On Dec. 15 of last year, Richmond lost the singular voice of journalist, architectural critic, historian and teacher Edwin “Eddie” Slipek.
For decades, the lifelong Richmonder served up sharp commentary on the happenings of our fair city. His journalism asked us to reconsider our urban streetscapes, reexamine our forgotten history and envision a better tomorrow for Richmond.
While a full summation of Slipek’s work would take a book (say, that’s not a bad idea), here’s a roundup of some of his best stories ahead of his funeral on Saturday, Feb. 28.
Jan. 10, 2012
Slipek’s understanding of the city’s history went much deeper than you’ll find in any textbook. This 2012 cover story about how Richmond courtesan Arabella Huntington became the richest woman in the world — first by marrying railroad tycoon Collis P. Huntington, then his nephew, Henry E. Huntington — is a prime example. Arabella’s Moorish-revival boudoir, where she engaged in part of her decade-long seduction of the elder Huntington (who was the biggest of the “big four” California railroad tycoons and essentially founded Newport News) while he was still married to his first wife, is preserved at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The signage surrounding the Worsham-Rockefeller room at the VMFA dances around this scandalous history.
“‘What would Mr. Jefferson do’ with Second Baptist?”
Feb. 18, 2022
It wasn’t long ago that the classical former Second Baptist Church at 9 W. Franklin St. was slated for the wrecking ball. A 1906 recreation of a Roman temple in France that completed construction in 2 A.D., the building is possessed by Historic Hotels, owner of the Jefferson Hotel next door.
In a commentary piece for Richmond BizSense, Slipek argued for the building’s preservation, noting its location across the Jefferson’s modern entrance: “Rarely does one find such graceful melding of two grand, classical-revival structures, architectural chemistry that makes an urban space, well, a place.”
He asks what Thomas Jefferson himself would have made of the demolition, then calls out Bill Goodwin, the businessman who has given tens of millions of dollars to philanthropic causes over the years: “When I read the Richmond Times-Dispatch quoting Historic Hotels head William Goodwin saying that he and his organization had tried everything for 30 years to figure out a use for Second Baptist, I wondered: Who the heck has Mr. Grinch been talking to?”
July 26, 2011
Reflecting on the then-recent death of Cy Twombly in 2011, Slipek recounts the life and work of Virginia’s “greatest and most celebrated native artist” through the remembrances of photographer Sally Mann, art historian and curator John Ravenal, and philanthropist Frances Lewis. Twombly’s “Synopsis of a Battle,” a paint and crayon work that depicts the 333 B.C. Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great’s forces and the Persians through what appears to be a complex mathematical equation, is part of the VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Collection (the couple founded now defunct retailer Best Products Co.; Frances Lewis died on Jan. 10 at the age of 103).
Noting that Twombly’s work now sells for millions of dollars, Slipek asks Frances Lewis if she collected other Twomblys before he became famous.
“No,” she said ruefully, “Do you know what we paid for that work? $3,000. I could shoot myself.”
Sept. 7, 2005
Always a man about town, Slipek loved traversing the city by foot and conversing with everyone he met. This “on the street” approach to Richmond nearly took his life in 2005. Slipek was on Ryland Street, one of the two boundaries of Grace Street’s infamous Hell Block near VCU, when he came across a domestic dispute. The attempts of Slipek and others to intervene were met with gunfire. Luckily, no one was shot.
“What Do My Annual Holiday Cards Reveal About Our Time?”
Jan. 19, 2018
Anyone close to Slipek knew how much he loved publications. Through the course of any given day, he’d collect every newspaper and pamphlet he could get his hands on — “building my nest,” he’d joke. This love of paper extended to his yearly Christmas card campaign. In this piece, Slipek serves as an armchair anthropologist, asking what the 2017 season’s cards illuminate about society at that moment.
May 27, 2014
Salvador Dali once proposed a pink aluminum sculpture for Monument Avenue that would have featured Confederate woman slaying a dragon atop a giant mushroom?
Believe it or not, it’s all true. In “When Dali Met Sally,” Slipek tells the improbable story of how the Spanish surrealist was enlisted to design a new monument for Monument Avenue. The intended honoree was Capt. Sally Louisa Tompkins, a Civil War-era nurse who was the first female officer of any American army in history.
When Dali’s plan was presented to the monument committee in 1966, it didn’t go over well: “Dali is about as suitable an artist to do a statue of a Confederate Captain Sally Tompkins on Monument Avenue as Cleopatra would be as a candidate for halfback on the Green Bay Packers,” screamed one newspaper editorial.
Needless to say, the proposed sculpture never became a reality, but Tawnya “Dr. T” Pettiford-Wates, a VCU professor of graduate pedagogy in acting and directing, did beat a 9-foot-tall papier-mache replica of it to death with a baseball bat as part of the 2022 Resonate Podcast Festival*.
May 21, 2012
On April 25, 2012, New York-based firm Steven Holl Architects was named designer of the newly announced Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (BCWH Architects of Richmond was named associate architect). Two days later, Slipek interviewed Holl to give Richmonders a better understanding of the architect for ArchitectureRichmond. At the time of the interview, Holl had recently received the American Institute of Architect’s Gold Medal, the profession’s highest accolade for an individual architect. Other famous Holl designs include the Bloch Building addition of Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Simmons Hall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Horizontal Skyscraper, a LEED Platinum complex in Shenzhen, China.
“‘Moaning over the loss of a great view will solve nothing’”
Aug. 26, 2022
A little over three years ago, Legend Brewery publicly raised concerns that a proposed high-rise would block the iconic view of the city skyline from its outdoor deck in Manchester. In this commentary piece for Richmond BizSense, Slipek not only summarizes the issue but offers possible solutions — for the brewery, for the city, for developers — to soften the blow and improve the cityscape in general.
Aug. 25, 2010
James J. Kilpatrick, the journalist and grammarian who was once editor of The Richmond News Leader — the city’s extremely conservative afternoon daily — died in August 2010. As a columnist syndicated throughout the South, Kilpatrick had been a leading advocate for massive resistance to desegregation and worked behind the scenes with state officials to prevent it from happening in Virginia. A number of 2010 remembrances noted that he had since apologized for his segregationist past and played up his writings on grammar and usage. Appalled by what he viewed as a retrospective cleansing of Kilpatrick, Slipek wrote this sour obituary of the man.
“No individual had ever done more to diminish my hometown’s moral spirit,” he observed. “Our city has survived raids, wars, fires and floods. But nothing has left so deep a wound as the words of James J. Kilpatrick.”
Jan. 26, 2021
One treasured piece of Richmond lore is that Louis Malle’s 1981 film “My Dinner with André” was filmed at the Jefferson Hotel. What fewer people know is that Slipek was instrumental in bringing the film production to Richmond.
In this 2021 piece for Style, Slipek recounts how his longtime friend and Richmond native Jeffrey Ullman — the movie’s eventual costume designer — kept pestering him to read the film’s script and pass it along to Andrew and Virginia Lewis. At the time, Andrew Lewis (son of Sydney and Frances) was president of Best Products Co. and Slipek was the company’s director of corporate communications. Thinking the screenplay pretentious, Slipek was hesitant to bring it to his boss and boss’ wife in the interest of seeking additional funding for the film, but the Lewises loved it.
Slipek also suggested the Jefferson as a filming location to co-producer George W. George (son of cartoonist Rube Goldberg) and connected George with the Richmond developer who owned the Jefferson at that time. Back then, Slipek writes, the hotel was “a shuttered and dilapidated fleabag”; filming took place in the hotel’s ballroom in December 1980.
Dec. 29, 2020
At the close of each year, Slipek would write remembrances for the notable Richmonders who had been lost over the previous 365 days. Like any good obit, these pieces gave readers a flavor of the person while also imparting a bit of history. Here’s his list from 2020.
Oct. 1, 2019
Ahead of the installation of Kehinde Wiley’s “Rumors of War” sculpture at the VFMA, Slipek and Style staff photographer Scott Elmquist headed to New York for the artwork’s grand unveiling on Broadway. The event was a who’s who of the wealthy, artsy and in-the-know. The piece gives readers the experience of “being there” as Slipek rubs elbows with Alicia Keys, Swizz Beats and a wide-ranging delegation of Richmonders.
“Remembrance: William A. “Bill” Royall Jr. (1946-2020)”
July 7, 2020
Slipek and Richmond businessman, arts patron and philanthropist Bill Royall became friends while serving on the staff of the Commonwealth Times, Virginia Commonwealth University’s student newspaper. Slipek was Royall’s handpicked successor to the editorship.
Royall later founded direct marketing services firm Royall and Co. (known as EAB today). He and his widow Pam donated and fundraised to help create the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU and facilitated the acquisition of “Rumors of War” among other contributions to the city. For the rest of Royall’s life, Slipek would seek his guidance whenever he had a major life decision to make.
“‘If Richmond Is Serious About Replacing the Coliseum, Here’s How It Should Be Done’”
July 3, 2017
Though the Richmond Coliseum has its detractors, it had a champion in Slipek. Sometimes compared to a metallic Big Mac, the Coliseum has a “spectacular interior concourse, ringed in brick arches, recalls the underbelly of a Roman amphitheater and offers excellent traffic flow. But most importantly, the hall has terrific sight lines — even from the vertigo-inducing steep upper regions. You can always see what’s going on,” he wrote.
Acknowledging in 2017 that saving the Coliseum was probably a lost cause, Slipek serves up some urban planning recommendations to improve the surrounding Court End and Jackson Ward neighborhoods.
July 3, 2018
Aside from longtime Greater Richmond Transit Company staffers, it’s hard to imagine that someone knew the bus system better than Slipek. After being questioned by students Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School students about why he still drove to work if he supported public transportation, he promptly sold his car and took the bus for the rest of his life.
In this 2018 cover story, Slipek reviews the then-recently launched rapid transit Pulse service and documents riders’ first impressions of this new city connector.
May 23, 2018
Lo to anyone who ran afoul of Slipek’s architectural and urban planning sensibilities.
Long the state’s only architecture critic, Slipek didn’t shy away from delivering a smackdown on the page when he felt it was deserved. One memorable instance is his critique of the Pulse stop installed in front of VCU’s Hunton Student Center, which began its life as First Baptist Church.
“It is distressing that the Pulse station somehow ended up where it is, trashing one of our city’s most important pieces of architecture, a remarkably beautiful edifice and a smartly re-purposed building,” he wrote. “The station should be moved.”
June 18, 2019
On the heels of lauded Chinese American architect I.M. Pei’s death, Slipek wrote an admiring piece of VCU’s McGlothlin Medical Education Building. Designed by Pei’s New York firm Pei Cobb Freed with Philadelphia-based Ballinger, the building got a rave.
“Such architecturally distinguished contemporary buildings are rare here,” he writes. “It takes its place among VCU architectural landmarks from much earlier times such as Hunton Hall and the Egyptian Building, and the neighboring Monumental Church and Old City Hall.”
The critique offers more than a celebration of the same architect who designed the glass and metal pyramid of the Louvre in Paris; it serves as a reminder of how architecture can enhance our public spaces and allow Richmonders to reconnect with their city’s history.
Edwin Slipek’s funeral will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 28 at Second Presbyterian Church, 5 N. Fifth St.
*Full disclosure: Griset was a producer and performer for this live podcast episode of “Love + Radio” at the Resonate Podcast Festival.
