Over time, a colonial ferry, later a one-lane bridge, and a steamboat landing helped make Watling Street a main avenue into Urbanna. Originally called Wadling Lane, the street in the 1880s ran from the bridge to a carpenter shop near the corner of Watling and Cross streets owned by town builder Charles H. Palmer Sr., son of steamboat dock master Alfred Palmer. Born in 1845 across the street from here in a colonial home later torn down in 1907, Palmer enlisted in the Confederate army at age 16, survived a musket shot to the jaw, spent time in Point Lookout Union prison camp, and after the war went with his friend Columbus Burton to Binghamton, New York, where they learned to build houses in a Folk Victorian style with an italianate influence. After returning home in 1872, Burton became dock master of Burton's Steamboat Wharf, while Palmer became Urbanna's master builder, and his architectural style remains visible throughout town. In 1895 he built and designed the main portion of Urbanna Baptist Church and added its two wings in 1904; his own home, built in 1875, still stands across from the church parking lot. Palmer also built the Bristow House in 1876 at Watling and Cross streets, and in 1877 he built the Urbanna Masonic Lodge No. 83 A.F.&A.M. building, a three-story lodge that stood next to his woodworking shop until it was torn down in 1919. Around the turn of the 20th century, Watling Street also had four boarding houses, the Ross Hotel, Haywood's general merchandise store, a blacksmith shop and feed store, an oyster shucking house, and at its western end the old Confederate Home for homeless Confederate veterans, funded by the Daughters of the Confederacy, a structure that still stands on the south side of the street.