinary History by Maureen Egan

Richmond's Culinary History by Maureen Egan

Author:Maureen Egan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2017-11-20T05:00:00+00:00


The Jefferson as it looked from the Franklin Street side around the time of the 1901 fire. William Henry Jackson, Detroit Publishing Co., Library of Congress.

The hotel survived Lewis Ginter’s death in 1897 and a catastrophic fire in 1901, but it took several Richmond investors, including Joseph Bryan and Major James Dooley, to bring it back to full Beaux Arts beauty in 1907. It remained a place of grand entertainments and lavish meals, hosting presidents, entertainers and national heroes until it lost its luster mid-century. Unfortunately, segregation was in full force in Richmond, so though many hotel employees were black, black guests were not welcome well into the twentieth century. One occasional employee in the dining room was purportedly Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the performer, who in his early days waited tables in between touring. During the Beaux Arts Ball in 1933, Robinson, by then a well-known actor and dancer, performed in the Rotunda but was not allowed at the hotel as a guest.143

Later, private clubs, including the men’s-only Rotunda Club, took over large sections of the hotel, keeping the statue of Thomas Jefferson from public view from 1949 to 1977 and taxing the kitchen with their extravagant buffets.



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