Stearns Iron-Front Building
Richmond, United States
Exterior only
Visible from the street; the inside is private.
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The Stearns Iron-Front Building, a four-story commercial structure in Richmond, Virginia, was erected in 1869 by Richmond Unionist Franklin Stearns on the site of the former Planters Bank Building. Measuring 107 feet wide by 64 feet deep, the brick building features a distinctive cast-iron front across fourteen bays, exemplifying the Italianate style popular in mid-nineteenth-century American commercial architecture. Designed to house rental apartments and office space, it gained prominence when Richmond's circuit court convened there beginning in 1870. The property changed hands in 1923 when Stearns's grandchildren's estate sold it; by then, its ornamental iron front had become notable enough to warrant documentation in the Historic American Buildings Survey. The building was designated a Virginia Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
Movement
- Type
- commercial building
- Heritage
- National Register of Historic Places listed place, Virginia Historic Landmark
- Place
- Richmond, United States
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Location