The Valentine, Richmond, Virginia

The Valentine Museum is celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2024. It is located within the 1840 Bransford-Cecil House. The museum focuses on the history that shaped Richmond which is the capital city of Virginia.

When Mann Satterwhite Valentine II (1824 – 1892) died, he left his collection of objects and funding for the creation of the public museum which opened in 1898.  He was interested in science and medicine which resulted in his creation of the Valentine’s Meat Juice in 1871.  This product gained worldwide sales for sickly people and from which Valentine amassed a small fortune.  It was made from concentrated beef juice and egg whites.

(Valentine’s Meat Juice)

Meat Globules was another product…

(Valentine’s Meat Globules)

Artifacts within the Valentine include the Giant Clock from 1924 which was inside the Miller and Rhodes department store and was known as a meeting place.  The department store closed in 1990 after 104 years of operation.  Employees from the store collected money to buy the clock at auction and donated it to the museum….

A carousel animal from a popular street park that closed in 1932 due to the Great Depression….

An Algonquian dugout James River canoe and a 19-foot 4-inch wooden gun….

A hardware store trade sign….

An 1855 fire department silver megaphone…

A1910 barber’s chair from an African American shop…

A 1980’s toll sign and toll taker’s smock from the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike.  I remember hating to wait in those toll lines, of which there were a number…

Model of the first electric streetcar in the USA used in Richmond in 1888 and developed by Thomas Edison’s assistant, engineer Frank J. Sprague, who went on to invent electric motors for trolleys and trains….

Local company Reynolds Metals purchased the first USA chocolate covered ice cream bar called the I-Scream-Bar in 1924 which was renamed the famous Eskimo Pie….

Richmond was known worldwide for tobacco product production.  On display were old tobacco tins and a wooden cigar mold…

An 1885 “Old Chief Smokum” wooden figure was used to identify a local tobacco shop for people who could not read signage….

(Old Chief Smokum)

In February 1960, African American university students began sit-in protests at the segregated Woolworth’s and Murphy’s lunch counters, which later became integrated in 1963….

Also on display is the statue of Jefferson Davis which was toppled by protesters during the George Floyd protests in June 2020.  Davis was president of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865. The statue and monument was unveiled on Davis’ birthday, June 3, 1907, a day that used to be celebrated in Virginia and many other Southern states as Confederate Memorial Day.

(Topled Jefferson Davis monument)

An 1855 flogger used to intimidate and punish 71 enslaved workers at the local Turpin and Yarborough tobacco warehouse.  Richmond was also one of the centers of the slave trade, selling and shipping slaves locally and throughout the south….

(Floggum)

Local breweries were also a big part of Richmond history.  Exhibits of beer bottles are on display when Richmond had local and national beer brands….

(Beer bottles)

A few other exhibits included an early version of the Richmond City seal which depicts a female figure representing “Justice” and a Latin motto “Sic Itur Ad Astra” which translates to “Such is the Way to the Stars”…..

A Coca-Cola Slow Down sign was from the 1950’s at the Thomas Jefferson High School….

A room of old local neon and metal signs, and outside the back door were larger signs from local establishments….

The Valentine Museum is located at 1015 East Clay Street, Richmond VA23219. Admission is: Adults $10, Seniors(55+)$8, Active Military Free, and Youth (18 and under) Free. Admission includes two hours of parking in the Valentine museum lot or validated parking for the MCV Visitor Parking Deck at 529 N. 12th Street, and a one-day admission to Valentine exhibition galleries and a guided tour of the historic Wickham House.  Be wary of street parking.  I noticed police issuing tickets to some street parking vehicles.