AKA Biggs Furniture Company

318 East Franklin Street (Studio)

Built, unknown

Demolished, unknown

900 West Marshall Street (Factory)

Biggs made high-quality colonial reproduction furniture. The company was started by J.F. Biggs, who began selling antiques in Richmond in 1890. A 1912 ad claimed the antiques shop was Virginia’s largest dealer of “old mahogany furniture, old brass, cut glass, copper plate, old china, engravings, paintings, etc.” The company began making high-end reproduction furniture when the supply of antique furniture dwindled. (Kovels)

They used only the Finest Solid Mahogany to construct their pieces. They competed with Baltimore’s Potthast Brothers for high end buyers in the Baltimore and Washington DC area. Their Baltimore Furniture business was so good, that they even had a store on “Charles Street”- a very upscale business district on the North side of Baltimore. (Cornerstone)

In 1974, the Biggs Furniture Company of Richmond, Virginia was acquired by the Kittinger Furniture Company and it became the Biggs Division of Kittinger. The Biggs Division was licensed to produce the Old Dominion Collection, Old Sturbridge Village Collection and Thomas Jefferson Furniture Reproductions.

These collections included an extensive collection of important pieces of Americana from early country furniture to beautifully developed Queen Anne and Rococo furniture. (Stenella Antiques)

Sometimes, acquisition is the best compliment you can pay to a competitor. How cool is this? A company starts out as a simple antiques dealer, then when the supply-chain dries up, says “we’ve got more where that came from”, and opens up a factory to produce Colonial-era furniture en-masse. And not just cheap knock offs — this was the good stuff.

This Classical Revival manufacturing facility has a two-story, three-bay by seven-bay office block at the eastern end and a one-story, seven-bay factory wing to the west.

The factory wing rises to two stories in height north of the one-story section. Vertical concrete pilasters express the bays. They are set on a concrete base and terminate at another concrete band above which is a cast stone cornice. All of the bays are in-filled with multi-light, steel industrial sash windows except on the first story of the office block where they are in-filled with brick. (Living Places)

So how to classify Biggs? It’s is a bit of a toss-up. The original location is no longer with us, but the factory building, constructed 33 years after the company’s founding still remains, another of Richmond’s repurposed apartment buildings. Yes, some of it still exists, but with half being gone, and the other part no longer remotely engaged in the same activity – RVA Legend it is.

(Biggs Antique Co. is part of the Atlas RVA Project)

Sources

[RGB] The Richmond Guide Book. Louise Nurney Kernoodle. 1923.

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