The Southern Stove Works, constructed in 1902, typifies industrial purpose-built architecture, with some elaboration above and beyond the strictly utilitarian. The complex, arising near crucial rail lines, retains sufficient architectural integrity to this day to convey its historic function as a facility for manufacturing and storing the company’s complete line of stoves. Southern was one of the two largest stove companies in Richmond, an important city in the South for stove manufacturing, including cast and sheet metal products. In 1920–1921, J.P. Taylor Leaf Tobacco Company purchased and occupied the complex, utilizing it as a manufacturing facility for tobacco hogsheads and tobacco storage, part of a far-flung empire of tobacco trading.  The Southern Stove Works relocated at that time to a new factory in the Manchester section of Richmond.