By the start of the twentieth century, the city’s population had reached 85,050 in 5 square miles (13 km2), making it the most densely populated city in the southern United States.
In 1903, African-American businesswoman and financier Maggie L. Walker chartered St. Luke Penny Savings Bank , and served as its first president, as well as the first female bank president in the United States. Today, the bank is called the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, and it is the oldest surviving African-American bank in the U.S. The regional Governor’s School in Richmond is named after her.
In 1910, the former city of Manchester was consolidated with the city of Richmond , and in 1914, the city annexed the Barton Heights, Ginter Park, and Highland Park areas of Henrico County.
Richmond became the headquarters if the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve Bank in may 1914 . It was selected due to the city’s geographic location, its importance as a commercial and financial center, its transportation and communications facilities, as well as Virginia’s leading regional role in the banking business. The bank was originally located near the federal courts downtown and moved to a new headquarters building near the Capitol in 1922, and finally to its present location overlooking the James River in 1978. Richmond’s business and industrial development continued throughout the decade, and in 1929, Philip Morris, which began as a British company about 100 years earlier, opened its first US factory in the city. Richmond was chosen because the town’s rich tobacco history.
Richmond entered the broadcasting era in late 1925 when WRVA, originally known as the Edgeworth Tobacco Station and owned by Larus & Brothers, went on the air. The white ballad singers and black gospel quartets that were popular on the radio at the time were often urban and sometimes even professional men. At the time, Richmond was particularly self-conscious with its southern roots, and such music was seen as culturally inferior. WTVR-TV (CBS 6), the first television station in Richmond, was the first television station south of Washington, D.C.
During the 1920′s , several performing arts venues were constructed . In 1926, The Mosque (now called the Landmark Theater) was constructed by the Shriners as their Acca Temple Shrine, and since then, many of America’s greatest entertainers have appeared on its stage beneath its towering minarets and desert murals. Loew’s Theater was built in 1927 , and was described as, “the ultimate in 1920s movie palace fantasy design.” It later suffered a decline in popularity as the movie-going population moved to the suburbs , but was restored during the 1980s and in 1928 it was renamed as the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts , the Byrd Theater was built by local architect Fred Bishop on Westhampton Avenue (now called Cary Street) in a residential area of the city. To this day, the Byrd remains in operation as one of the last of the great movie palaces of the 1920s and 1930s.
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