RVA Legends — Charles D. Hill & Co.

• 1410-1416 East Cary Street

Another tobacco merchant in a town filled with them.

[RVCJ93] — Charles Watkins, who would later leave Hill, Skinker & Watkins to form his own Charles Watkins & Co. in 1882

Grain, Leaf Tobacco, and General Commission Merchants. No firm in Richmond, either—in amount of business, extent of facilities, or excellence of location, surpasses that of Charles D. Hill & Company. Mr. Hill has lived in Richmond since 1857, and has since 1866, been connected with the leaf tobacco trade. In that year he organized the firm of Hill & Poteat, Leaf Tobacco Commission Merchants, and afterwards was, at various times, a member of Hill & Skinker, and Hill, Skinker & Watkins, both of which were noted in the tobacco trade.

(Library of Congress) — Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Richmond (1886) — Plate 15 — showing Center Warehouse

In 1882, he entered business alone, under the title at the head of this notice, the company being nominal. His place of business Centre Warehouse, is probably the largest in the city, and has a storage capacity for 3000 hogsheads of tobacco. From early in the Colonial History of Virginia, tobacco warehouses have played a prominent part in her social and business life, being the gathering place for Virginians, as the village was to the New Englanders. The planters only money crop was brought to them, and at the same place he received tobacco notes, the currency of the day. Here were the blacksmith’s shop and the tavern, and here too, if it was on a river, as was generally the case, came the ships from “home” England.

March 2020 — looking towards the former 1410-1416 East Cary Street — the tobacco storage building where the parking lot stands today, and Centre Warehouse across the alley in today’s parking lot

Though, of course, many of these features have changed, yet warehouses, and especially the massive built Centre, are objects of great interest, and are frequently visited by strangers, who look curiously at the “breaks.” There is a stable attached for teams hauling tobacco from the country. Besides leaf tobacco, the house does a very extensive grain and general commission business, and exports tobacco to England. Mr. Hill “has a business reputation second to none, and is widely known as an unsurpassed judge of the staples he handles. He is also engaged in the manufacture of the “Virginia Weed,” and is President of the Pemberton & Hill Company. [IOR]

(Charles D. Hill & Co. is part of the Atlas RVA! Project)

Print Sources

• [IOR] Industries of Richmond. James P. Wood. 1886.
• [RVCJ93] Richmond, Virginia: The City on the James: The Book of Its Chamber of Commerce and Principal Business Interests. G. W. Engelhardt. 1893.

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