People of Marion County, Tennessee

Richard Hardy

Cement manufacturer, Chattanooga mayor, and namesake of Richard City

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Last updated: April 19, 2026

Oval portrait of Richard Hardy, bald and slightly smiling, in a dark suit
Figure 2. Richard Hardy. Courtesy of Richard Hardy Memorial School. Source: Wilkerson 2003 thesis.

Richard Hardy (1868 to 1927) was the central figure in the founding, naming, and civic life of Richard City, the Dixie Portland Cement company town at the southern edge of Marion County. Hardy arrived in the Chattanooga area in 1905 from the Pittsburgh office of New York Life, helped complete the Dixie Portland plant through the 1907 panic, and in 1914 was elected president of the company, at which point the combined communities of Deptford and Copenhagen were renamed Richard City in his honor. He later served as Mayor of Chattanooga from 1923 to 1926, and in his last years was an executive of the new Pennsylvania-Dixie Cement Corporation.

Early life and educator

Hardy graduated from the University of Michigan in 1892. He became Superintendent of Schools in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and in that role developed his idea of a “model school” that would, in his words, “make possible the development of the abilities of each individual child, thus enriching the entire community and assuring happier and more efficiently run homes.” That conviction ran through the rest of his career; the Richard Hardy Memorial School that was built in Richard City in 1926 was its full realization.

New York Life and recruitment to Dixie Portland

After leaving education, Hardy moved into insurance, becoming director of the Pittsburgh branch of the New York Life Insurance Company. In 1905, Detroit businessman George W. Millen, a large Dixie Portland stockholder, recruited Hardy to the young cement company at Deptford, Tennessee. The plant, organized by Chattanooga engineer Ellis Soper and Iola, Kansas cement men George Nicholson and Lee Hunt, was still under construction at the time. Hardy was elected secretary and treasurer on the company's formal incorporation in 1907.

The Dixie Portland presidency, 1914 to 1926

In 1914 Hardy was elected president of Dixie Portland, after nine years at the company and a leading role in completing the plant through the Panic of 1907. The two small communities at the plant site, Deptford and Copenhagen, were formally combined and renamed Richard City in his honor. By 1917 the plant employed 600 to 700 workers, and Hardy was simultaneously building out the company town: worker housing in cement stucco, the Dixie Inn hotel, the commissary, a hospital, a church, parks, a swimming pool, a baseball diamond (on which Hardy often pitched), and a tennis club where he played alongside plant chemist W. H. Kewish.

Mayor of Chattanooga, 1923 to 1926

In October 1923, the Chattanooga city commission elected Hardy to serve the unexpired term of Mayor Alexander W. Chambliss, who had been appointed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Hardy continued as president of Dixie Portland throughout his mayoralty. He declined to seek another term in 1926, when the consolidation of Dixie Portland into a new national cement company required him to move to New York.

The Penn-Dixie consolidation and New York move, 1926

In 1926, Dixie Portland was consolidated with several other large eastern cement producers to form the Pennsylvania-Dixie Cement Corporation, a $45 million combination headquartered in New York City. Hardy took a new role with the combined company and relocated. That same year, the Dixie Portland Memorial School he had championed was dedicated in Richard City over three days, April 26 to 28, with Colonel John R. McQuigg of the American Legion, Charles F. D. Belden of the American Library Association, and Dr. Harcourt A. Morgan of the University of Tennessee among the speakers.

Death and legacy, 1927

Hardy died of heart disease in New York City in August 1927, at age 59, about a year after leaving the mayor's office. He was buried at Forest Hills Cemetery in Chattanooga. The Dixie Portland Memorial School was renamed Richard Hardy Memorial School in his honor that same year. Commonly cited secondary sources date his death to August 14, 1927, but the Wilkerson 2003 thesis gives only the month and year; the day-precise date is therefore [needs verification] against primary records.

Hardy and his wife had no children, but by local accounts he paid college tuition for nearly one hundred young men of the Richard City community. His legacy on the ground is the town he built, which retains much of its distinctive cement-stucco architecture, and the school that still bears his name.

Related

About Richard City →
About Dixie Portland Cement →
About Richard Hardy Memorial School →
About South Pittsburg →

Sources

  • Kelly Wilkerson, Richard City, Tennessee: Home, Community, and Paternalism in a Southern Company Town, 1900–1985, M.A. thesis, Middle Tennessee State University, May 2003
  • Robert N. Chenault, “How a Dream Transformed Education in this Tennessee Town,” The Nation's Schools 8 (November 1931): 33–40
  • Zella Armstrong, The History of Hamilton County and Chattanooga, Tennessee (Chattanooga: Lookout Publishing Company, 1940), vol. 2, p. 252
  • “Death Claims Former Mayor Richard Hardy,” newspaper clipping, Special Collections, Local History, Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library
  • Tennessee Encyclopedia — Richard City
  • City of Chattanooga — Past Mayors