Atop Gambles Hill, a prominent point overlooking the James River, a castle once stood.
Completed in 1854, Pratt’s Castle was an iron-plated gothic revival “fortress” with four crenulated towers, a basement dungeon, hidden passageways and secret staircases. Standing on one such secret staircase, a guest could peer into another room through the eyes of a painting on the wall.
Yet Pratt’s Castle is no longer with us. Despite appeals from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it was demolished in 1956 to make way for the corporate offices of the Ethyl Corporation.
It’s lost architectural treasures like this that Calder Loth will address in his lecture this Thursday at the Branch Museum of Design.
“Virginia has a very rich architectural heritage, but you can’t know the full extent of it just by looking at what’s currently standing,” says Loth, the retired senior architectural historian of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and coauthor of the 2001 book “Lost Virginia: Vanished Architecture of the Old Dominion.” “In order to get a complete picture, you need to be aware of important architectural and historic resources that have been lost.”

Loth’s lecture isn’t simply about bemoaning Virginia’s vanished architectural treasures; it’s also intended as a call to action to preserve what we have left.
“I wanted to use it as a way of raising awareness of why we lose things, whether it’s war or fire or neglect or development,” says Loth of his lecture. “In other words, what are the pressures on historic resources and how we can deal with such pressures on existing landmarks?”
The lecture will take place at the Branch, which recently eliminated the word “architecture” from its title and named former Martin Agency CEO Kristen Cavallo as its new executive director.
Losing a city’s character
Loth warns that if the city’s architectural gems are torn down and replaced by anonymous structures of glass and metal, we risk losing the urban fabric that makes Richmond unique.
“Are the buildings we build today anything anybody in the future would want to preserve?” he asks. “You know a city by its architecture, and when you lose all the character-defining features of a city’s architectural heritage, it’s anywhere.”
Here are a few of the historical places that Loth will highlight in his lecture:

Broad Street Methodist Church
1000 E. Broad St.
Built 1859
Demolished 1968
Designed by Richmond architect Albert L. West, this handsome Italianate structure was an imposing one, 38-feet wide and 71-feet long. It also featured a polygonal portico and steeple base.
In 1876, the steeple was heightened by 20 feet, making the church stand out in the city’s skyline. The steeple was taken down in 1900 when a hurricane scare led the city to order the removal of steeples around Richmond.
The congregation moved in December 1961 to a new church west of the city. The building was torn down in 1968 to make way for a parking lot. The Children’s Hospital of Richmond now stands at that location.
“That was the first preservation crisis that I witnessed when I moved to Richmond in 1968,” Loth says. “It was lost. Couldn’t make it into a visitor center. Nobody wanted to adapt it into anything, so it became a parking lot.”

Forbes House
3401 Monument Ave.
Built 1914
Demolished mid-20th century
The Forbes House that once existed at 3401 Monument Ave. was so large it took up an entire city block.
“It was this ginormous mansion built in the early 20th century by a man named Whitmell Forbes who was involved in all sorts of businesses: trolley business, bakeries, whatnot,” Loth says. “Sadly, he was the victim of the Depression. Went completely broke. This house was such a white elephant, just so big, that nobody lived like that anymore. You couldn’t get staff or service, and down it came. Most people don’t even know it existed.”
Located near the intersection of Monument Avenue and Roseneath Road — the present-day site of the Arthur Ashe Monument — this massive house was likely built by an out-of-town architect trying to capture the “Southern Colonial” look.
“Constructed of yellow brick with large wings, a tile roof, outflung balustraded terraces and elaborate details, the house’s two-story, approximately forty-foot-tall entrance portico had four monumental Corinthian columns,” states Loth’s book “Lost Virginia.” The house received criticism for its “overdone” nature; one detractor said it was “an example of everything not to do.”

Gallego Flour Mills
12th Street between Cary and Canal streets
Built 1835. Rebuilt or expanded 1848, 1860, 1865, 1904
Demolished after 1930
Once upon a time, Richmond had a “Great Basin” downtown where boats using the city’s canal system could turn around. Along the basin were mills that ground flour.
“All the water flowing through the Great Basin turned these enormous mills,” Loth explains. “Richmond was one of the largest milling cities in the country in the 19th century. All of these canal boats were bringing in grain from the Shenandoah Valley down to Richmond. It was all being ground down there.”
On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, the Gallego and Haxall mills surpassed their national competitors in annual production: Gallego produced 190,000 barrels of flour; Haxall produced 160,000.
After the Confederates torched the city during the evacuation in 1865, famed photographer Mathew Brady’s shot of the burned mills became an iconic image of the defeated South. The rebuilt Gallego Mills came down in the 1930s when Richmond ceased to be a milling mecca.
The Great Basin was filled in and became a railroad yard. The James Center office complex now stands at that location.

Howitzers Armory
700 block of E. Jackson St.
Circa 1895
Demolished 1971
Constructed circa 1895, the Richmond Howitzers Armory was “a wonderful Castellated-style building. As many armories were gothic revival, it reminded you of a castle,” Loth says.
At some point, the Howitzers’ building was expanded to include an indoor swimming pool and other amenities. The facilities were utilized by servicemen during World War II as a reception and recreation center as they traveled through Richmond to other assignments.
“That was torn down for the downtown branch of the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, which is one of the more vapid works of architecture in the city,” Loth says.
According to a 2016 report from Historic Richmond, “vestiges of [the armory’s] rounded turrets and truncated walls are still visible and now serve as retaining walls around the entrance to the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College building on the same site.”

Pratt’s Castle
324 S. 4th St.
Built 1853
Demolished 1956
Built by William A. Pratt, Pratt’s Castle was actually a modest-sized house built on a conspicuous viewpoint overlooking the James River. Located near the present-day Virginia War Memorial and the American Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar, the residence consisted of two floors set atop an English basement.
Pratt, who designed the home, was a talented entrepreneur known for his money-making schemes; one such scheme involved putting the home up for auction. After too few people took him up on the offer, Pratt canceled the lottery.
“Gambles Hill was a very fashionable address,” Loth says. “Pratt’s Castle stood very proud on a high point, but by about the 1950s, there was no use for it. What is now the Ethyl Corporation wanted that site for their headquarters and had no use for the building, so down it came.”
Still, Loth isn’t sour about losing the castle; in its place, the Ethyl Corporation built its headquarters, which Richmond newcomers often mistake for the State Capitol.
“That’s one we can’t begrudge too much, because the Ethyl Corporation building is a very handsome Georgian-style building, kind of inspired by the Williamsburg Inn. Handsome building, a very prominent location and very well maintained,” Loth says. “When something is replaced by nothing, that shows a horrible lack of imagination and spirit and pride in the city. There is a lot of vacant land just used for surface parking downtown in Richmond, as there is nationwide.”

Robert Mills’ City Hall
1001 E. Broad St.
Completed in 1818
Demolished 1874
Best known for designing the Washington Monument, Robert Mills is sometimes said to be the first native-born American who was professionally trained as an architect.
He also designed Richmond’s Original City Hall. Located between Broad Street and the State Capitol, Original City Hall featured Doric lines with large columns and a symmetrical dome. It was here that the formal surrender of Richmond took place at the end of the Civil War.
While beautiful, this building met its end after the floor of an overcrowded courtroom at the State Capitol collapsed in 1870, killing 60 and injuring 250.
“That made people think that historical buildings aren’t safe,” Loth says. “They tore down a perfectly good Robert Mills City Hall.”
Luckily, Richmond still has the Mills-designed Monumental Church on Broad Street; some sources say that Mills also designed the White House of the Confederacy, but evidence is ambiguous.
On the site of the Original City Hall, Richmond built Old City Hall, which still stands today. The Victorian Gothic is a National Historic Landmark and serves as a state office building.
The Lost Virginia Architecture Lecture will take place Jan. 16 at 6 p.m. at the Branch Museum of Design, 2501 Monument Ave. For more information, visit branchmuseum.org or call (804) 655-6055.