St. Luke Building (Boundary Increase)

Located at 900 St. James Street in Richmond, this four-story office building has a yellow pressed-brick facade, a modillion cornice and segmental and round-arched windows. John H. White designed it, and it was built about 1902-1903. Between 1915 and 1920 it was enlarged and rebuilt under Charles T. Russell, a Virginia Union University professor, with Henry J. Moore as contractor. The building serves as national headquarters of the Independent Order of St. Luke, a benevolent society formed after the Civil War to aid freed slaves. Under Maggie L. Walker, who became executive secretary in 1899, membership grew from 700 to 20,000 by 1910, and the Order founded a penny savings bank, a department store and a weekly magazine, the St. Luke Herald. The basement still holds the original printing equipment, and Walker's fourth-floor office is kept as it was at her death in 1934. It is the oldest black-affiliated office building in Richmond and remains a landmark to her work.