Amid the remains of the Tredegar Iron Works, the nation’s largest and best-equipped ironworks in 1860, some Tredegar iron industries operated until the 1950s. Tredegar’s Pattern Storage Building, constructed around 1867, now serves as Richmond’s Civil War Visitor Center. This building once held patterns for casting guns, railroad wheels, and machinery. Other surviving structures include the 1861 gun foundry, the office building, a 1915 carpenter shop, and the company store. The site’s complex industrial heritage was largely dependent on the James River and Kanawha Canal.
