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Monumental Church, 1224 East Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia

Why This Richmond Church Was Built Over a Grave

On December 26, 1811, fire swept the Richmond Theatre, killing Virginia's governor and dozens more. Monumental Church was built over the common grave.

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The story

At Broad and Twelfth in downtown Richmond there's an old church with a dome and a columned porch. It was built over a grave.

On the night of December 26, 1811, this was the site of Richmond's theater. More than six hundred people were inside when it caught fire. Virginia's governor was among the dead. Seventy-two names were recorded, and there were probably more. Afterward, the city decided that many of the dead would stay right where they died.

The theater

Richmond's theater was a three-story brick building. It had opened in 1806, on the same spot where an earlier theater had burned down.

That Thursday night was a benefit performance for Mr. Placide, one of the company's leaders: a new play, and after it, a pantomime. The house had three parts: the pit in front of the stage, two tiers of boxes, and the gallery.

The men who investigated the fire later wrote that people had often asked, as the crowd left at the end of a play, "Suppose the house were on fire, what should we do?" On the night after Christmas, it stopped being a question.

The lamp

Between the first and second acts of the pantomime, a hanging lamp that had lit one of the scenes was lifted up out of sight, among the scenery above the stage. It had two wicks. Only one had been lit, and no one had put it out.

The theater's property man saw it. Three times, he told a carpenter: "Lower that lamp and blow it out." As it was being lowered, the cords tangled, and the lamp swung into one of the hanging scenes. Thirty-five scenes were hanging up there, and thirty-four of them were painted canvas.

The fire climbed into the roof. There was no plaster ceiling under it, just pine boards and shingles. The investigators estimated that within four or five minutes the whole roof was one sheet of flame.

At first, some voices in the house called out that there was no danger. One actor, Mr. Robertson, signaled to the audience to get out. It was around half past ten, according to a letter written the next day.

The staircase

The pit and the boxes shared a single entrance. By the investigators' count, 598 people were in that part of the house, and they had, as the investigators put it, one common avenue out.

One of the theater's managers, William Twaits, described the way in: an entrance so narrow that two people could scarcely pass at the same time, then a gloomy passage, a narrow winding staircase, and a lobby just as narrow. For the people in the boxes, that same route in reverse was the way out.

The staircase jammed. One survivor said it gave way with the crowd on it. People went to the windows instead. Mr. Robertson helped about a dozen women out of a front window, and then had to jump himself.

Most of the people in the pit seem to have made it out. So did most of those in the gallery, which had its own stairs. The worst of it was at the foot of the stairs from the boxes.

The people

Gilbert Hunt was an enslaved man in Richmond, later known as the city's blacksmith. According to accounts written decades later, the woman who enslaved his wife begged him that night to go to the theater and find her daughter, a young woman named Louisa Mayo. Hunt stood beneath an upper window while a doctor, James McCaw, lowered women down to him. Together, those accounts say, they got about a dozen out. He never found Louisa. She was among the dead. In 1829, Gilbert Hunt bought his own freedom.

Charles Copland had left the play early and gone home, but four of his children were still inside. He went back into the theater three times and brought two women out alive. At the foot of the stairs he searched for his daughter, Margaret, feeling for the cloth of her dress. In his diary he wrote: "I found my two sons, but my daughter was no more."

George William Smith had been acting governor since the spring, and the legislature had elected him governor just three weeks before the fire. Accounts at the time said he may have gotten out and gone back in to save his child. Even then, nobody knew for sure. He didn't survive.

Most of the dead were women and girls. Six of the recorded dead were Black, free and enslaved.

What the city did

A committee chosen at a public meeting of Richmond's citizens looked into the cause. It found no sign that anyone meant it to happen. In its words, "it was inattention, it was the grossest negligence." It blamed the way the building was made for the number of deaths.

Richmond banned public shows and dances for four months. People were asked to wear mourning crape for a month and to keep a day of prayer.

The grave

At first the city planned to bury the unclaimed remains in the public burying ground. A day later it changed its mind: they would stay where they died, on ground the city would buy and wall in.

On the Sunday after the fire, the remains no family had claimed were carried in two large mahogany boxes and buried together in one common grave in the middle of the ruins, where the pit had been.

The plan was a monument over the grave, and John Marshall, the chief justice, helped raise the money. That plan merged with an Episcopal effort to build a new church. The city gave five thousand dollars and the site. Robert Mills designed the building, and it went up between 1812 and 1814. It came to be known as Monumental Church.

One more connection: Edgar Allan Poe's mother, an actress, had died in Richmond just eighteen days before the fire. As a boy, Poe went to church here.

What the record shows, and what it doesn't

  • Seventy-two names were officially recorded. The historian Meredith Henne Baker counts at least seventy-six and thinks there were more. Higher numbers from the first days were estimates, not a count.
  • The committee's report says the crowd choked the staircase. Only one survivor said it gave way.
  • Gilbert Hunt's part in the rescue is known from accounts written decades later.
  • The 1812 engraving of the fire is a period print, not an eyewitness record, and no picture of the theater from before the fire turned up in the sources.
  • Where exactly the common grave lies under the church is not settled.

Seeing it today

Monumental Church is a National Historic Landmark, cared for by Historic Richmond. You can see it from the sidewalk at 1224 East Broad Street, and tours are available by arrangement through Historic Richmond. The city first planned a monument over the grave. What it got was a church.

Watch the film above to see the investigators' report, the witness statements and the church across two centuries.

Sources

Credits

Benjamin Tanner, "The Burning of the Theatre in Richmond, Virginia," published 1812, National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Mary E. Maxwell Fund, 1956), public domain. From the Library of Congress, public domain: Monumental Church, 1865 (LC-B811-3369); William Henry Jackson / Detroit Publishing Co., 1903 (LC-D4-16194); the broadside "Theatre on fire. Awful calamity!", 1812; Sanborn Map Company, 1886; F. W. Beers, Illustrated Atlas of the City of Richmond, Va., 1876; and the Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS VA-1241, measured drawings (1986–89) and photographs by Jack Boucher, 1987. John F. Watson, Calamity at Richmond (1812), Internet Archive, University of Pittsburgh Library System copy, public domain. "Inside View of the New Theatre, Philadelphia," engraved by Ralph after J. Lewis, 1794, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, public domain via Wikimedia Commons (a Philadelphia theater, not Richmond's). The diagram of the theater is illustrative, not a floor plan. Poster: Monumental Church, photograph by William Henry Jackson, Detroit Publishing Co., 1903, Library of Congress, public domain. Original score.