Tobacco Row

Richmond’s Tobacco Row has been a center of tobacco warehousing and manufacturing since the 1600s, when Virginia tobacco became popular in Europe and planters and shippers maintained facilities there as part of the colony’s most valuable export trade. The substantial brick buildings along Dock Street date from 1886 to 1929 and were erected to protect tobacco from fire. Among them were factories, warehouses, and storage buildings used by Philip Morris, American Tobacco, P. Lorillard, Cameron & Co., Kinney & Co., Allen & Ginter, Consolidated Cigar, Whitlock, and Larus & Brother, with uses ranging from cigarette, cigar, smoking tobacco, and pipe tobacco production to leaf storage and stemmery operations. In 1925, WRVA radio began broadcasting from a studio in the Edgeworth warehouse. By the late 1980s, most tobacco companies had moved elsewhere, and after the James River Flood Wall was built in 1995, many of the old warehouses were converted into apartments and retail space.

Richmond, Virginia · United States