The story below is from our November/December 2016 issue. For the full story Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Location
Runs east and west along the railroad tracks through Roanoke from Williamson Road downtown to The Boulevard (24th Street) and Shaffers Crossing in Northwest.
Features
You name it and you can probably find it on Salem Avenue, whether you want it or not. From the spaceship-like Taubman Museum, cute little shops, restaurants and Roanoke’s tallest building on the east to old warehouses and car dealerships turned into trendy lofts and condos, to popular gay bars, to seedy empty lots and car repair shops and a couple of homeless shelters in the middle to light manufacturing concerns to subsidized housing at the west end, you can find it on Salem Avenue.
Significance
As old as the city itself, Salem Avenue passes through or by five of Roanoke’s 11 listed historic districts, including Downtown, City Market, N&W Railway Company, Warehouse, and Salem Avenue/Roanoke Automotive Commercial historic districts.
History
Salem Avenue was never a glamorous boulevard; never had much cache like Jefferson Street or Campbell Avenue. It was built on a marsh—not unlike most of downtown, but marshier. It was opened as a link between the New Town of Roanoke and the Old Town of Big Lick, which was concentrated west of Jefferson in the vicinity of what is now Campbell Avenue and Second Street north to the railroad tracks. Once the boom started, things moved east toward Jefferson Street and Williamson Road. As Roanoke newspaperman and historian Raymond Barnes described it, “This thoroughfare, lying in marshy uneven ground, gave birth to flimsy, hastily constructed buildings and only here and there one found a brick affair built for permanence.”
No, Salem Avenue, was more of a working man’s street where working men crossed the railroad tracks to get a drink, have some fun, lay down some hard-earned N&W cash. That appeal to the working man’s dollar is what eventually led to Salem Avenue’s downfall. As Big Lick boomed into the city of Roanoke in the 1880s and ‘90s, as substantial buildings for commerce and finance rose on Jefferson and Campbell, Salem Avenue became the watering hole for those who labored to make it happen. By the turn of the century, Salem Avenue was the address for some 30 of Roanoke’s 40 saloons. And drinking wasn’t the only thing that took place along the muddy unpaved street. Some saloons had clandestine gambling dens in backrooms and brothels upstairs. The city did little to curtail these latter activities, feeling that the working stiffs needed a little fun.
The Roanoke newspaper reported that Salem Avenue at this time was also inhabited by a number of grifters and quack medicine salesmen operating in vacant lots: “Here has congregated a collection of traveling museums, fakers, merry-go-rounds and other schemes to beguile the pennies from the pockets of the man who does not know any better.”
If the newspaper and church-going Roanokers thought Salem Avenue had become a cesspool of crime and corruption, they could see that it was a literal cesspool of mud and filth and disease as well. Rand Dotson in his book “Roanoke, Virginia 1882-1912— Magic City of the New South” draws on newspaper accounts of the day to describe the nasty conditions on Salem Avenue and other streets surrounding the Roanoke’s City Market Building where vendors parked their wagons. “Wherever these wagons have stood there is left piles of garbage… festering in the sun, breeding disease.”
City fathers knew the conditions were bad and that unpaved streets such as Commerce (now Second), Railroad and Salem avenues were muddy miasmas after a rain, but the fast-growing city simply did not yet have funds for a permanent fix. So they got the chain gang out to fill mud holes with gravel.
What killed Salem Avenue, however, according to Raymond Barnes was not muddy streets but state-wide prohibition which arrived in November 1916, four years ahead of the national drought. “The lights in 30 stores went out and Salem Avenue was doomed,” he wrote. “Yet over the black faces of the first floors, dim lights glared all night from those quarters housing ‘furnished rooms’…Occasionally business was interrupted by police raids, but on the whole this nuisance was tolerated.” Along with the nip joints selling illegal corn likker, he might have added.
Despite hard times on the east end, Salem Avenue on the west side of Jefferson Street housed a Roanoke landmark and arguably the most famous building in Roanoke’s history: the legendary Academy of Music, “built lavishly and acoustically perfect along the lines of European opera houses,” according to Carolyn Hale Bruce, author of Roanoke Past and Present. The Academy opened its doors in the 400 block of Salem Avenue on October 4, 1892, and for 60 years brought to Roanoke world-famous actors, bands, and performers, such as Sarah Bernhardt, Tallulah Bankhead, Ethel Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, and many others. The building was razed in 1953 for a parking lot which it remains to this day.
With the coming of the automobile, Salem Avenue finally got paved and business moved on west toward what had been a residential area in the 1880s. By 1919 Salem Avenue from downtown westward was home to small retail businesses, light industrial firms and warehouses. By the 1920s the automobile had caught on in Roanoke and numerous dealers and service businesses had opened on Salem and Campbell avenues. Fulton Motor Company built a showroom at 400 Salem Avenue in 1928 beside the Academy of Music. The Fulton building later became home to Magic City Motors and today is one of the leading lights to give Salem Avenue new life.
Interest in spiffing up the Roanoke City Market in the 1980s started a renaissance for Salem Avenue that has been slow in coming. Renaissance may not even be the right word since that implies revival of what was. Nobody lobbied for that. Roanokers were so traumatized by Salem Avenue’s reputation for turn-of-the-century bawdy houses and later-day prostitutes and transvestites that some are still afraid to venture downtown. Once they do, however, they find a whole new look and vibe.
Today and beyond
What is happening on Salem Avenue, thanks in large part to private investors and historic tax credits, is a metamorphosis into something entirely different, a cool place to visit, dine and even live.
Richmond-based developer Bill Chapman has led the way with housing in the 300 and 400 blocks around the trendy and successful Beamer’s 25 Restaurant. He developed the Fulton Motor Lofts, whose parking lot was once the Academy of Music. He also created the Lofts at West Station across the street beside Beamer’s and Parkway 301 on nearby First Street. He is now renovating a 1930s warehouse into 416 MicroFarms apartment complex with an adjoining Mexican restaurant and tequila bar. Thus far, Chapman has invested more than $25 million into downtown living. His efforts have created 180 apartments and condos, adding to a downtown resident population that has grown to 1,700, many of them young professionals.
Chapman had planned to put the next phase of his West Station Lofts in the old Habitat for Humanity Building at 403 Salem, but announced in September that instead he will lease the space to the Big Lick Brewing Co., currently located in a smaller building at 135 Salem. The new space will enable Big Lick to greatly enlarge its brewing capacity and will include a large outdoor seating area with multiple fire pits, covered picnic tables, space for games and food trucks, and a stage for live entertainment.
Raymond Barnes was still lamenting the death of Salem Avenue in the 1960s: “As I have stated often in this column, prohibition killed Salem Avenue in 1916 and the street never again made a comeback.”
Well, maybe Mr. Barnes was wrong.