Tredegar Iron Works Civil War Visitor Center

Richmond Times-Dispatch Archives

Published: July 20, 2008

Check our photos
of Brown’s Island and Tredegar Iron Works

Check our photos
of the Lincoln statue at Tredegar Iron Works

Richmond National Battlefield Parks Tredegar Iron Works Civil War Visitor Center, 490 Tredegar Street. Interpretive center with artifacts, video displays, historical photographs, and informational brochures and maps of Richmond’s Civil War battlefields and attractions. Tredegar is also the site of the statue of Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad, which was dedicated in 2003. The center shares the grounds of Tredegar with the American Civil War Center located is across the street from Brown’s Island.

Hours: Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. For the locations and operating hours of Richmond National Battlefield Park units in the metro Richmond area, call or check the Web site.

Info: 226-1981 or www.nps.gov/rich/

TREDEGAR HISTORY
This industrial complex, now a National Historic Landmark, was the leading ordnance foundry of the Confederacy. Tredegar maintained wartime production despite severe shortages of raw materials, skilled labor and effective transportation and enabled the South to sustain itself as a viable war machine for four years.

Chartered in 1837 and named for the ironworks at Tredegar in wales, Tredegar’s rise to prominence began in 1841 when Joseph Reid Anderson took over the company. Known as the “Ironmaker to the Confederacy,“ Anderson guided the firm through the ward and to prosperity in the decades following. Unable to make the transition from iron to steel in the late 19th century, Tredegar declined to a small local concern and eventually left its original site in 1958.

The principal structure of the group of buildings is the gable-roofed gun foundry where most of the Confederate armaments were produced.
[Credit: Virginia Landmarks Register]