DATE: Monday, May 5, 1997                   TAG: 9705050035

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: George Tucker 

                                            LENGTH:   71 lines

NORFOLK STREETS HAVE RICH PRE-REVOLUTIONARY HERITAGE

Even though downtown Norfolk has undergone many face lifts during the past two decades, it still retains enough of its time-honored street names to link it with its rich, pre-Revolutionary past.

Of these, Main and Church streets, the lower part of the latter now known as St. Paul's Boulevard, are the oldest.

Laid out by John Ferebee, the Lower Norfolk County Court's official surveyor when the town was established in 1680, Norfolk's main drag originally extended eastward from Four Farthing Point (later Town Point) on the Elizabeth River and the mouth of Town Back Creek north of the point to Dun-in-the-Mire Creek (later Newton's Creek) at its other extremity.

Church Street, running northward from Main Street, was first known as ``the street that leadeth into the woods'' and later as ``the street that leadeth out of town.'' It crossed a narrow causeway connecting the land on which ``Norfolk Towne'' was first established and the open country north of Town Back and Dun-in-the-Mire creeks. Later, it was renamed Church Street because Norfolk's second borough church, now St. Paul's Episcopal Church, was built on its western side in 1739.

Norfolk's first notable real estate boom took place in the 1760s, when Gershom Nimmo surveyed the extensive property of Samuel Boush III, the owner of most of the land north of Town Back and Dun-in-the-Mire creeks, at which time the present Boush Street was named for him. This expansion to the north gave rise to a bevy of street designations that linked the new and fashionable residential section with high-ranking British notables of that period.

Granby Street was named for John Manners, Marquis of Granby (1721-1770), a popular military hero of the Seven Years War. Cumberland Street got its name from William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765), the uncle of George III who defeated Prince Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender, popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie) and his Jacobite forces at Culloden Moor, Scotland, in 1746. Cumberland was also known as the ``Bloody Duke'' because of his brutality to Prince Charles' Scottish Highlanders after the battle.

Charlotte Street was named for the Princess Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (d. 1818), who married George III in 1761. Through her son, Edward, Duke of Kent (1767-1820), she became the grandmother of Queen Victoria (1819-1901).

Freemason Street was so called because Norfolk's Royal Exchange Masonic Lodge erected its ``Mason's Hall'' on the southeast corner of what is now Freemason and Cumberland streets shortly after 1764. The Willoughby-Baylor House now stands on that site.

Bute Street was named for John Stuart, Third Earl of Bute (1713-1792), a Scottish favorite of George III who was also the British prime minister from 1762 to 1763. He is remembered today principally because he granted Dr. Samuel Johnson, whom James Boswell immortalized in his famous biography, a pension of 300 pounds a year.

Other old Norfolk streets that still retain their pre-Revolutionary designations are Duke, York, Dunmore and Botetourt, the first two of which take their names from Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (1763-1837), the second son of George III.

Dunmore Street received its name from John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore (1732-1809), who was Virginia's last royal governor from 1771 to 1775. It was the cannonading from his ships anchored along the Elizabeth River waterfront that began the destruction of pre-Revolutionary Norfolk on Jan. 1, 1776.

Botetourt Street takes its name from Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt (1718-1770), the popular royal governor of Virginia from 1768 to 1770.

One other Norfolk pre-Revolutionary thoroughfare still bearing a corruption of its original name deserves mention. This is Magazine Lane, running north from Brambleton Avenue to Olney Road a few feet west of Granby Street near The Virginian-Pilot building. This narrow lane, originally called Gunpowder Street and looking more like an alley today, received its name because a powder magazine, containing ordnance for the defense of Norfolk, was built there in 1774 in compliance with an act of the Virginia Assembly passed two years earlier.

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