Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 10, 1994 TAG: 9404100139
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Much of the town burned in 1815. Fifty years later, Ulysses S. Grant's cannons laid a crippling siege to the city and forced Robert E. Lee into a headlong run that ended the Civil War a week later at the Appomattox Court House.
More recently, in 1985, its largest employer, the Brown and Williamson tobacco plant, closed its gates to 4,000 workers. The city went into an economic swan dive.
So, when a tornado slashed through Petersburg last August, it left a lot of destruction in the hands of a populace versed in the art of dusting itself off and building things anew.
The storm killed three people in nearby Colonial Heights. Nobody died in Petersburg, but, in a few brutal minutes, two very different neighborhoods, both close to the city's heart, were in ruins: Old Towne, the historic district of antebellum brick buildings housing dozens of small businesses, and Pocahontas Island, an insular little hideaway populated largely by descendants of free blacks who had settled there while slavery was still at issue.
In both parts of town, seven months after the storm, recovery is still a struggle.
On a morning walk through Petersburg's Old Towne section, if your eyes stay at street level, you might not notice anything wrong.
Here and there are piles of ancient brick, or a construction chute emptying into a Dumpster that blocks the sidewalk. It all could pass for normal renovation.
Little seems amiss. Until you look up.
Then you notice that the top of the building you're admiring is splayed open to the sunlight like some ripe brick watermelon. Across the street, buildings have sheets of black or bright blue plastic strapped across their tops where century-old metal roofs had been.
Had the funnel cloud struck just a few blocks south, the damage to Petersburg's seen-better-days business district might not have been so critical. Had it taken out the abandoned tobacco plant, residents might have allowed themselves some righteous little smiles.
Instead, it tore out the heart of a district that was blossoming into something of a legitimate tourist attraction.
The storm was "very, very selective," said Bill Martin, the city's tourism director. "It was just a narrow band of damage, but that narrow band of damage went right through the Old Street historical district."
Antiquity, the very attribute that made the buildings special, has contributed to the difficulty in rebuilding. In Colonial Heights, the Wal-Mart that collapsed already has been replaced by a newer, bigger, bolder Wal-Mart. One looks pretty much like another.
In Old Towne, however, the architecture is the challenge.
"Old buildings always cost a great deal to repair," said Patricia Adams, who leads the Historic Petersburg Foundation. "These were important businesses to us, but not necessarily businesses that made a lot of money. It's been difficult for them to get back on track."
Even owners with good insurance found that their policies were linked to the cost of replacing modern construction, leaving a large gap between the insurance check and the bills for renovation. In Old Towne, repairs might call for specially milled rafters or paneling, or craftsmanship that isn't readily available. It makes for slow going.
"Shopping mall or subdivision developers have no idea how an old building is done," she said. "Those walls may be six courses of brick thick. It's labor-intensive, material-intensive."
Old Towne Petersburg is a place for people who take antiquity seriously. This is not a Williamsburg-style reinvented village, and it's certainly nothing like the history wonderland that the Disney people are planning near Washington, D.C.
Wander off a main street in Petersburg and you realize that the building housing a new business out front still has an 1800s beam sticking out over the alley in back. Look at the doors, original, and the beam placement, and you quickly realize that the alley entrance had been a stable. The beam held a pulley that lifted grain to the loft.
Ninety businesses had adapted themselves to Old Towne's 152 buildings at the time the tornado hit. Six buildings were destroyed, 47 were badly damaged, and nearly 90 more were affected to varying degrees.
By spring, work was finished on 76 buildings, and repairs were under way on 27 more. Thirty-two hadn't been touched. Seven businesses closed or left the city, but six new ones have opened in Old Towne.
"Given the number of buildings affected," Bill Martin said, "we're doing pretty good. Substantial progress has been made.
"But some are still dealing with insurance difficulties; others are still working with the Small Business Administration to get loans to begin the restoration process. There are still some uncertainties out there."
There are uncertainties up on the river, too, at Pocahontas Island. Monica Stokes talked about them on a chilly morning as she stood at the curb of a vacant lot where her home once sat. Next door, a stiff breeze pushed scraps of cardboard across the vacant lot where her father's home had been.
The family had four houses on the block between Witten and Rolfe streets. Her sister's place still is standing, and a brother's new home is about half-done. A handful of others are under construction, and a few brand-new houses have been completed.
"To me, it's been slow," she said of the rebuilding. "It's been almost a year, and I ain't got a . . . thing yet."
It's all a jumble to her, the patchwork of aid plans and agencies that are supposed to help her and her husband and two daughters get back on their feet. "They tell you one thing, then they tell you something else."
Her brother's place is well along because he had insurance. "My father just gave me my house the Monday before the storm," she said, "so I didn't have a chance to get insurance."
The family's been part of the neighborhood for nearly 60 years. Many Pocahontas folks trace their deeds back to the freedmen who settled there on a piece of high ground that splits the Appomattox River, long before Lee and Grant traded cannonades in the siege of 1864-65.
Many Pocahontas Island homes are as old as the brick structures of Old Towne, but their aging wood frames make them terribly vulnerable. Only two walls still are standing of the one building that was the emotional core of the settlement right up to the day of the storm: a chapel that dated to the early 1800s.
Architects have looked at the framing and old photos, and eventually the church will be rebuilt. Today, though, it doesn't look much different than it did moments after the tornado moved through.
Unlike other big-city tragedies such as the Los Angeles earthquake or the south Florida hurricane, the Petersburg tornado did not qualify for a federal disaster designation, which would have loosened government funds. It's a sore point among some involved in the restoration.
State money has plugged some of the gap, donations have helped elsewhere, and businesses that were hit can qualify for low-interest loans.
Steadily, bricks and mortar, wood and nails are coming into place in Old Towne and Pocahontas Island. But the time that it's taking is deepening the sense of loss.
"At first, we were horrified and in shock," Patricia Allen said, "then there was a period of euphoria - `We'll rebuild this!'
"Then the reality sets in: dealing with the insurance, the loans, the contractors. People began to feel discouraged. We realized it would all take a lot longer than initially anticipated."
In Old Towne, they long for an end to the construction, a return of the tranquility and the very subtle splendor one feels when wandering the streets of an authentic old neighborhood.
Up on the rise at Pocahontas Island, Monica Stokes, whose family now leases a $400-a-month, cookie-cutter apartment across town, described the sense of emptiness in more visceral terms.
"I'm anxious to get back," she said, casting a long look down Witten Street. "People look out for each other here.
by CNB