History of Richmond, Virginia
Until 1609, Parahunt, the weroance of the Powhatan tribe, had his main capital on a high hill overlooking the falls of the James, shown as a "king's house" on the 1608 map made by John Smith.
The falls marked the western frontier of the confederacy with its enemies, the Siouan Monocan tribe, and Newport soon became obsessed with this location and the idea of assisting the Powhatans against them militarily.
Gabriel Archer, who wrote the fullest account of the visit to Parahunt's village later that day, gave a vivid description of this inhabitation, which he called Pawatah's Tower.
After meeting with the two weroances while the women provided them strawberries and mulberries, the Englishmen decided to visit the nearby waterfalls, found they could pass no farther in their pinnace, and anchored for the night between the islands and the village.
The English did not visit the falls again for a year and a half, although during this time they continued attempting to negotiate with the paramount Chief Powhatan for an assault on the Monacans.
Even so, the Powhatans did not fully appreciate that the English were now actually in possession of their fortified town (which Smith had renamed Nonsuch), and thus they began to harass the settlers, eventually forcing West to abandon the project and return to Jamestown.
After two years, the site of Fort Charles was relocated to Manastoh on the South Side of the river (later known as Manchester, Virginia), where the ground was considered slightly more fertile.
By around 1699 or 1700, the Monacan had abandoned their closest settlement, Mowhemencho, above the falls at Bernard's Creek — which was then repopulated with French Huguenot pioneers, to serve as a further buffer between the downriver English plantations and the native tribes.
Both plots consisted of one acre each and were located directly east of the Jew's Burying Ground (Hebrew Cemetery) on the opposite side of 5th St. at what is now Hospital St.
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.
Besides transportation and industry, antebellum Richmond was also the center of regional communications, with several newspapers and book publishers, including John Warrock, helping shape public opinion and further the education of the populace.
Two months after Davis' inauguration, the Confederate army fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Civil War had begun.
With the outbreak of war, followed by Virginia's secession in May 1861, the strategic location of the Tredegar Iron Works was one of the primary factors in the decision to relocate the capital of the Confederacy to Richmond.
From this arsenal came much of the Confederates' heavy ordnance machinery, making 723 tons of armor plating that covered the CSS Virginia, the world's first ironclad used in the two-day Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862, against the USS Monitor.
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.
[15] On April 4, President Abraham Lincoln 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.
Some wanted him to make a public gesture of sitting at Jefferson Davis's own desk, symbolically saying to the nation that the President of the United States held authority over the entire land.
1870 has been called the Year of Disasters: the worst flood in 100 years occurred; overcrowding during a court hearing over Richmond's elections collapsed the third floor of the Virginia State Capitol, causing 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.
Rails of interurban streetcar services formed a suburban network from Richmond extending north to Ashland and south to Chester, Colonial Heights, Petersburg and Hopewell.
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.
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.
It was selected due to the city's geographic location, its importance as a commercial and financial center, its transportation and communications facilities, as well as Virginia's leading regional role in the banking business.
In 1926, The Mosque (now called the Altria Theater) was constructed by the Shriners as their Acca Temple Shrine, and since then, many of America's greatest entertainers have appeared on its stage beneath its towering minarets and desert murals.
[25] In 1928, the Byrd Theater was built by local architect Fred Bishop on Westhampton Avenue (now called Cary Street) in a residential area of the city.
A multimillion-dollar flood wall was completed in 1995, in order to protect the city and the Shockoe Bottom businesses from the rising waters of the James River.
Notwithstanding objections of purists in the country, Ashe was added to a group of statues that previously had consisted primarily of prominent Confederate military figures, as a sign of the changing nature of the city's population.
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.
Virginia Commonwealth University has also been aggressively developing its campuses downtown, with the new Stuart C. Siegel Center athletic complex, and RAMZ apartments.
The storm lingered over the Richmond area, dumping nearly 12 inches (300 mm) of rain in the Shockoe Bottom watershed which then backed up behind the James River flood wall.
The "Bottom" has recovered as a major restaurant and night club district after changes to the area's sewage system were made to prevent a re-occurrence.
