315 Albemarle Avenue SE · Building history

A 1912 can factory, put back to work four times.

The buildings at 315 Albemarle went up in 1912 for the Virginia Can Company, the first and largest maker of tin cans in Roanoke, on the newly laid Virginian Railway line. They made cans for about 40 years and dresses for 11, then spent nearly four decades as the warehouse for Heironimus, Roanoke’s department store. The complex has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2006.

Timeline Four names on one wall The companies

The brick office building at 315 Albemarle Ave SE with S. H. Heironimus Co. Warehouse painted in white letters on a black band between its two storeys.

1890 to now

Timeline

1890
S. H. Heironimus and L. K. Brugh open a store on Second Street SW in Roanoke: one floor, 25 feet wide, 120 feet deep, two employees. It will be 73 years before the store has anything to do with this building.
1912
The factory buildings go up for the Virginia Can Company, the first and largest manufacturer of tin cans in Roanoke, on the newly established Virginian Railway line. The architect was not recorded.
1927
United States Can Company takes over the operation.
c. 1928
Continental Can Company takes over. Around the same time Consolidated Can Company buys the property and builds the two-storey office building, replacing an earlier one-storey office.
1951
Canning ends after roughly 40 years. The complex stands empty for a year.
1952
Kenrose Manufacturing Company turns the buildings into a clothing factory, sewing washable frocks and dresses on the open factory floors.
1963
The S. H. Heironimus Company, by then Roanoke’s department store at Jefferson and Church, buys the complex for its warehouse.
1996
The downtown Heironimus store closes. The warehouse stays in use into the early 2000s.
2005–06
Listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register on 7 December 2005, and on the National Register of Historic Places on 22 February 2006.
2013
Added to the Roanoke River and Railroad Historic District. The complex also sits within the Southeast Roanoke Historic District.
Now
A record shop and Albemarle Studios on the ground floor, and the Star View Room on the second floor of the north building, the South Star Loft upstairs in the south building, and The Can Dock between them.

The roofline

Four names on one wall

The same band of brick along the roofline has carried four company names in turn. The band is still there, and you can see what’s left of two of the signs from the parking lot.

Period booklet photograph of the Virginia Can Company plant: two brick factory buildings with VIRGINIA CAN COMPANY painted on the parapets, the small office, and rail sidings with boxcars at the loading dock. — From a period booklet: “Virginia Can Company, Manufacturers Tin Cans for Food Products.”

Virginia Can Company 1912

The original, painted across three roof parapets, one of them reading VIRGINIA CAN COMPANY “SANITARY” CANS. Note the rail sidings running right up to the loading dock. This sign now survives only in photographs.

Mid-century photograph of the complex from across the railway tracks: CONTINENTAL CAN COMPANY INC. painted on the parapet, a sign on the office reading ROANOKE PLANT CONTINENTAL CAN CO. INC., and two cars parked in front. — Mid-century, seen from across the tracks.

Continental Can Company Inc. c. 1928

This is the sign whose remains are on the south parapet today. The 2005 National Register nomination identifies the faded band as Continental Can Co., not Virginia Can. After dark you can see it from the Star View Room’s south windows, under the Mill Mountain Star.

1950s photograph of the factory painted WASHABLE FROCKS, Kenrose Mfg. Co. Inc. in script, and WASHABLE DRESSES, with period cars parked in front and a Pitzer Transfer Corp. moving truck at the dock. — 1950s, with a Pitzer Transfer Corp. truck at the dock.

Kenrose Mfg. Co. Inc. 1952

The Kenrose name in painted script, flanked by WASHABLE FROCKS and WASHABLE DRESSES.

S. H. Heironimus Co. Warehouse 1963

Painted between the two storeys of the office building (the photograph at the top of this page) and still easy to read from the street. If you are coming for a tour, it is the easiest way to spot the building.

From the National Register nomination

The building itself

The complex is U-shaped: three connected buildings, one office building and two factory buildings, all two storeys of brick on concrete foundations. A second-storey pedestrian bridge once connected the two factories. It is retired now, a weathered timber landmark best admired from the dock below rather than walked. A brick hyphen links the office to the north factory.

Accent tiles, patterned brickwork and cast concrete keystones run throughout, which is why it reads as a designed building and not a shed. The factory floors are open, with maple boards and exposed brick and structure. The architect and builder are recorded as not known.

Who worked here

The companies

Virginia Can Company, 1912–1927

The first and largest tin can manufacturer in Roanoke. The siting was the point: the plant went up on the newly established Virginian Railway line, so cans could go out and tin could come in by the carload. Its customers were the valley’s canneries, which turned what the farms grew into something that could be shipped and stored.

United States Can and Continental Can, 1927–1951

The operation passed to United States Can Company in 1927 and to Continental Can Company around 1928, with Consolidated Can Company buying the property in the same period and building the office. Continental was one of the two giants of American can making. Cans came out of this building until 1951.

Kenrose Manufacturing Company, 1952–1963

After a year standing empty, the complex became a clothing factory. The floors built for can-making machinery filled with sewing machines and rows of workers.

1950s photograph of the Kenrose sewing floor: women at rows of sewing machines under long fluorescent light fixtures, with racks of garments behind them. — The Kenrose sewing floor in the 1950s. Which floor of the complex this is was not recorded.

S. H. Heironimus Company, 1963 to the early 2000s

Heironimus was Roanoke’s department store. Founded in 1890 by S. H. Heironimus and L. K. Brugh with two employees, it was incorporated under the Heironimus name in 1906 after Robert Lee Lynn Sr. bought out Brugh’s interest, and moved to Jefferson and Church streets in 1915. A $1.3 million remodel in 1956 added escalators. The Lynn family later sold to The Dunlap Company of Fort Worth, and the downtown store closed in 1996.

From 1963 this was where the store kept its stock, which is why its name is on the wall. Nearly four decades of Roanoke’s Christmas inventory came through these doors.

Upstairs, today

The Star View Room is on the second floor of the 1912 north factory.

Original maple floors, the brick walls, timber posts and skylights are all still there. Windows run down three walls, and the Mill Mountain Star sits in the south glass after dark, above the Continental Can sign. People have been working on this floor since 1912, and now you can rent it by the hour for meetings, events and shoots.

Book a free tour See the room

The Mill Mountain Star lit on the wooded hillside at dusk, above the Continental Can ghost sign painted on the warehouse's south parapet.

Sources

National Register of Historic Places nomination, Virginia Can Company–S. H. Heironimus Warehouse, DHR file 128-5455, NRHP reference 06000067, listed 22 February 2006.
“Heironimus History,” Roanoke Times, 14 January 1996.