1792 Federal-era townhouse in downtown Norfolk where a fatal 1811 quarrel lingers — visitors report a top-hatted figure pacing the garden.
323 E Freemason St, Norfolk, VA 23510
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission. Small group tours available Saturday and Sunday afternoons; private appointments at (757) 333-1087.
Access
Limited Access
Historic 1792 townhouse with original staircases; ground floor partially accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1792 · Federal Era Architecture · Jewish-American Heritage · Norfolk Reconstruction Post-1776 · National Register of Historic Places
Moses Myers arrived in Norfolk in the late 1780s and rebuilt his international import-export business after marrying Eliza Judah Chapman in March 1787. The brick townhouse he built at 323 East Freemason Street was completed around 1792 in the Federal style, one of the first substantial homes erected in Norfolk after the town's near-total destruction during the Revolutionary War. The Myers family were the first permanent Jewish residents of the Norfolk area and for more than a decade composed the region's entire documented Jewish community.
The house remained in family hands for five generations, from 1795 until 1931. Among its surviving furnishings are companion portraits of Moses and Eliza Myers by Gilbert Stuart, additional family portraits by Thomas Sully, and an extensive collection of period furniture — more than seventy percent of the home's interior is original to the Myers family. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources lists the residence as one of the most intact and best-documented surviving Jewish-American homes of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
A documented incident shadows the property's story: in May 1811, Moses's son Samuel Myers shot and killed Richard Bowden, a former business partner of his father, after Bowden allegedly beat the elder Myers in the public market square. Samuel was charged with manslaughter and acquitted in May 1812. The episode became one of the most discussed legal cases in early Norfolk.
The Chrysler Museum of Art acquired the property and now operates it as part of its Historic Houses program along with the Willoughby-Baylor House. The collection, archive, and house are open to the public on weekend afternoons at no charge, with guided tours offered by museum docents and additional appointments available by phone.
Sources
According to Colonial Ghosts and the Mid-Atlantic Tourism PR Alliance (MATPRA), the Moses Myers House has a long-standing local reputation for at least three named apparitions. The most-cited is a figure in a top hat and cloak that paces back and forth through the rear garden — described in tour narratives as Richard Bowden (sometimes called Thomas Bowden), the man shot and killed on the property in 1811 by Samuel Myers. Tour guides frame him as 'eager to give his last word.'
A 'Lady in Black' is reported wandering the second-floor halls and vanishing through closed doors, and a separate sickly female figure — associated in local lore with Mary Myers, a member of the family — has reportedly turned up in visitor photographs. None of these accounts originate from the Chrysler Museum's own historical documentation; they are part of the city's commercial ghost-tour and tourism-marketing tradition, and the museum itself does not promote the house as a paranormal site.
Because the underlying 1811 shooting is well documented in court records and in the Chrysler Museum's own house history, the Bowden figure is one of the few Norfolk apparitions tied to a specific, named, archivally corroborated death on the property. The other figures are single-anchor lore and should be treated as folkloric.
Notable Entities
Walk the Federal-period rooms of one of America's most intact early Jewish-American residences, including original Gilbert Stuart portraits and over 70 percent original furnishings. Guided talks are offered Saturday and Sunday afternoons; private group tours by appointment.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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