Main Street Banking Historic District (Boundary Decrease)

Along five blocks of East Main Street in downtown Richmond, this district preserves the city's historic banking center, first established in 1817 when the Bank of Virginia and the Farmer's Bank built adjoining offices. The 1865 Evacuation Fire destroyed nearly every antebellum building here except the 1858 Customs House, designed by Ammi Burnham Young. Rebuilding followed quickly with Northern capital, producing cast-iron commercial fronts such as the Stearns Building and the Virginia Fire and Marine Insurance building, both by George H. Johnson. Around 1900 the street gained early skyscrapers, including the Mutual Building, the American National Bank Building and the nineteen-story First National Bank Building of 1912, then Richmond's tallest structure. Hotels, an 1893 Richardsonian Romanesque bank and Neoclassical buildings add further variety. The district contains twenty-one contributing buildings, six of which were already individually listed. Financial institutions remain the leading business, continuing a role that dates back more than two centuries.