History
Must-See RVA! — Duplex Envelope Company
A look into the history of Richmond places that are still part of our landscape.
AKA, The Coliseum, Valentine Auction Company Building
1339-1363 West Broad Street
Built, 1922
Reconfigured, 1928
Architect, Otis Spiers (1928)
VDHR 127-5811
Developed by prominent local businessmen Gibson Worsham and Archer Jones as the city’s first coliseum, the building was used originally as a skating rink and performance hall.
(VDHR) — 1999 nomination photo
Only three years after the Coliseum was constructed, the Shriners completed the Acca Temple Mosque, a first class auditorium facility. Apparently competition with these other new facilities cut into the Coliseum’s business. Within a few years of undertaking the development of the Coliseum, Worsham sold his share of the building to Duplex Envelope Company, and Jones hired architect Otis Spiers with Davis Brothers, Inc., General Contractors to reconfigure the interior so that it might house an automobile dealership along with his own rapidly expanding church envelope company.
(Chronicling America) —The Presbyterian of the South — December 17, 1913
While located in this building, the Duplex Envelope Company grew to become the world’s largest manufacturer of church envelopes. Thanks to the dozens of patents acquired by the business Duplex was able to develop and monopolize innovations that helped churches raise unprecedented funds through devices including the original duplex envelope which provided for weekly offerings of two types of benevolences and the boxed sets of envelopes provided for members of church congregations throughout the world.
(Free Patents Online) — Patent 1987778 — Offering Envelope
That company enjoyed unparalleled national success; it held patents on a machine which printed and boxed the envelopes at a speed which could not be matched by its competitors. In December 1927 Duplex Envelope brought suit against a former employee who had taken the trade secrets to another company.
In the mid-1960s Duplex was bought out by paper industry giant Hammermill, which ultimately moved the company and its original machinery to an industrial area near the State Fairgrounds. Those patented machines and methods developed by Duplex in the 1920s and 30s for installation at 1339-63 West Broad Street continue to be used today in the company’s present offices.
(Mayfair) — 1953 advertisement
The national success of the Duplex Envelope Company is emblematic of the heyday of “mainline” churches. As the twentieth century opened the churches mirrored an increasingly settled community. Church building and church missions also began to take on also an identifiable shape. Where previously prominent individuals –leading businessmen and their families in individual congregations– met most expenses and funded large building projects, the twentieth century saw a process of democratization in church giving. The Duplex Envelope provided the primary vehicle for this revolutionary “Every Member Canvas.” Lie the secret ballot in a way, each offering no matter the size could be discreetly proffered, lessening the impact of large gifts (and their givers’ influence) and opening the way to consensus planning.
The contribution of Archer Jones and his successors was the invention of an envelope which allowed two separate benevolences to be placed in a single envelope, hence “duplex.” In addition to weekly tithing, special missions and building projects could be solicited simply and without special effort. It is arguable that the ‘Duplex Envelope” was the engine for the observable social and civic expansion of the “mainline”churches throughout the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The Duplex envelope concept, in combination with the company’s theory of “the every member canvas” enabled church congregations to pool their wealth, thus allowing an increasingly democratic face to emerge for church missions. It is hard not to credit Duplex Envelope with this sociologic phenomenon, since it developed and has sustained the market for church envelopes for nearly a century. (VDHR)
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