Various Sights of Interest Around Richmond

What a difference 137 years makes! The photo to the right shows the city line as it appeared after the Evacuation Fire in April 1865. The view is east from Gambles Hill. The picture below is taken from the same spot (well, maybe about 50 yards to the south). Gone is any evidence of the massive destruction caused by the Fire. Also, the Capitol is out of sight behind the skyscrapers that now dominate the city.

Another picture that gives you an idea of the changes in Richmond in the last 137 years. The view is west down Main Street from the intersection at 21st. Street. The new picture is actually taken from about two blocks up from the older photo (as far as I can tell). In the picture to the right, all the way to the right, is the Stone House, the oldest private residence in the City. This was the headquarters of George Washington for a brief time during the Revolutionary War, as well as the home of Edgar Allan Poe while he lived here. It now houses a museum in his honor.

Click here or on the picture above to see the full size photo.

The factory that armed a nation. Here is seen Tredegar Iron Works. At the outbreak of The War, this was the largest metal working plant in the South, and one of the biggest in the country. Although it was relatively advanced for the day, when the time came for the employees to change their work from civilian operations to the arming of troops, it was found that Tredegar was woefully unprepared. Luckily, when Virginia passed the ordinance of secession, state militia quickly moved to seize the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The Union soldiers attempted to burn the factory there, but the state forces put out the fires before it was a total loss. The equipment was quickly distributed across the South, but mainly to the sprawling facility on the James. Within months, the workers were turning out everything from huge coastal defense cannon, to the iron armor of the CSS Virginia, all the way down to small-arms. By the end of The War, Tredegar had done as much as any general or politician to make the Confederate Army one of the legendary forces to ever take to the battlefield.

Today, Tredegar has become the headquarters of the Richmond Battlefield Parks. The above photo was taken from Brown's Island.

The ruins of the Richmond Arsenal with Tredgar in the distance.  In the foreground can be seen cannon and cassions in park, weapons that never made it out to the fields of Petersburg for the Lee's Army, and were left behind when the Confederates retreated from the city.

The Stone House as it appeared during The War.

A drawing of Camp Lee, the training grounds for many of the men that would make up Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. This area was the location of the Fairgrounds, and laid outside of the boundries of the city. Today this is called Monroe Park, and is on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. The photo to the left shows Monroe Park as it appears today.

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Looking east inside of the grounds of Tredegar. In the immediate foreground is one of the millraces that powered the factory. The large, brick building with the smokestack is the same structure you see in the pictures taken during The War. In the background can be seen some of the large skyscrapers the now dominate the skyline of the city.

The northern side of what is left of Tredegar taken just below the original bed of the Kanawah Canal. These buildings now house the headquarters of the Richmond National Battlefield Parks, well over a hundred sites that surround the city, ranging from locations of small skirmishes, to restored homes, to epic fields where thousands laid down their lives in the War for Southern Independence.