The history of Richmond Michigan between 1890 and 1930 is not a story of one big disaster or overnight change. It is a slower, steadier arc of a farm village turning into a modest small town, helped along by the railroad, a fieldstone church, and a surprisingly grand hotel that looked like it belonged in a much larger place.
From about 1,000 residents in 1890 to roughly 1,500 by 1930, Richmond grew without losing its local character. It remained a place where people knew each other by name, watched the trains come in, and marked time by church bells and school terms.
Video – Richmond Michigan – A Small Town’s Journey Through the Early 1900s
Roots of a Village on the Ridge
To understand the history of Richmond Michigan, you have to start before 1890. In the 1830s, Erastus Beebe and others settled a crossroads hamlet known as Beebe’s Corners. Nearby were separate spots called Ridgeway and Cooper Town. In 1878 those three settlements agreed to join together, and in 1879 the Michigan Legislature chartered the new village of Richmond.
By 1890, the merged village sat on a narrow ridge in northern Macomb County, linked to Detroit and Port Huron by the Grand Trunk Railway. Farms surrounded the built-up area. Census figures show 1,074 residents in 1890 and only a bit more, 1,133, by 1900. The numbers suggest a stable, working community rather than a boomtown.
Daily life in those years would have felt familiar to people across rural Michigan. Families raised grain, hay, and livestock. Children walked to one-room schools. Saturdays brought a trip into the village for supplies, mail, and gossip. The railroad depot, a few stores, churches, and a handful of service businesses made up the core of town.
Hotel Lenox and a Bigger Vision for a Small Town
One of the most striking buildings in Richmond’s early-1900s skyline was the Hotel Lenox. The brick façade in your photo shows “F. Springborn” and the date 1888 on the front pediment, placing its construction in the late 19th century. The three-story block with tall windows and a deep front veranda looked like something from a larger city, not a village barely over a thousand people.
The counterintuitive part of the history of Richmond Michigan is right there in that image: the town stayed small on paper, but its architecture signaled ambition. The Lenox sat on what was then Grand Trunk Avenue, close to the railroad and the business district. Traveling salesmen coming in by train could walk straight to the hotel, check in upstairs, and then work their way through local shops with samples and order books.
Old postcards and newspaper references show the hotel as an important social spot into the 1930s. A 1939 Macomb County paper mentions a social club meeting there and advertising a New Year’s Eve party, which suggests the Lenox remained a local gathering place well into the interwar period. On warm evenings, the front porch likely functioned as Richmond’s unofficial front parlor, where farmers, merchants, and travelers traded news while watching the street.
Churches, Schools, and Everyday Routines
Like most Michigan villages of the time, Richmond anchored community life around its churches and schools. German Catholic families in the area helped establish St. Augustine as a mission in 1880, with a small wooden church built in 1888. As the parish grew to roughly 200 families, the old frame building could not keep up. Under Father Edward Schrauder, the congregation launched an ambitious building campaign.
The result was the stone St. Augustine Church that still dominates Main Street today. Sources note that the present building, completed in 1913, was constructed from roughly 2,000 wagonloads of fieldstone hauled by parishioners from surrounding farms. That says as much about social organization as it does about architecture. People were willing to invest time, labor, and teams of horses to produce a permanent church that matched their sense of what the town should be.
Schools followed a similar pattern, shifting from scattered one-room buildings to a more centralized system. By the early 20th century, Richmond maintained graded schools and, eventually, a high school for village youth and farm children from outside the corporate limits. School events, church suppers, and local club meetings filled out the calendar. The picture that emerges from local histories and the Richmond Area Historical and Genealogical Society’s collections is less about drama and more about routine: school bands, church picnics, and class photos that show steady enrollment year after year
Trains, Roads, and the Slow March into the Modern Age
Railroads had tied Richmond to outside markets since the 1850s, and that connection stayed important through 1930. Grain and livestock went out by rail. Manufactured goods, mail, and travelers came in the same way. For decades, the depot platform was where you watched people arrive and leave, or saw crates labeled for distant cities.
During the early 1900s, though, new networks layered on top of the old ones. Automobiles began to share the roads with horse-drawn wagons. A state highway, now M-19, carried traffic north and south right through the village. Paving came in stages. Residents who remembered rutted dirt and spring mud would have noticed the difference when concrete and asphalt finally reached town.
Public services improved as well. Richmond installed a municipal water system in the early 20th century, part of a broader state and national move toward piped water and fire protection. Local government records referenced in city newsletters show that the village gradually added modern utilities and better streets; there is no sign of a single huge “turning point” project, just a string of incremental upgrades.
World events did reach this small place. During World War I, local men enlisted and served overseas. Names from Richmond and nearby townships appear in regional casualty lists and honor rolls, and the Richmond Review, archived on microfilm, carried letters and war news for residents at home. The flu epidemic of 1918 likely affected the community, as it did everywhere, though detailed local accounts are scattered. Prohibition in the 1920s closed legal saloons and probably pushed alcohol into more private spaces, as happened across Michigan.
By the end of the 1920s, radios had started to appear in homes, giving families a nightly feed of news and entertainment from Detroit and other cities. Richmond was still rural, but it was no longer isolated.
History of Richmond Michigan in the Numbers
Census data provides a clear backbone for the history of Richmond Michigan in this period. A summary of U.S. decennial census results compiled for students shows the following population figures for the village: 1,074 in 1890, 1,133 in 1900, 1,277 in 1910, 1,303 in 1920, and 1,493 in 1930. There is no sudden spike or collapse; instead, the line creeps upward.
Those numbers confirm what the built environment hints at. The village had enough people and money to support:
- a substantial brick hotel in the 1880s
- an architecturally ambitious fieldstone church by 1913
- a school system that expanded as secondary education became more common
But Richmond did not explode in population the way some factory towns did. It stayed closer to its agricultural roots even as it slowly added urban features.
Today’s city of Richmond, incorporated in 1966 and now straddling Macomb and St. Clair counties, has nearly 6,000 residents. Yet the core street grid, the location of St. Augustine, and the memory of places like the Hotel Lenox link the modern city straight back to its 1890–1930 footprint.
Why the History of Richmond Michigan Still Matters
The history of Richmond Michigan in these four decades offers a useful reminder that most communities change by degree, not in sudden leaps. There is no famous battle, no national scandal, and, despite what an earlier draft of this piece claimed, no record of a single catastrophic downtown fire wiping out the business district. Instead, Richmond’s story is quieter: small increases in population, step-by-step infrastructure upgrades, and a few standout buildings that show how people saw their town.
The photo of the Hotel Lenox captures that attitude. A village of barely more than 1,000 people built a three-story brick hotel with decorative trim and a wide porch, as if it expected important guests to arrive at any moment. The fieldstone church built from thousands of wagonloads of rock says something similar about parish priorities. Together, they show that Richmond saw itself as worthy of durable, well-designed institutions.
For viewers and readers today, that is the real value of this period. Looking at Main Street scenes, hotel verandas, and church façades from 1890 to 1930, you can trace how one Michigan community balanced tradition with steady change. The result is not a fairy-tale version of small-town life, but a grounded record of how people actually built and maintained the place they called home.
Works Cited for the History of Richmond Michigan
“Genealogy Resources.” City of Richmond, MI – Official Website, City of Richmond, .
“Historical Population – Richmond, Michigan.” Kiddle Encyclopedia, .
“History of Richmond, Michigan.” The Star Newsletter, City of Richmond, Sept. 2017, .
“RAHGS – The Richmond Area Historical and Genealogical Society.” Richmond Area Historical and Genealogical Society, .
“Richmond, Michigan.” Wikipedia, .
St. Augustine Church. SAH Archipedia, Society of Architectural Historians,.
“St. Augustine Church (Richmond).” Detroit Church Blog, 25 Apr. 2017, .
“St. Augustine Parish, Richmond, Michigan.” Flickr, photo by Steve Burt, 30 Aug. 2010, .
“U.S. Decennial Census Data.” United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov.
