Rocketts Landing
Neighborhood of Richmond
Water tower in Rocketts Landing
Coordinates: 37°30′55″N 77°24′50″W / 37.51528°N 77.41389°W / 37.51528; -77.41389
CountryUnited States
StateVirginia
CityRichmond
Time zoneUTC−04:00 (Eastern Daylight Time)
 • Summer (DST)UTC−05:00 (Eastern Standard Time)
ZIP code
23231
Area code804
ISO 3166 code1
Websiterockettsvillage.com

Rockett's Landing (or simply Rocketts) is a new urbanist neighborhood in southeastern Richmond, Virginia on the border of Henrico County, Virginia and the north bank of the James River.[1] It was named after Baldwin Rockett, an 18th-century ship's captain born in April 1681 in Exeter, Devon, England.

The neighborhood was originally a factory and water tower and has been converted into mixed-use development with brick streets.[2] It is served by the GRTC Pulse Rocketts Landing station.

Civil War

Contemporary map of the Richmond area, showing the burnt Rockett's Yard in the lower right

In the American Civil War, and still a suburban hamlet of Richmond at the time, the northern fringes of Rockett's Landing were chosen to become one of the two sites in the Richmond area to serve as a Confederate Navy shipyard as compensation for the loss of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in May 1862 (the other one having been William Armistead Graves' smaller "Graves's Yard" further upstream[3]), with yard installations eventually straddling both sides of the James River. During the remainder of the war, the yard, at the time simply known as the "Navy Yard", serviced and built vessels for the James River Squadron, most notably its casemate ironclads such as CSS Fredericksburg, CSS Richmond and CSS Texas (1865).[4] The yard ceased operations and was partially burnt by retreating Confederate troops when Richmond fell to Union troops the next day on April 3, 1865, though the hamlet itself was spared according to the contemporary map, featured on the left.

When President Abraham Lincoln started his tour of the fallen city the following day, he came ashore at Rockett's Landing.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Spiers, Jonathan (8 March 2017). "Land added to Rocketts Landing; apartments under construction | Richmond BizSense". Richmond BizSense. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Rich in Richmond History". rockettsvillage.com. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
  3. ↑ Bisbee, Saxon (2018). Engines of Rebellion: Confederate Ironclads and Steam Engineering in the American Civil War. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. p. 280. ISBN 9780817319861., p. 131
  4. ↑ Wallis, John W. (27 September 2017). "The 150ft PP Ironclad Gunboats of John Luke Porter, Part One". Civil War Talk. Retrieved 1 July 2018.


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