Richmond, Indiana

 city, county seat

www.visitrichmond.org/
ci.richmond.in.us/

Richmond was settled along the East Fork of the Whitewater River in 1806 by Quaker families from North Carolina. John Smith and David Hoover were among the earliest settlers. Richmond is still home to several Quaker institutions including Friends United Meeting, Earlham College and the Earlham School of Religion.

Richmond is believed to have been the smallest community in the United States with a professional opera company and symphony orchestra. The Whitewater Opera has since closed its doors but the Richmond Symphony Orchestra is a source of community pride. Will Earhart formed the first complete high school orchestra in Richmond in 1899. A later orchestra director, Joseph E. Maddy went on to found what is now known as the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.

A significant group of artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came to be known as the Richmond Group. The list of artists includes John Elwood Bundy, Charles Conner, George Herbert Baker, Maude Kaufman Eggemeyer and John Albert Seaford among others. The Richmond Art Museum has an outstanding collection of regional and American art. Many consider the most significant painting in the collection to be a self portrait of Indiana-born William Merritt Chase.

Richmond was once known as "the lawnmower capital" because of the lawn mowers manufactured there from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. Manufacturers included Motomower Dille-McGuire and F&N. The farm machinery builder Gaar-Scott was based in Richmond.

In the 1920s, Indiana had the strongest Ku Klux Klan organization in the country under Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson, with control over the state legislature and an ally in Governor Ed Jackson. At its height, national membership during the second Klan movement reached 1.5 million, with 300,000 from Indiana.Records show that Richmond (home to Whitewater Klan #60) and Wayne County were Klan strongholds, with up to 45 percent of the county's white males having been Klan members. At the same time Gennett Records was recording important black jazz artists, it also produced private-label contract recordings for the Ku Klux Klan.[9] Official racial segregation was a feature of Richmond life until 1965, when the city ended its policy of restricting black firefighters to one station and limiting the promotion opportunities of firefighters and police officers.

After starting out in nearby Union City, Wayne Agricultural Works moved to Richmond. Wayne was a manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles, including "kid hacks", a precursor of the motorized school bus. Beginning in the early 1930s through the 1940s, several automobile designers and manufacturers were located in Richmond. Among the automobiles manufactured there was the "Richmond" which was built by the Wayne Works, the "Rodefeld", the "Davis", the "Pilot", the Westcott and the Crosley.

In the 1950s, Wayne Works became Wayne Corporation, a well-known bus manufacturer, and relocated to a site adjacent to Interstate 70 in 1967. The company was a leader in school bus safety innovations, but closed in 1992 during a period of school bus manufacturing industry consolidations.

Richmond was known as the Rose City because of the many varieties once grown there by Hill's Roses in several sprawling complexes of greenhouses. The company once had about 34 acres under glass. The Richmond Rose Festival honored the rose industry and was a popular summer attraction.

Richmond is located on the National Road, which became part of the system of National Auto Trails. The highway is now known as U.S. Highway 40. One of the extant Madonna of the Trail monuments was dedicated at Richmond on October 28, 1928 The monument sits in a corner of Glen Miller Park adjacent to U.S. 40.

On April 6, 1968, several downtown blocks were destroyed or damaged by a natural gas explosion and fire, killing 41 people and injuring more than 150. Thereafter, the main street through downtown was closed to traffic and the Downtown Promenade was built in 1972 (and later expanded in 1978). The five-block pedestrian mall was later torn down and the street reopened to traffic in 1997 as part of an urban revitalization effort.


Architecture

Richmond is noted for its historic architecture. In 2003, a book entitled Richmond Indiana: Its Physical Development and Aesthetic Heritage to 1920 by Cornell University architectural historians, Michael and Mary Raddant Tomlan, was published by the Indiana Historical Society. This work is the result of twenty five years of research on Richmond's growth and development. Particularly notable buildings are the 1902 Pennsylvania Railroad Station designed by Daniel Burnham and the 1893 Wayne County Court House designed by James W. McLaughlin of Cincinnati. Local architects of note include John A. Hasecoster, William S. Kaufman and Stephen O. Yates. Five large districts and several individual buildings are listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic American Engineering Record.