#ghostmurals

Yonan Rugs - a little architectural history

Two aging Yonan Rugs advertisements found at 214 E Franklin Street, side of building along 3rd Street in between E Franklin and E Grace Streets.

These two are intriguing, so I decided to do a little digging using the only investigative, historic research tool I know of - Google. Here are a few things I dug up:

Yonan’s Persian Rugs Ad from a 1922 Richmond-Times Dispatch newspaper.

See the above advertisement announcing the opening of Yonan’s Persian Rug Store in Richmond in the Sunday, May 7th 1922 edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The address listed in the ad is just one block away from the location of the ghost sign. [See newspaper here - thanks archive at The Library of Virginia!]

I also found that this building is listed on the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, is classified as Art Deco, and as part of the Grace Street Commercial Historic District. [Original Registration Form and Amended Registration Form as submitted by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources]

The official description of the building: “Built in 1938, as a retail space for Yonan Persian Rugs, 214 E Franklin Street was designed by Carl Linder. Decoration is limited to an ornamented colored band that outlines the top of the display windows and the entrance bay. The upper floors are a later addition.”

According to the registration, Grace and Franklin Streets formed a trendy residential and shopping district in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (I highly recommend reading the original historic registration documentation for its narrative on the neighborhood’s historic bona fides.) 

Carl Linder is listed as the architect of a number of buildings in the decades surrounding the Yonan Rugs building on Grace and Franklin Street. Linder’s uncle, Carl Reuhrmund, was also an architect born in Germany who emigrated to the U.S. and Richmond in 1881. I found a great bio of Carl Linder, and his legacy in Richmond, on ArchitectureRichmond.com. The article and photos are credited to Robert P. Winthrop of Winthrop, Jenkins and Associates and author of several Richmond architecture books.

I couldn’t find much about what has become of Yonans’ Rugs. Quick google searches showed a Yonan rug company out of Chicago, but no indication if the two are related or not. Is the company still in business? Are there Yonan’s still in Richmond? Ghost signs bring more questions than answers.

However, there must be some karmic synergy in the fact that this building is now home to a different oriental rug company (Christian-Lorraine Oriental Rugs).

Thanks, and I hope this piece finds you well! It is fine using ghost signs to scratch the itch of a passion for both photography and history.

-Sarah, Ghost RVA

[SIDE BAR: I live in this neighborhood and here’s what the historic register has to say about my own apartment building, which had been restored in just the last couple of years: