Richmond has a mayor-council form of government, with an advisory board consisting of the directors of the five depart ments, together with the mayor. It owns and operates its water, gas and electric plants, and has an annual budget of $8,500,000. A city plan has been adopted and zoning ordinances are in effect. The assessed valuation of property subject to taxation was $259, 101,845 in 1927. Richmond is the financial and commercial metropolis of a large area of the South and the leading manufac turing city of Virginia. It is the seat of the Federal Reserve Bank of the fifth district. Bank debits in 1927 amounted to $1,711, 049,000, and postal receipts totalled $2,197,000. Five insurance companies have their home offices here. The wholesale and jobbing houses do an annual business of over $150,000,000. Richmond is one of the oldest and largest tobacco markets, and one of the largest hog markets, in the United States. Its principal manu factures are cigars and cigarettes (500,000,00o and 40,000,000,000 annually) and other tobacco products. In 1927 the total value of the city's manufactures was $220,742,721.
History.—Richmond was founded in 1733 by Col. William Byrd, owner of much land along the James, who held important offices in the Colony and was the author of some of the best accounts of contemporary scenes and events, and whose family has been conspicuous in the history of Virginia since 1637. He was an ancestor of Harry F. Byrd, governor 1926-30, and of Richard E. Byrd, explorer (q.v.) An exploring party from James town had sailed up the river in 1607 and erected a cross on one of the small islands here ; a short-lived settlement had been made within the present city limits in 1609, and a second had been attempted 3 m. below by Capt. John Smith on land he bought from the Indians; and in 1645 Ft. Charles had been built as a frontier defence at the falls. Col. Byrd (who had been educated in England) called the town Richmond, probably be cause of the similarity of its site to that of Richmond on the Thames. It was laid out in 1737 by Maj. William Mayo and was incorporated as a town in 1742. In 1777 the public records were brought here from Williamsburg, and in May 1779, Rich mond was made the capital of the State. The town was partly burned on Jan. 5, 1781, by British troops under Benedict Arnold. It was chartered as a city in 1782. At the opening of
the Civil War it was an important port and commercial centre, with a population of about 38,000. On May 8, 1861, it was made the capital of the Confederacy, and for the next four years was the objective of military operations to which the greatest lead ers and the finest armies were devoted. (See AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.) The city was defended by three encircling lines of fortifi cations. On March I, 1862, President Davis placed it under mar tial law, together with the environs within a radius of 10 miles. The opening of McClellan's peninsular campaign (see YORK TOWN) in 1862 caused great apprehension in Richmond, and preparations were made to ship the government records to a safer place. On the approach of the "Monitor" and the Union gunboats many persons fled from the city and President Davis appointed a day of prayer. Confidence was restored by the checking of the fleet at Drewry's Bluff on May 15, 1862, the battle of Fair Oaks, and the Seven Days (qq.v.). In May Grant began the final campaign against Richmond. (See WILDER NESS and PETERSBURG.) On the fall of Petersburg (April 2, 1865) Richmond was evacu ated, after the ironclads, the bridges and many of the tobacco and military warehouses had been set on fire. When the Federal troops made their entrance the next morning a serious conflagra tion was under way, which was not extinguished until a third of the city was in ruins. The Tredegar iron works, still a leading industry of Richmond, was the principal iron foundry of the Confederacy, where most of the cannon were cast. A tobacco warehouse and ship-chandlery (built in 1845 by Luther Libby) was used as a prison, chiefly for Federal officers, throughout the war. Frequently it was terribly overcrowded, housing at times as many as 1,200, and the sufferings and the death-rate were extreme. In 1888-89 Libby prison was moved to Chicago to be a war museum. Within 25 years after the close of the war the population of Richmond had doubled (reaching 81,388 in 1890), $14,000,000 was invested in manufacturing plants, annual jobbing sales amounted to $31,500,000 and bank clearings to $93,5oo,000. In the next 3o years (189o-192o) the population doubled again.