Richmond's history is recorded not only in text but also in maps. This overview of Richmond's cartographic history provides important context regarding the production of its maps.
In 1737 William Mayo, a friend of William Byrd II, completed his survey of the town of Richmond. His plan was one common to the Tidewater, a rectangular town design located east of Shockoe Creek. That year, Byrd held a lottery to sell off town lots. Mayo’s original plan included 112 numbered lots, 14 lots designated by letters, and two without any identification. Lots 97 and 98 were set aside for the Henrico Parish vestry, and St. John’s Church was erected on them in 1741. In 1742 Virginia’s General Assembly granted Richmond a town charter. Byrd’s son, William Byrd III, in debt and seeking a way to pay off his creditors, decided to hold a lottery in 1768 to sell additional lots west of Shockoe Creek.
When Virginia’s capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond in 1780, Shockoe Hill was chosen as the site for the new capitol building; it would look over the town of Richmond that had developed on flat land adjacent to the James River. Nine directors, one of whom was Thomas Jefferson, were appointed to plan Virginia’s new capital. Jefferson proposed a gridiron plan for Shockoe Hill that would set apart the platted portion of “Richmond Town” from the new capitol. There would be two major connecting streets, Main and Cary, and “Capitol Square” would consist of three buildings. Ultimately, the General Assembly decided to combine all three branches of government into one building, and Jefferson was asked to design a plan for it (as were others). While in France, Jefferson worked with Charles-Louis Clerisseau to design what became Virginia’s Capitol Square. One of Richmond’s best-known features, it dominated Richmond’s skyline for decades.
Early maps of Richmond do not always convey the challenges presented by the area’s topographic features; hills, valleys, gullies, and ravines defined early Richmond’s topography and made the area difficult to traverse. As the city grew, the topography presented challenges to its development.
Richard Young became the first official surveyor for the City of Richmond in 1805. The Library of Virginia’s collections include three of Young’s manuscript city plans of Richmond that were drawn in 1809–10 and 1817. His plans “map” Richmond and project the city’s future development, but do not provide users with any contour lines or hachures to define Shockoe Hill and Valley. Today, Young’s plans are a part of the Richmond City Office of the City Engineer Collection and are still consulted. Tracings and handwritten copies of Young’s 1817 Plan of Richmond were created in the early 20th century by city engineers, and his plans have served recently as a resource for individuals researching the location of an early African American burial site that was referenced on Young’s 1809 plan.
Micajah Bates was appointed surveyor for the City of Richmond after Young’s death, and his 1835 map of the city notes the changes made to Shockoe Creek, the location of “Old Town Richmond,” and the city’s corporation lines. As the 19th century progressed, antebellum Richmond was the cultural, political, and financial capital of Virginia and served as the hub of the state’s developing railroad network as well as an important port, in part, due to the success of the James River and Kanawha Canal.
As the city’s influence grew, so did its population. Moses Ellyson and other publishers helped shepherd visitors through Richmond by producing city directories that proved to be excellent guides for casual and business travelers. Ellyson’s 1856 Richmond City Directory contained a map of the city that listed 95 points of interest, including warehouses, banks, hotels, churches, and meeting places. Richmond’s topographical features are shown, as well. It also reveals that the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad line stopped on Broad Street between 8th and 9th Streets—the Library of Virginia’s present location. Ellyson’s directory notes that Richmond had a “hilly” terrain.
Richmond and its surrounding area were mapped during the Civil War, and the city remained relatively unscathed until April 1865, when Confederate forces set fire to their own warehouses. The fire spread to other parts of Richmond and was contained before it reached Capitol Square. Richmond’s business district was heavily damaged, however, and many businesses never fully recovered. Charles Ludwig’s Map of a Part of the City of Richmond showing the burnt districts, published by the Richmond Whig just a few days after the fall of Richmond, shows the areas that were destroyed. The map notes that residents had to rely on a pontoon bridge to travel to the Southside after the bridges connecting Richmond with Manchester were destroyed, and includes a crude sketch of Shockoe Creek.
Two years later, in 1867, the City of Richmond annexed 2.5 square miles of surrounding Henrico County, including the islands in the James River, neighborhoods in Union and Chimborazo Hills, and a section of Church Hill that faced Broad Street. Two new wards were created in 1867, Marshall and Clay, and a third, Jackson Ward, was added in 1871. In the decades following the Civil War, several publishing firms created atlases for American cities including the Beers (1877) and the Baist (1889) atlases for the City of Richmond. The F. W. Beers Company published maps of cities and towns and often collaborated with local surveyors. In 1877 F. W. Beers, with assistance from James T. Redd, published Map of Richmond, Manchester and Suburbs…, which includes political divisions for Richmond City and Henrico County and the names of several property owners.
Other structural materials include fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company in the second half of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century. These large-scale maps show commercial, industrial, and residential sections of a city or town. Overall, thousands of cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico were mapped. Designed to assist fire insurance agents, they are incredibly detailed, showing property boundaries, house and block numbers, fire alarm boxes, hydrants, and other minute details. The first Sanborn maps for Richmond were published in 1886.
Richmond expanded in 1892 and again in 1906. Maps produced after this date show new wards: Clay, Lee, Henry, and Marshall. Jackson Ward no longer existed. In 1910 the city annexed the City of Manchester and expanded again in 1914. The city’s continued growth, the significant changes brought by the advent of the automobile, and technological advances in general parallel the Richmond City Department of Public Works’ increased publication of Richmond City maps. One example of the department’s work is Map Showing the Territorial Growth of Richmond, where color is used to show annexations by Richmond up to 1914. The department published several maps throughout the 20th century and many are listed in this bibliography.
Richmond’s first master plan, published in 1946, “attempted to put the city’s development in perspective and required 85 map plates” (Withers 1986). The maps “map” the distribution of Richmond’s population, the number of buildings erected, population density, and other socioeconomic information.
Brown, Elsa Barkley and Gregg D. Kimball. “Mapping the Terrain of Black Richmond” in Journal of Urban History. Vol. 21, No. 3, March 1995: 296–346.
Chesson, Michael B. Richmond After the War 1865–1890. Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1981.
Dabney, Virginius. Richmond: The Story of a City. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990.
Kimball, Gregg D. American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
—. “The Working People of Richmond: Life and Labor in an Industrial City, 1865–1920” in Labor’s Heritage. Vol. 3, No. 2, April 1991, p. 42–65.
Mordecai, Samuel. Richmond in By-Gone Days. Richmond: The Dietz Press, 1946.
Ristow, Walter. American Maps and Mapmakers. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1985.
Reps, John. Tidewater Towns: City Planning in Colonial Virginia and Maryland. Williamsburg, VA: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1972.
Ruggles, Jeffrey. The Burial Ground: An Early African-American Site in Richmond. N.P., 2009.
Withers, Marianne. "Complete in Every Part; Select Maps of the City of Richmond.” Virginia Cavalcade, Spring 1986, Vol. 35, No 4, pp. 162–170.