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Virginia: Tidewater and Piedmont » Richmond Metropolitan Area » East of Richmond » Richmond Cedar Works

Richmond Cedar Works

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c. 1880. Old Osborne Tpk. (VA 5) (on the city-county border)

The Richmond Cedar Works comprises several large brick industrial buildings that sit at the border of the city of Richmond and Henrico County, where Virginia 5 leads into the county's Varina district. Cedar Works is one of few surviving factory buildings that once crowded this riverfront area, an extension of the Richmond seaport, called Rocketts. While the company is no longer in operation, at its peak in the twentieth century the Cedar Works employed 2,000 workers and produced washing machines, clothespins, churns, “ice cream freezers” (refrigerators), and tenners (barrels) for sauerkraut. During the same period the company owned 350,000 acres of land in Nansemond County's Great Dismal Swamp, a source of the plant's cedar supply. The size of the complex has been reduced in recent years.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Richard Guy Wilson et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Clarke-Palmore House (Marion Hill)
The Mews
Residence
Tree Hill
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Citation

Richard Guy Wilson et al., "Richmond Cedar Works", [Richmond, Virginia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-01-RI397.

Print Source

Buildings of Virginia: Tidewater and Piedmont, Richard Guy Wilson and contributors. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 302-302.

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