1877 Illustrated Atlas of the City of Richmond Virginia Post Civil War

This facsimile reproduces the Illustrated Atlas of the City of Richmond, Virginia, published in 1877 by F.W. Beers, Civil Engineer, for the Southern and Southwestern Surveying and Publishing Company, with business managers A. Enslow Jr. and P. Brown, and offices at 2 Goddin Hall, Richmond, and Concord, Virginia. The atlas captures Richmond just over a decade after the end of the Civil War, during the Reconstruction-era rebuilding of the former Confederate capital. F.W. Beers was among the most prolific American atlas publishers of the late nineteenth century, and the Richmond volume is one of the relatively few Southern city atlases the firm produced.

A Note on This Edition

This facsimile is assembled primarily from the Library of Congress copy of the atlas, with selected views and the Richmond city business notices reproduced from the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries copy. The eight pages of business notices included in this edition were not listed in the original Table of Contents, and are added here as a substantial supplement to the cartographic content.

Summary of Contents

The atlas opens with an outline or index plan of Richmond, followed by detailed sectional maps of the city organized alphabetically from Section A through Section T, each covering one or more of the city's wards — Jackson, Marshall, Clay, Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, and Manchester wards across the full geographic extent of Richmond. Each section is keyed to specific streets and boundaries, with descriptions running from Allen Street east to 10th Street and Bacon Street south to Duval Street in Section A, through to 14th Street south to City Line and James River east to Maury Street in Section T. The maps show street grids, individual property lots, named landowners and institutions, public buildings, railroads, and major industrial works including the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad lines, the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac and Petersburg Railroad shops, Harvey's Nursery, Oakwood Cemetery, Marshall Reservoir, Belle Isle, and the Old Dominion Iron and Nail Works. Coverage extends across the James River to include Manchester, then a separate municipality and now part of South Richmond.

The atlas is illustrated with a series of lithographic views including the St. James Hotel of Richmond, the Richmond Stove Company, the St. Claire Hotel of Richmond, the American Hotel of Richmond, and views of regional resort destinations including Healing Springs, Virginia; Wallawhatoola Springs, Virginia; and Old Sweet Springs, West Virginia — capturing the Virginia spa-and-springs tradition that drew genteel visitors to the Appalachian mineral resorts throughout the nineteenth century.

The volume also includes eight pages of Richmond city business notices providing biographical and commercial information about the merchants, manufacturers, professionals, and tradesmen of the post-war city — a section that makes the atlas an exceptionally rich resource for family, commercial, and industrial research.

An essential reference for genealogists researching Richmond and Virginia families, historians of Reconstruction-era Southern urbanism, architectural and industrial historians documenting the rebuilding of Richmond after the Civil War, scholars of the Virginia springs and resort tradition, and collectors of antiquarian American cartography.

8.5" x 11". Color. 66 pages.