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Richmond, Virginia Vacations, Luxury Hotels, Inns, Experiential Tours and Richmond Historical Travel Packages 


Jefferson Davis Monument, Richmond City Photo

Whether you're looking for shops or sports, homes or history, culture or cuisine or day or nighttime entertainment, the Richmond Region has something for every taste and budget. With more than 60 attractions, 11 malls, four distinct seasons and one river with the only class IV rapids in an urban U.S. setting, it's always the perfect time to visit.

Richmond is the capital of Virginia, in the United States. Like all Virginia municipalities incorporated as cities, it is an independent city and not part of any county. The population was 197,790 at the 2000 census, with an estimated population of 1,194,008 for the Richmond Metropolitan Area — making it the third largest in Virginia.

The site of Richmond, at the fall line of the James River in the Piedmont region of Virginia, was briefly settled by English settlers from Jamestown in 1609, and in 1610-11, near the site of a significant native settlement. The present city of Richmond was founded in 1737. It became the capital of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia in 1780. During the Revolutionary War period, several notable events occurred in the city, including Patrick Henry's, "Give me liberty or give me death," speech in 1775 at St. John's Church, and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1779; the latter of which was written by Thomas Jefferson in the city. During the American Civil War, Richmond served as the capital of the Confederate States of America, and many important American Civil War landmarks remain in the city today, including the Virginia State Capitol and the White House of the Confederacy, among others.

Richmond's economy is primarily driven by law, finance, and government with several notable legal and banking firms, as well as federal, state, and local governmental agencies, located in the downtown area. Richmond is one of twelve cities in the United States to be home to a Federal Reserve Bank. There are also nine Fortune 500, and thirteen Fortune 1000 companies in the city. Tourism is also important, as many historic sights are in or nearby the city.

Richmond History

Before 1607, the Powhatan tribe had lived in the region. For centuries, the tribe recognized the value of this site, rich in natural beauty, and had one of their capitals here, also known as Powhatan. They knew it as a place to hunt, fish, play, and trade, and they also called it Shocquohocan, or Shockoe.

The Christopher Newport Cross monument on the canal, commemorating the cross erected at the current site of Richmond by an English exploration party that claimed the site and the river for King James in 1607. The party was led by Capt. Christopher NewportIn 1606, James I granted a royal charter to the Virginia Company of London to settle colonists in North America. After the first permanent English-speaking settlement was established in April, 1607, at Jamestown, Captain Christopher Newport led explorers northwest up the James River, and on May 24, 1607, erected a cross on one of the small islands in the middle of the part of the river that runs through today's downtown area.

The first English settlement within the present limits of the city was made in 1609 by Francis West at the falls, in the district known as Rockett's, and was known as "West Fort". Captain John Smith then bought the fortified Powhatan village on the north bank of the river from chief Parahunt, about 3 miles (4.8 km) from the fort. He named this tract Nonesuch, but the English garrison soon abandoned the entire area after attacks by the Powhatans. In fall, 1610, Lord de la Warre made a second attempt to build a fort at the falls, which managed to last all winter, but was then likewise abandoned.

In 1645, Fort Charles was erected at the falls of the James – the highest navigable point of the James River – as a frontier defense. New settlers moved in, and the community grew into a bustling trading post for furs, hides, and tobacco.

In 1673, William Byrd I was granted lands on the James River that included the area around Falls that would become Richmond and already included small settlements. Byrd was a well-connected Indian trader in the area and established a fort on the site. William Byrd II inherited his father's land in 1704, and in 1737 founded the town of Richmond at the Falls of the James and commissioned Major William Mayo to lay out the original town grid. Byrd named the city Richmond after the town of Richmond in England (a suburb of London) because the view of the James River was strikingly similar to the view of the River Thames from Richmond, England, where he had spent time during his youth. The settlement was laid out in April, 1737, and was incorporated as a town in 1742 by Chad Glasheen.

Richmond During the American Revolutionary War
 
Patrick Henry delivering his, "Liberty or Death," speech at St. John's Church in Richmond, helping to ignite the American Revolution.In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his famous, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death," speech in St. John's Church in Richmond that was crucial for deciding Virginia's (then the largest of the 13 colonies) participation in the First Continental Congress and setting the course for revolution and independence. Thomas Jefferson, who would soon write the United States Declaration of Independence, George Washington, who would soon command the Continental Army, were in attendance at this critical moment on the path to the American Revolution.

On April 18, 1780, as Virginia’s population moved further west, the state capital was moved from the colonial capital of Williamsburg to Richmond, to provide a more centralized location, as well as to isolate the capital from British attack.[8] In 1781, under the command of Benedict Arnold, Richmond was burned by British troops causing Governor Thomas Jefferson to flee the city. Yet Richmond shortly recovered and, by 1782, Richmond was once again a thriving city.

In 1786, one of the most important and influential passages of legislation in American history was passed at the temporary state capital in Richmond, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Written by Thomas Jefferson and sponsored by James Madison, the statute was the basis for the separation of church and state, and led to freedom of religion for all Americans as protected in the religion clause in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. Its importance is recognized annually by the President of The United States, with January 16 established as National Religious Freedom Day.

The Virginia Capitol Building, designed by Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau.The Virginia State Capitol building, designed by Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau, was completed in 1788. It is the second-oldest US statehouse in continuous use (Maryland's is the oldest) and was the first US government building built in the neo-classical Roman style of architecture, setting the trend for other state houses and the federal government buildings (including the White House and The Capitol) in Washington, DC. The state capitol is one of thirteen in the United States without a dome and underwent a complete renovation which was completed in May 2007.

Richmond Early Nineteenth Century

After the Revolutionary War, Richmond emerged an important industrial center; it also became a crossroads of transportation and commerce, much of this tied to its role as a major hub in the Transatlantic slave trade. George Washington proposed and received the support of the Virginia legislature for the establishment of the James River and Kanawha Canal, the first canal system to be established in the U.S. The canal allowed goods and services coming up the James River to be navigated around the falls at Richmond and connect Richmond and the eastern part of Virginia with the west. As a result, Richmond became home to some of the largest manufacturing facilities in the country, including iron works and flour mills, the largest facilities of their kind in the south. Canal traffic peaked in the 1860s and slowly gave way to railroads, allowing Richmond to become a major railroad crossroads, eventually including the site of the world's first triple railroad crossing. The Canal officially ceased operations in the 1880s, although portions of the canal have been preserved and rebuilt by 1998–1999, spurring tourism and economic development along the old canal route in downtown Richmond.

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.

The resistance to the slave trade was growing by the mid-nineteenth century; in one famous case in 1848, Henry “Box” Brown made history by having himself nailed into a small box and shipped from Richmond to abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, escaping slavery.

Richmond During the Civil War and Reconstruction
 
Shells of the buildings of Richmond, silhouetted against a dark sky after the destruction by Confederates fleeing advancing Union forces, 1865.Main article: Richmond in the Civil War
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 the 723 tons of armor plating that covered the CSS Virginia, the world’s first ironclad used in war, as well as much of the Confederates' heavy ordnance machinery. In February, 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama, the first Confederate capital. In the early morning of April 12, 1861, the Confederate army fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Civil War had begun. On April 17, 1861, Virginia seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States, and soon thereafter the Confederate government moved its capital to Richmond. The Confederate Congress shared quarters with the Virginia General Assembly in the Virginia State Capitol, and the Confederacy's executive mansion, the "White House of the Confederacy", was two blocks away in the upscale Court End neighborhood.

The Seven Days Battles, in which Union General McClellan threatened Richmond and came very near but ultimately failed to take the city, followed in late June and early July of 1862. Three years later on April 3, 1865, Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army captured Richmond, and the state capital was then relocated to Danville. Six days later, Robert E. Lee's retreating Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, symbolically ending the war. On April 2, 1865, about 25% of the city's buildings were destroyed in a fire set by retreating Confederate soldiers. Union soldiers put out the fires as they entered the city.

A 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.After the Civil War, Richmond entered a phase of recovery and reconstruction. Monument Avenue was laid out in 1887, with a series of monuments at various intersections honoring the city's Confederate heroes, included (east to west) J.E.B. Stuart, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Matthew F. Maury. Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery is the final resting place of both Stuart and Davis.

Contributing to Richmond's industrial reconstruction was the first successful electrically-powered trolley system in the United States, the Richmond Union Passenger Railway. Designed by electric power pioneer Frank J. Sprague, the trolley system opened its first line in 1888, and electric streetcar lines rapidly spread to other cities.[19] Sprague's system used an overhead wire and trolley pole to collect current, with electric motors on the car's trucks.

Richmond Twentieth Century

By the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the city's population had reached 85,050 in 5 square miles (13 km2), making it the most densely populated city in the southern United States.

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 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. The Governor's School in Richmond City is also dedicated to her name.

In 1910, the former city of Manchester was consolidated with the city of Richmond, and in 1914, the city annexed the Barton Heights, Ginter Park, and Highland Park areas of Henrico County.

In May of 1914, Richmond became the headquarters of the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve Bank. 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. The bank was originally located near the federal courts downtown and moved to a new headquarters building near the Capitol in 1922, and finally to its present location overlooking the James River in 1978. Richmond's business and industrial development continued throughout the decade, and in 1929, Philip Morris, which began as a British company about 100 years earlier, opened its first US factory in the city. Richmond was chosen because the town's rich tobacco history.

Richmond entered the broadcasting era in late 1925 when WRVA, originally known as the Edgeworth Tobacco Station and owned by Larus & Brothers, went on the air. The white ballad singers and black gospel quartets that were popular on the radio at the time were often urban and sometimes even professional men. At the time, Richmond was particularly self-conscious with its southern roots, and such music was seen as culturally inferior. WTVR-TV (CBS 6), the first television station in Richmond, was the first television station south of Washington, D.C.

The Landmark Theater, originally known as The Mosque, adjacent to Monroe Park.Several performing arts venues were constructed during the 1920s. In 1926, The Mosque (now called the Landmark 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. Loew's Theater was built in 1927, and was described as, "the ultimate in 1920s movie palace fantasy design." It later suffered a decline in popularity as the movie-going population moved to the suburbs, but was restored during the 1980s and renamed as the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts.[28] 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. To this day, the Byrd remains in operation as one of the last of the great movie palaces of the 1920s and 1930s.

Between 1963 and 1965, there was a, "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. In 1970, Richmond's borders expanded by an additional 27 square miles (69 km²) on the south. After several years of court cases in which Chesterfield County fought annexation, more than 47,000 people who once were Chesterfield County residents found themselves in the city’s perimeters on January 1, 1970.

Between the 1984 and 1985 seasons, the city completed construction of the Diamond, a new baseball stadium for the Richmond Braves, a AAA baseball team in the Atlanta Braves minor league system. The park opened on April 17, 1985, replacing the old Parker Field, which previously occupied the same site. Also in 1985, Richmond saw the opening of 6th Street Marketplace, a downtown festival marketplace, which was envisioned as a solution to the downtown areas urban erosion. The project ultimately failed, and the shopping center was closed and demolished in 2004.
 
Statue of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue.A multi-million 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. After the flood wall was completed, the River District businesses grew rapidly, and today the area is home to much of Richmond's entertainment, dining and nightlife activity.

In 1996, a reminder of Richmond's Confederate history arose amid controversy involved in placing a statue of African American Richmond native and tennis star Arthur Ashe to the famed series of statues of Confederate heroes of the Civil War on Monument Avenue. After several months of controversy, the bronze statue of Ashe was finally completed on Monument Avenue facing the opposite direction of the Confederate Heroes on July 3, 1996.

Twenty-First Century

Richmond entered the twenty-first century in the process of undergoing several redevelopment initiatives. The city completed a $52 million restoration of the James River and Kanawha Canals, as well as the Haxall Canal, in 1999, which included a Canal Walk, designed to attract businesses such as restaurants and nightclubs to the area. The riverfront project has brought the 1.25-mile (2.01 km) 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. Riverfront development continued in April 2003 with the start of construction of Riverside on the James, a 720,000 square foot (66,890 sq m) residential and office complex near Brown's Island between 10th and 12th Streets downtown. The project, costing $90 million, was completed in July 2005, and is expected to attract even more commercial development to the downtown area.

On September 19, 2003, Hurricane Isabel's sustained winds of 40–60 mph (64–96 km/h) caused major power outages in the area.

In September 2004, Tropical Storm Gaston swept through the area, bringing with it intense rain, causing severe flooding in the Shockoe Bottom business district, as well as major electrical outages throughout the metropolitan area.

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