Cross Street extends over Urbanna’s three main streets, Watling, Prince George, and Virginia streets. Throughout the town’s history, these four streets vied for commercial dominance, and at the turn of the 20th century Cross Street, briefly named Bank Street, became the most prominent. Before 1900, Middlesex County had no commercial banks. About 1900, Fredericksburg investor A. Randolph Howard moved to town, founded the Bank of Middlesex, and with others built the brick three-story bank building on Cross Street that became the centerpiece of the commercial district. At the other end of Cross Street on Taylor Avenue, Howard also built the Urbanna Manufacturing Co., on the site of today’s Queen Anne’s Cove Condominiums. Its Branch Standard Overalls Factory division employed more than 50 women who lived in and around town. Howard also led the town’s incorporation, approved by the Virginia State Legislature on April 2, 1902. Cross Street commerce also grew through waterfront development. George S. Chowning founded a marine railway and boatyard just off Cross Street at the foot of Prince George Street, where boatbuilder Fred Ward built the Ida Mae, the only sailing schooner ever built in Middlesex County, and in 1904 one of the first modernized oyster buyboats, the Cresent. Chowning’s Railway later became Southside Marine Railway, home to the Urbanna Yacht Club, founded in 1939, which moved in 1949 to Deltaville and became Fishing Bay Yacht Club.