Beauties." In 1881, with growing competition in the tobacco industry, Ginter began leasing James Bonsack's newly-invented cigarette rolling machine. By 1888, Allen & Ginter employed over 1,000 workers and cigarette production increased from 100,000 per month to 2,000,000 per day. The firm eventually opened offices in London, Paris, and Berlin in order to meet foreign demand for their products. Allen & Ginter continued to prosper until they merged with J. B. Duke, Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, Goodwin & Company and W.S. Kimball & Company to form the American Tobacco Company in January 1890. Ginter was offered the presidency, but declined and remained a director until his death. Real estate Although Ginter had lived in Richmond for several decades, he did not purchase his first home until 1876. He invited his sister, Jane Arents, and three of her daughters, Grace, Joanna, and Minnie, to live with him at 405 East Cary Street. In 1891, he completed construction of a freestyle, Richardsonian Romanesque mansion in an elite neighborhood at 901 West Franklin Street. Even today, the structure is known as the Ginter House. Ginter was inspired by the suburban developments in Melbourne and Sydney that he visited on one of many business trips marketing for Allen & Ginter. Beginning in 1888, Ginter and John Pope began assembling large tracts of land just north of Richmond in Henrico County, with the intention of developing an upscale streetcar suburb. Their purchases included part of the original Westbrook Plantation, which they developed into their own country estate. Ginter's renovated and enlarged Westbrook house included a private barbershop. An outbuilding featured an automated, one-lane bowling alley." Ginter and Pope divided the large swaths of land into residential plots and provided many extravagant amenities, such as fresh artesian wells, tile sewer lines, roads covered with crushed stone, and the extension of the Richmond Union Passenger Railway, the nation's first large-scale electric streetcar system. The neighborhood, known as Ginter Park, attracted the Union Theological Seminary and was eventually annexed to the City of Richmond. Ginter also laid the groundwork for several adjoining neighborhoods, including Bellevue Park and Sherwood Park. He established the Lakeside Wheel Club in 1895, and Lakeside Park in 1896. Always eager to improve Richmond, Ginter hired famed architects Carrère and Hastings in 1892 to design a world-class hotel known as the Jefferson. An estimated 5 to 10 million dollars was invested in the realization of