Roofing Repair Richmond, Virginia

Law, finance, and government primarily drive Richmond's economy. The downtown area is home to federal, state, and local governmental agencies as well as notable legal and banking firms. The greater metropolitan area includes several Fortune 500 companies: Performance Food Group, Altria, CarMax, Dominion Energy, Markel, Owens and Minor, Genworth Financial, and ARKO Corp. ^[10][11][12] The city is home to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and a Federal Reserve Bank (one of 13 such courts and one of 12 such banks, respectively). Richmond was an important village in the Powhatan Confederacy and was briefly settled by English colonists from Jamestown from 1609 to 1611. Founded in 1737, it replaced Williamsburg as 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 passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom written by Thomas Jefferson. During the American Civil War, Richmond was the Confederacy's capital. The Jackson Ward neighborhood is the city's traditional hub of African-American commerce and culture, once known as the "Black Wall Street of America" and the "Harlem of the South."^[9] At the beginning of the 20th century, Richmond had one of the world's first successful electric streetcar systems. Richmond is located at the James River's fall line, 44 mi (71 km) west of Williamsburg, 66 mi (106 km) east of Charlottesville, 91 mi (146 km) east of Lynchburg and 92 mi (148 km) south of Washington, D.C. Surrounded by Henrico and Chesterfield counties, Richmond is at the intersection of Interstate 95 and Interstate 64 and encircled by Interstate 295, Virginia State Route 150 and Virginia State Route 288. Major suburbs include Midlothian to the southwest, Chesterfield to the south, Varina to the southeast, Sandston to the east, Glen Allen to the north and west, Short Pump to the west, and Mechanicsville to the northeast.^[7][8] Richmond (/ˈrɪtʃmənd/ RICH-mənd) is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Incorporated in 1742, Richmond has been an independent city since 1871. The city's population in the 2020 census was 226,610, up from 204,214 in 2010,^[6] making it Virginia's fourth-most populous city. The Richmond metropolitan area, with 1,260,029 people, is the Commonwealth's third-most populous.

About Richmond, Virginia

After the first permanent English-speaking settlement was established at Jamestown, Virginia, in April 1607, Captain Christopher Newport led explorers northwest up the James River to an inhabited area in the Powhatan Nation. In 1611, the first European settlement in Central Virginia was established at Henricus, where the Falling Creek empties into the James River. In 1619, early Virginia Company settlers established the Falling Creek Ironworks there. Decades of conflicts between the Powhatan and the settlers followed, including the Battle of Bloody Run, fought near Richmond in 1656, after tensions arose from an influx of Manahoacs and Nahyssans from the North. Nonetheless, the James Falls area saw more White settlement in the late 1600s and early 1700s. In early 1737, planter William Byrd II commissioned Major William Mayo to lay out the original town grid, completed in April. Byrd named the city after the English town of Richmond near (and now part of) London, because the view of the James River's bend at the fall line was similar to that of the River Thames from Richmond Hill, named after Henry VII's ancestral home in Richmond, North Yorkshire. In 1742, the settlement was incorporated as a town. In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his famous "Give me liberty, or give me death" speech in Richmond's St. John's Church, greatly influencing Virginia's participation in the First Continental Congress and the course of the American Revolution. On April 18, 1780, the state capital was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond, providing a more centralized location for Virginia's increasing western population and theoretically isolating the capital from a British attack from the coast. In 1781, Loyalist troops led by Benedict Arnold led a raid on Richmond and burnt it, leading Governor Thomas Jefferson to flee while the Virginia militia, led by Sampson Mathews, unsuccessfully defended the city. Richmond recovered quickly from the war, thriving within a year of its burning. In 1786, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, was enacted, separating church and state and advancing the legal principle for freedom of religion in the United States. In 1788, the Virginia State Capitol, designed by Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau in the Greek Revival style, was completed. To bypass Richmond's rapids on the upper James River and provide a water route across the Appalachian Mountains to the Kanawha River, which flows westward into the Ohio River, which converges with the Mississippi River, George Washington helped design the James River and Kanawha Canal. The canal started in Westham and cut east to Richmond, facilitating the transfer of cargo from flat-bottomed James River bateaux above the fall line to the ocean-faring ships below. The canal boatmen legacy is represented by the figure in the center of the city flag. Because of the canal and the hydropower the falls generated, Richmond emerged as an important industrial center after the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). It became home to some of the largest manufacturing facilities, including iron works and flour mills, in the South and the country. By 1850, Richmond was connected by the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad to Port Walthall, where ships carrying over 200 tons of cargo could connect to Baltimore or Philadelphia. Passenger liners could reach Norfolk, Virginia, through the Hampton Roads harbor. In the 19th century, Richmond was connected to the North by the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad, later replaced by CSXT. The railroad also was used by some to escape slavery in the mid-19th century. In 1849, Henry "Box" Brown famously had himself nailed into a small box and shipped from Richmond to abolitionists in Philadelphia through Baltimore's President Street Station on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, often used by the Underground Railroad to assist escaping disguised slaves reach the free state of Pennsylvania. Five days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Virginia legislature voted to secede from the United States and join the newly-created Confederate States of America on April 17, 1861. The action became official in May, after the Confederacy promised to move its national capital to Richmond from Montgomery, Alabama. Richmond held local, state and national Confederate government offices, hospitals, a railroad hub, and one of the largest slave markets. It also had the largest Confederate arms factory, the Tredegar Iron Works. The factory produced artillery and other munitions, including heavy ordnance machinery and the 723 tons of armor plating that covered the CSS Virginia, the world's first ironclad ship used in war. The Confederate States Congress shared quarters in the Jefferson-designed Virginia State Capitol with the Virginia General Assembly. The Confederacy's executive mansion, known as the "White House of the Confederacy," was two blocks away on Clay Street. Located about 100 miles from Washington, DC, the new capital was at the end of a long supply line and difficult to defend. For four years, its defense required the bulk of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederacy's best troops and commanders. The Union army made Richmond a main target in the campaigns of 1862 and 1864–65. In late June and early July 1862, Union General-in-Chief George B. McClellan threatened but failed to take Richmond in the Seven Days Battles of the Peninsula campaign. Three years later, Richmond became indefensible in March 1865 after nearby Petersburg fell and several remaining rail supply lines to the south and southwest were broken. On March 25, Confederate General John B. Gordon's desperate attack on Fort Stedman, east of Petersburg, failed. On April 1, Union Cavalry General Philip Sheridan, assigned to interdict the Southside Railroad, met brigades commanded by Southern General George Pickett at the Five Forks Junction, defeated them, took thousands of prisoners, and advised Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant to order a general advance. When the Union Sixth Corps broke through Confederate lines on the Boydton Plank Road south of Petersburg, Confederate casualties exceeded 5,000, about a tenth of Lee's defending army. Lee then informed President Jefferson Davis that he intended to evacuate Richmond. On April 2, 1865, the Confederate Army began Richmond's evacuation. Confederate President Davis and his cabinet, Confederate government archives, and its treasury's gold, left the city that night by train. Confederate officials burned documents and troops burned tobacco and other warehouses to deny the Union any spoils. In the early morning of April 3, Confederate troops exploded the city's gunpowder magazine, killing several paupers in a temporary Almshouse and igniting raging fires. Later that day, General Godfrey Weitzel, commander of the 25th Corps of the United States Colored Troops, accepted Richmond's surrender from the mayor and a group of leading citizens who did not evacuate. Union troops eventually contained the fires, but about 25% of the city's buildings were destroyed. On April 3, President Abraham Lincoln visited Grant at Petersburg and took a launch up the James River to Richmond on April 4. While Davis attempted to organize the Confederate government in Danville, Lincoln met Confederate Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell, handing him a note inviting Virginia's state legislature to end their rebellion. After Campbell spun the note to Confederate legislators as a possible end to the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln rescinded his offer and ordered General Weitzel to prevent the state legislature from meeting. On April 6, Union forces killed, wounded, or captured 8,000 Confederate troops at Sayler's Creek, southwest of Petersburg. The Confederate Army continued a general retreat southwestward, and General Lee continued to reject General Grant's surrender entreaties until Sheridan's infantry and cavalry encircled the shrinking Army of Northern Virginia and cut off its ability to retreat further on April 8. Lee surrendered his remaining approximately 10,000 troops the following morning at Appomattox Court House, meeting Grant at the McLean Home. Davis was captured on May 10 near Irwinville, Georgia, taken back to Virginia, and imprisoned two years at Fort Monroe, until freed on bail. A decade after the Civil War, Richmond had resumed its position as an economic powerhouse, with iron front buildings and massive brick factories. Canal traffic peaked in the 1860s, with railroads becoming the dominant shipping method. Richmond became a major railroad crossroads, showcasing the world's first triple railroad crossing. Tobacco warehousing and processing continued to play a central economic role, advanced by the world's first cigarette-rolling machine that James Albert Bonsack of Roanoke invented between 1880 and 1881. Another important contributor to Richmond's resurgence was the Richmond Union Passenger Railway, a trolley system developed by electric power pioneer Frank J. Sprague. The system opened its first Richmond line in 1888, using an overhead wire and a trolley pole to connect to the current and electric motors on the car's trucks. The success led to electric streetcar lines rapidly spreading to other cities. A post-World War II transition to buses from streetcars began in May 1947 and was completed on November 25, 1949. By the beginning of the 20th century, the city's population had reached 85,050 in 5 sq mi (13 km2), making it the most densely populated city in the Southern United States. In the 1900 Census, Richmond's population was 62.1% white and 37.9% black. Freed slaves and their descendants created a thriving African-American business community, and the city's historic Jackson Ward became known as the "Wall Street of Black America." In 1903, African-American businesswoman and financier Maggie L. Walker chartered St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, served as its president, and was the first back female bank president in the United States. Charles Thaddeus Russell was Richmond's first black architect, and he designed the bank's office. Today, the bank is called the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company and is the country's oldest surviving African-American bank. Another prominent African-American from this time was John Mitchell Jr., a newspaper editor, civil rights activist, and politician. In 1910, the former city of Manchester consolidated with Richmond, and in 1914 the city annexed Barton Heights, Ginter Park, and Highland Park in Henrico County. In May 1914, Richmond became the headquarters of the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve Bank. Several major performing arts venues were constructed during the 1920s, including what are now the Landmark Theatre, Byrd Theatre, and Carpenter Theatre. The city's first radio station, WRVA, began broadcasting in 1925. WTVR-TV (CBS 6), Richmond's first television station, was also the first TV station south of Washington, D.C. Between 1963 and 1965, there was a "downtown boom" that led to the construction of more than 700 buildings. In 1968, Virginia Commonwealth University was created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and the Richmond Professional Institute. On January 1, 1970, Richmond's borders expanded south by 27 sq mi (70 km2) and its population increased by 47,000 after several years of court cases in which Chesterfield County unsuccessfully fought annexation. In 1995, a multimillion-dollar flood wall was completed, protecting the city's low-lying areas from the oft-rising James River. Consequently, the River District businesses grew rapidly, bolstered by the creation of a Canal Walk along the city's former industrial canals. Today the area is home to much of Richmond's entertainment, dining, and nightlife activity. In 1996, racial tensions grew amid controversy about adding the statue of African American Richmond native and tennis star Arthur Ashe to the series of statues of Confederate generals on Monument Avenue. After several months of controversy, Ashe's bronze statue was finally completed and installed facing north, the opposite direction from the Confederate generals, on July 10, 1996.