Richmond, Virginia
The history of Richmond,
Virginia as a modern city dates back to the early seventeenth century,
and crucial to the development of the colony of Virginia, the United
States Revolutionary War, and the Civil War. After Reconstruction, Richmond's
location helped it develop a diversified economy and as a land transportation
hub. Richmond attracted businesses relocating from other parts of the
country as one of the northernmost cities of the right-to-work states.
High-angle view looking west toward the capitol from Church Hill, 1862.
Seventeenth century
In 1607, James
I granted a royal charter to the Virginia Company of London to settle
colonists in North America. After the first permanent English settlement
was established later that year at Jamestown, Captain Christopher Newport
and Captain John Smith set sail ten days after landing at Jamestown,
traveling northwest up Powhatan's River (now known as the James River)
to Powhatan Hill. The first expedition consisted of 120 men from Jamestown,
and made the first attempt to settle at the Falls of the James, located
between the 14th Street Bridge in modern downtown Richmond and the Pony
Pasture (a recreational area along the banks of the river south of the
City of Richmond). The settlement was made at this location as it is
the highest navigable site along the James River.
In 1611, Sir Thomas Dale,
the new Governor of the Jamestown Colony, organized an expedition and
established a settlement below the falls called "Henricus."
The first hospital in North America was built here and was home to Pocahontas.
In 1622, during the Powhatan
Uprising, widespread Native American attacks wiped out every English
settlement except Jamestown. Two years later, King James revoked the
Virginia Company of London’s charter and declared Virginia a royal
colony. By 1634, Henrico County (consisting of present-day Henrico,
Charles City, Powhatan, Chesterfield and Goochland) was created. A Native
American treaty signed in 1646 ceded all territory below the Falls of
the James to the English. Nathaniel Bacon led “Bacon’s Rebellion,”
in 1676, which was a historical revolt against the Native Americans
following Sir William Berkeley’s failure to defend the frontier
against Indian attacks.
Eighteenth century
By the early eighteenth
century, the population of the area was still below 200. In 1730, the
Virginia House of Burgesses passed the Warehouse Act, which required
inspectors to grade tobacco at 40 different locations. This led to much
development at the Falls of the James. Seven years later, in 1737, William
Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond, on
land provided by Colonel William Byrd II of nearby Westover Plantation.
The name came from Richmond-upon-Thames, England.
In 1741, St. John’s
Church was built in the present day neighborhood of Church Hill, the
oldest neighborhood in the city, overlooking downtown Richmond, Shockoe
Bottom and Shockoe Slip. Richmond was chartered as a town in 1742.
Shockoe Bottom was a center
for slave trading. It is believed that between 1800 -1865, 300,000 slaves
were sent from Shockoe Bottom to work in the deep south. Shockoe Bottom
also serves as the burial ground for thousands of Africans.
By 1768, William Byrd III
had squandered the family fortune and resorted to a public lottery to
raise money for his debts. He auctioned off large lots of still-undeveloped
Byrd family land in the Richmond region.
Revolutionary War
In 1775, Patrick
Henry delivered his famous “Give me Liberty or Give me Death”
speech in St. John's Church, during the Second Virginia Convention.
This speech is credited with convincing members of the House of Burgesses
to pass a resolution delivering Virginia troops to the American Revolutionary
War. One year later, in the throes of the Revolutionary War, the Continental
Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
In 1780, Virginia’s
state capital was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond. In 1781, under
the command of Benedict Arnold, Richmond was burned by British troops.
Yet Richmond shortly recovered, and, in May 1782, was incorporated as
a city.
In 1785, the James River
Company was formed with George Washington as its honorary president.
Development of the James River and the Kanawha Canal, designed by Washington,
ensued. The cornerstone of the Virginia State Capitol, designed by Thomas
Jefferson, was also laid this year. These events led to further development
of the economy of the city. The first bridge across the James River,
named Mayo’s Bridge after the founder of the city, was built in
1787.
The Virginia Statute for
Religious Freedom, written in 1779 by Thomas Jefferson, was passed in
Richmond on January 16, 1786, and the first freemasonry in America was
constructed on Franklin Street between 18th and 19th Streets in downtown
Richmond. The Bill of Rights was instated in the Constitution one year
later, in 1787.
Nineteenth century
Antebellum period 1800-1860
For much of the
1800s, the institution of slavery shaped several local issues. Following
the Haitian Revolution of the late 1700s, slaveowners were faced with
the prospect of similar slave uprisings in the American British Colonies.
A failed major uprising called Gabriel Prosser's Rebellion, occurred
near Richmond in 1800. This uprising was rumored to have involved somewhere
from 1000 to 4000 Africans living in the Richmond area. By the start
of the nineteenth century, the city's population had reached 5,730.
Congress also passed a law prohibiting the African Slave Trade in 1808.
Several other important events
took place in Richmond early in the century, including the designation
of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe as Richmond’s first political
districts in 1803, the charter of the Bank of Virginia, the city’s
first bank, was signed in 1804, and the first public library was established
by the Library Society of Richmond in 1806.
The first stagecoach lines
to Richmond were established during the War of 1812, and the first regular
steamboat service began on the James River in 1815. In 1816, the first
City Hall was built.
In the 1830s, the Industrial
Revolution arrived in Richmond. In 1831, the Chesterfield Railroad Company
opened its horse-drawn rail line between Manchester and the Chesterfield
coal mines, just south of the city. The first steam locomotive service
to the city began with the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad
in 1836.
In 1833, Rhys Davies, an
engineer from Tredegar, South Wales, was hired by Richmond businessmen
and industrialists to construct furnaces and rolling mills used in the
iron and foundry business. By 1837 the rolling mills were merged with
the Virginia Foundry, creating Tredegar Iron Works, the largest foundry
in the South and the third-largest in the United States.
In 1838, the Medical College
of Virginia was founded in the city.
The Richmond and
Danville Railroad was chartered in 1847, and completed the circuit to
Danville, Virginia by 1854.
Tredegar Iron Works, along the banks of the James River, in Richmond,
Virginia.
1860-1865: The Civil War
The aversion to
the slave trade was growing by the mid-nineteenth century, and in 1848,
Henry "Box" Brown made history by having himself nailed into
a small box and shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
escaping slavery to the land of freedom.
At the outbreak of the American
Civil War in 1861, the strategic location of the Tredegar Iron Works
was one of the primary factors in the decision to make Richmond the
Capital of the Confederacy. From this arsenal came much of the Confederates'
heavy ordnance machinery. In 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as
President of the Confederate States of America. One month later Davis
placed Richmond under martial law. Two months after Davis' inauguration,
the Confederate army fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina,
and the Civil War had begun.
Tredegar Iron Works made
the 723 tons of armor plating that covered the CSS Virginia, the world’s
first ironclad used in the 2-day Battle of Hampton Roads in March, 1862,
first successfully against wooden Union ships, then to a draw against
the USS Monitor, another innovative ironclad.
In 1862, the Peninsula Campaign
led by General George B. McClellan was a Union attempt to take Richmond,
beginning from Union held Fort Monroe at the eastern tip of the Virginia
Peninsula at Old Point Comfort. Efforts to take Richmond by the James
River were successfully blocked by Confederate defenses at Drewry's
Bluff, about 8 miles downstream from Richmond. The Union march up the
Peninsula by land culminated in the Seven Days Battles. Ruses to make
the defending forces seem larger by General John B. Magruder, Richmond's
defensive line of batteries and fortifications set up under General
Robert E. Lee, a daring ride around the Union Army by Confederate cavalry
under General J.E.B. Stuart, and an unexpected appearance of General
Stonewall Jackson's famous "foot cavalry" combined to unnerve
the ever-cautious McClellan, and he initiated a Union retreat before
Richmond. Even as other portions of the South were falling, the failure
of the Peninsula Campaign to take Richmond led to almost three more
years of bitter and bloody warfare between the states.
The Confederacy hit its high-water
mark at Battle of Gettysburg in mid-1863. 21 months later, after a long
siege, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured Petersburg Richmond in
April 1865.
As the fall of Petersburg
became imminent, on Evacuation Sunday, President Davis, his cabinet,
and the Confederate defenders abandoned Richmond, and fled south on
the last open railroad line, the Richmond and Danville. The retreating
soldiers were under orders to set fire to bridges, the armory, and warehouses
with supplies as they left. The fire in the largely abandoned city spread
out of control, and large parts of the city were destroyed, reaching
to the very edge of Capitol Square mostly unchecked. The conflagration
was not completely extinguished until the mayor and other civilians
went to the Union lines east of Richmond on New Market Road (now State
Route 5) and surrendered the city the next day.
President Abraham
Lincoln, who had been staying nearby at City Point, toured the fallen
city by foot with his young son Tad, and visited the former White House
of the Confederacy and the Virginia State Capitol. Also, about one week
later after the evacuation of Richmond, Robert E. Lee surrendered to
Grant ending the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse. Unfortunately for
the South, within the same week, Lincoln was assassinated in Washington
D.C.. Northern leadership would deal much more harshly with the fallen
states than Lincoln had planned.
Shells of the buildings of Richmond, silhouetted against a dark sky
after the destruction by Confederates, 1865.
1865-1880:Reconstruction
and City growth
During 1865, the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery.
Richmond (and the South's) Reconstruction began. Richmond's Theological
School for Freedmen, later becoming Virginia Union University, was established
that year. (Today, the historic campus is located on Lombardy Street
just north of the downtown area).
In 1866, the first organized
Memorial Day was celebrated in Richmond at Oakwood Cemetery near Church
Hill on the Nine Mile Road. Many fallen Confederate troops were buried
there and at Hollywood Cemetery, just west of the Tredegar Iron Works
in Richmond.
In 1869, the segregated public
school system was started in the city. Black voters registered in the
city's first municipal election since the end of the Civil War. One
year later, Virginia was readmitted to the Union with a new Constitution
and Federal troops were removed from the city.
1870 has been called the,
Year of Disasters. The worst flood in 100 years occurred. An overcrowding
during a court hearing over Richmond's elections collapsed the third
floor of the Virginia State Capitol, caused it to fall into the Hall
of the House of Delegates, killing 60 and injuring 250. Robert E. Lee's
death in Lexington where he headed what is now Washington and Lee University
compounded grief, followed by the Spotswood Hotel fire, killing eight
people.
Over the next decade, the
city's first high school, Richmond High School, opened in 1873. Cigarette
manufacturing was introduced in Richmond by P.H. Mayo & Bros. Tobacco
Co. in 1874, further expanding the city's economic importance to the
tobacco industry. The last Federal troops were removed from the South
in 1877, and Reconstruction ended.
Virginia politics under went
many power struggles in the 1870s and 1880s. Conservatives split over
repayment of the state's pre-war debt. "Funders" wanted the
full amount to be paid, much of which was held by northern interests.
"Readjusters" wanted a portion to be paid by the new State
of West Virginia, and formed the Readjuster Party, a coalition of Republicans,
conservative Democrats, and free blacks led by railroad executive William
Mahone. Mahone was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served from
1881 to 1887, and the Readjuster's candidate, William E. Cameron, was
elected as Virginia's governor, serving from 1882 to 1886. However,
by 1883, Democrats were assuming power in state politics, which they
held about 80 years, until the fall of the Byrd Organization in the
late 1960s, following the death of former Governor and U.S. Senator
Harry F. Byrd in 1966.
1880 - 1900: Monument Avenue,
Streetcars
Richmond’s
population had reached 60,600 by 1880, and the James River and Kanawha
Canal closed with tracks of the Richmond and Allegheny Railroad of Major
James H. Dooley laid on its towpath. In 1885, the Robert E. Lee Camp
Soldiers Home for Confederate Veterans opened.
Monument Avenue was laid
out it 1887, with a series of monuments at various intersections honoring
the city's Confederate heroes. Included (east to west) were J.E.B. Stuart,
Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Matthew F. Maury.
Richmond had the first successful
electrically-powered trolley system in the United States. Designed by
electric power pioneer, Frank J. Sprague, the trolley system opened
its first line in January, 1888. Richmond's hills, long a transportation
obstacle, were considered an ideal proving ground. The new technology
soon replaced horsecars.
As part of a national trend,
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the electrically-powered
street railway systems accelerated Richmond's expansion. To generate
traffic and fuel sales of property, amusement parks were created at
the end of the lines at Lakeside Park, Westhampton Park (now University
of Richmond), and Forest Hill Park. Rails of interurban streetcar services
formed a suburban network from Richmond extending north to Ashland and
south to Chester, Colonial Heights, Petersburg and Hopewell. Another
interurban route ran east along the Nine Mile Road and terminated at
the National Cemetery at Seven Pines at the end of the Nine Mile Road,
where many Union Civil War dead were interred. Electrically-powered
Trolley-buses, also using the Sprague technology, later operated in
local service in nearby Petersburg for several years.
The Richmond area's streetcar
suburbs included Highland Park, Barton Heights, Ginter Park, Woodland
Heights, and Highland Springs.
In 1894, a new City Hall
was built in Victorian Gothic style. The building, now called the "Old
City Hall", is located just north of Capitol Square near the statue
of Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire. It is across the Broad Street from current
Richmond City Hall, built in 1971.
In 1896, the United
States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that, "separate
but equal" laws did not deprive blacks of civil rights guaranteed
under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Confederate Museum opened and the
National Confederate Reunion (the first of five) was held in Richmond.
One year later the Richmond Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy
was established.
An historic postcard showing electric trolley-powered streetcars in
Richmond, Virginia,
where Frank J. Sprague successfully demonstrated his new system on the
hills in 1888.
The intersection shown is at 8th & Broad Streets.
Twentieth Century
1900 - 1930
By the beginning
of the twentieth century, the city's population had reached 85,050.
The theater mogul, Jake Wells,
built a number of vaudeville theaters and opera houses in Richmond during
the early 1900s. Other theaters and opera houses open on what became
"Theater Row", to include The Bijou, the Colonial Theater,
The Lyric Opera House.
In 1903, African-American
businesswoman and financier Maggie L. Walker chartered St. Luke Penny
Savings Bank, and served as its first president, as well as the first
female(of any race) bank president in the United States. Today, the
bank is called the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, and it is the
oldest surviving African-American bank in the U.S.
As roads improved in the
early 20th century, streetcars were unable to compete with automobiles
and the efficiencies of buses. The Richmond-Petersburg area's interurban
services were gone by 1939. The last streetcars ran in 1949 on the Highland
Park line when they were replaced by buses.
In 1914, Richmond became
the headquarters of the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve Bank.
In 1919, at the end of World War I, Philip Morris was established in
the city. The Fan district also began to develop during the 1920s.
Also during the 1920s, Richmond's
entertainment venues began to develop. The city's first radio station,
WRVA, first began broadcasting in 1925. The Mosque also opened in 1925
(today it is called the Landmark Theater). The Byrd Theater and Loew's
Theater opened in 1928 (the latter is now called Carpenter Center).
In 1926, the Carillon in
Byrd Park was constructed as a memorial to the World War I dead. The
Carillon still towers above Byrd Park in the city.
In 1927, the dedication of
Byrd Airfield (now Richmond International Airport) included a visit
by Charles Lindbergh. The airport was named after Richard E. Byrd, the
famous American polar explorer. The John Marshall Hotel opened its doors
in October 1929.
For over 250 years, the James
River divided Richmond on the north bank from its sister, independent
city of Manchester, located on the south bank.
A major issue for Manchester
and Richmond residents in the 19th and early 20th century were the toll
bridges over the James River. In 1910, Manchester agreed to a political
consolidation with the much larger independent city of Richmond. Richmond's
better-known name was used for both areas as it contained the location
of Virginia's state capital. Key features of the consolidation agreement
were requirements that a "free bridge" across the James River
and a separate courthouse in Manchester be maintained indefinitely.
Instead of barrier between neighboring cities, under the consolidation,
the James River became the centerpiece of the expanded Richmond.
Although Manchester is now
defunct as an independent city, vestiges can be found in the Manchester
Bridge, Manchester Slave Trail, and the Manchester Courthouse.
1930 - 1945: Great Depression
and World War II
The Tobacco industry
helped Richmond recover from the Great Depression. Within five years,
Richmond’s economy bounced back.
The population of the city
had grown to 255,426 by 1936, and the value of new construction to the
region was 250% over that of 1935. By 1938, Reynolds Metals moved its
executive office from New York City to Richmond.
By the end of World War II
in 1945, more than 350,000,000 pounds of war supplies were being shipped
through the Defense General Supply Center, located nine miles south
of the city. 1946 marked a crucial turning point for Richmond’s
economy. During that year, the highest level of business activity was
recorded in the history of the city. Within one year, Richmond was the
fastest growing industrial center in the United States.
In 1948, Oliver Hill became
the first black elected to the city council since the Reconstruction
era.
1945-1960: Postwar Richmond
and Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike
As the National
Auto Trails system grew into a national network of highways, the area
was served by the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway the busy north-south
corridor in central Virginia shared by U.S. Route 1 and U.S. Route 301
through the cities of Richmond, Colonial Heights, and Petersburg. It
crossed the James River on the Robert E. Lee Memorial Bridge. After
World War II, with only four traffic lanes and long stretches of undivided
roadway, the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway it became a major area
of traffic congestion, as well as the site of occasional spectacular
and deadly head-on collisions.
In 1955, prior to the creation
of the U.S. Interstate Highway System, the Virginia General Assembly
created the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike Authority as a state agency
to administer the new Turnpike of the same name. The new toll road was
planned with only 15 exits, and most of these were well away from the
highly developed commercial areas along parallel U.S. 301.
The Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike
opened in 1958, and soon was granted the Interstate 95 designation in
the Richmond area, splitting into Interstates 85 and 95 at Petersburg.
1960- 2000: Modern city
development
Natural gas was
introduced to Richmond in 1950 to meet the growing energy demand. By
1952, cigarette production reached an all-time high for Richmond at
110 billion per year.
Between 1963 and 1965, there
was a huge, "downtown boom," that led to the construction
of more than 700 buildings in the city. In 1968, Virginia Commonwealth
University was created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia
with the Richmond Professional Institute.
Richmond suffered some severe
flooding in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes dumped 16 inches of rain on central
Virginia. This flooded the James River to 6.5 feet over the original
200-year old record.
In 1984, the city completes
the Diamond ballpark, and the Richmond Braves, a AAA baseball team for
the Atlanta Braves, begin playing. In 1985, Sixth Street Marketplace,
a downtown shopping district, opened.
In 1990, Richmond native
L. Douglas Wilder, the grandson of slaves, was sworn in as Governor
of Virginia, the first elected African-American governor of any state
in United States history.
A multi-million dollar floodwall
was completed in 1995, in order to protect the city and the Shockoe
Bottom businesses from the rising waters of the James River. Also during
1995, a statue of Richmond native and tennis star Arthur Ashe was added
to the famed series of statues on Monument Avenue.
By the end of the twentieth
century, Sixth Street Marketplace finally closed, as the downtown revitalization
project had failed to attract enough business to be profitable. Thalhimers
also closed its doors downtown as well, resulting in further decay of
the downtown economy.
Twenty-first century
2000-present:
By the early twenty-first
century, the population of the greater Richmond metropolitan area had
reached approximately 1,100,000.
The floodwall downtown was
expanded, and opened the doors for the development of the riverfront,
stretching along the James River from the historic Tredegar Iron Works
site, just west of 7th Street, to 17th Street downtown. Recent renovations
included the rebuilt James River and Kanawha Canal and Haxall Canal,
now designed as a Canal Walk. The riverfront project has brought this
1.25-mile corridor back to life, with trendy loft apartments, restaurants,
shops and hotels winding along the Canal Walk, along with canal boat
cruises and walking tours. The National Park Service’s Richmond
Civil War Visitor Center, in the Tredegar Iron Works, brought three
floors of exhibits and artifacts, films, a bookstore, picnic areas and
more. The Cordish Company also began construction of Riverside on the
James, a power plant development project with shopping and entertainment
venues.
Virginia Commonwealth University
has also been aggressively developing its campuses downtown, with the
new Stuart C. Siegel Center athletic complex, and RAMZ apartments.
In 2002, the new, expanded
Greater Richmond Convention Center opened for business, containing more
than 600,000 square feet, the convention center, located in the heart
of downtown Richmond, is the largest of its kind in the state.
Renovation continues in the
historic neighborhood of Jackson Ward, to bring the neighborhood off
the National Trust Historic Preservation’s list of one of America’s
most endangered historic places. Encompassing forty blocks, Jackson
Ward was once deemed the, "Black Wall Street," in the 19th
century. Restaurants such as Croaker’s Spot, and attractions like
the Black History Museum and Cultural Center, keep Jackson Ward on the
list as one of the Richmond area's most culturally significant stops
for visitors to the area.
On August 31, 2004, the Shockoe
Bottom district was devastated by flooding brought on by torrential
rains from the remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston. The storm lingered
over the Richmond area, dumping nearly 12 inches (300 mm) of rain in
the Shockoe Bottom watershed. A 20-block area, including most of Shockoe
Bottom, was declared uninhabitable in the wake of the flood.
On November 2, 2004, former
Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder was elected as Richmond's first
directly-elected mayor in over 60 years.
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