Page 55 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

“probably done as much, if not more, than any other in bringing before the world at large the
advantages and benefits of this place.” He promised as mayor to advocate “all measures
appertaining to the public interest” and disputed widespread rumors that he was “connected” to
the Roanoke Land & Improvement Company, insisting that his only association with that firm
was a close friendship with its president, J. B. Austin.

Although the vote was very close, that May residents selected Dunstan along with ten new
council members. The hundreds of northern workers who had clustered in the Northeast’s Third
Ward sent David F. Houston, superintendent of the Crozier Iron Works, and three other
Republicans to council. Wards One and Two in the older sections of town elected one
independent, one Republican, and six Democrats.

The new government took control in July 1884, and in his first address to council, Mayor
Dunstan pushed an aggressive agenda of improvements and economic development. Not only
did the town require a new jail and a market house, he argued, it had to replace Rorer’s
warehouse with a real City Hall, needed a firehouse, and had to have two new schools – one for
workers’ children in the east and the other for African American students in the north.

Finally, common sense, cooperation, and a firmly resolute council under the capable leadership
of Dunstan began to make the improvements as well as policies that would lead Roanoke to
reach its potential and mold the two divisive factions into a cohesive city.

Among other things, Dunstan also believed that the city needed to diversify its industries. “To
assist such schemes,” he explained, “I would advise that besides the present freedom from
taxation until 1897, the council offer any parties starting a manufacturing enterprise different
from any now operation here, a bonus of a free site.” Council approved the initiative, and the
offer of free land and no taxes did much to lure a variety of new manufacturers to town.

Later that year, after Dunstan sold his interests in The Leader, he and the council passed the
city’s first comprehensive set of general ordinances. He and the councilmen behind the
regulations believed they could remedy myriad municipal concerns by expanding the
government’s ability to regulate a wide spectrum of behavior. Most of the laws therefore
addressed “problems” created by black residents or white migrants from the countryside,
inhabitants who had refused to conform to the etiquette of life in an urban setting.

The regulations, for example, banned bathing in streams, damaging trees, firing guns, creating
“noise,” putting “filth” in creeks, laboring or drinking on Sunday, storing hay inside homes, and
tying livestock to lampposts. They outlawed vagrancy and authorized police to assign anyone
without visible means of support to the chain-gang. The laws also created the city’s fist zoning
regulations by prohibiting new wooden structures in the downtown district.

The ordinances created a board of health with the power to send “infected persons” to the pest
house, the ability to prohibit the sale of food or other articles it considered “injurious,” and the
authority to order that standing water be drained. The code gave the board’s three physicians
the power to levy fines on residents with “cellars, yards, privies and other places which may be
alleged to be offensive, or likely to become so.”