Alexandria 1

For African American escaped slaves, the military occupation of Alexandria created opportunity on an unprecedented scale. As Federal troops extended their occupation of the seceded states, escaped slaves flooded into Union-controlled areas. Safely behind Union lines, the cities of Alexandria and Washington offered not only comparative freedom, but employment. Over the course of the war, Alexandria was transformed by the Union occupiers into a major supply depot and transport and hospital center, all under army control. 

Because the escaped slaves were still legally property until the abolition of slavery, they were labeled as contrabands to prevent their being returned to their masters. Contrabands took positions with the army as construction workers, nurses and hospital stewards, longshoremen, painters, wood cutters, teamsters, laundresses, cooks, gravediggers, personal servants, and ultimately as soldiers and sailors. According to one statistic, the population of Alexandria had exploded to 18,000 by the fall of 1863 – an increase of 10,000 people in 16 months. 

As of ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, Alexandria County’s black population was more than 8,700, or about half the total number of residents in the County. This newly enfranchised constituency provided the support necessary to elect the first black Alexandrians to the City Council and the Virginia Legislature. 

The population of contrabands flooding into Alexandria during the Union occupation included many who were destitute, malnourished and in poor health. Once in Alexandria, the contrabands were housed in barracks and hastily assembled shantytowns. In the close quarters with poor sanitation, smallpox and typhoid outbreaks were prevalent and death was common. In February 1864, after hundreds of contrabands and freedmen had perished, the commander of the Alexandria military district, General John P. Slough, seized a parcel of undeveloped land at the corner of South Washington and Church Streets from a pro-Confederate owner to be used as a cemetery specifically for burial of contrabands. Burials started in March that year. 

The cemetery operated under General Slough's command. Its oversight was supervised by Alexandria’s Superintendent of Contrabands, the Rev. Albert Gladwin, who made arrangements for burials. Each grave was identified with a whitewashed, wooden grave marker.  In 1868, after Congress ended most functions of the Freedmen's Bureau, the cemetery was closed; and the property was returned to its original owners. Eventually, after the grave markers had rotted and ownership had transferred several times, the property was redeveloped for commercial use. During its five years of operation, about 1800 contrabands and freedmen were buried in the cemetery. 

Beginning in 1987, when memory of the cemetery was revived, the City of Alexandria began the process of saving the cemetery to create a memorial park. During 2008, submissions in a design competition for the memorial were received from 20 countries, and a design for the memorial was selected. As of late 2008, construction of the memorial was underway.  

In 1914, Agudas Achim Congregation was founded. In 1930, Alexandria annexed the Town of Potomac. That town, adjacent to Potomac Yard, had been laid out beginning in the late 19th century and incorporated in 1908. In 1969 and 1976 Pope John Paul II visited Alexandria when he was known as Karol Cardinal Wojtyła. He was guided by a Polish Catholic priest from St. Mary's Catholic Church in Alexandria.

In 1999 the city celebrated its 250th anniversary.  

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 15.4 square miles (39.9 km²), of which 15.2 square miles (39.3 km²) are land and 0.2 square mile (0.6 km²) is water. The total area is 1.49% water. Alexandria is bounded on the east by the Potomac River, on the north and northwest byArlington County, and on the south by Fairfax County. The western portions of the city were annexed from those two entities beginning in the 1930s.

The addressing system in Alexandria is not uniform and reflects the consolidation of several originally separate communities into a single city. In Old Town Alexandria, building numbers are assigned north and south from King Street and west (only) from the Potomac River. In the areas formerly in the Town ofPotomac, such as Del Ray and St. Elmo, building numbers are assigned east and west from Commonwealth Avenue and north (only) from King Street. In the western parts of the city, building numbers are assigned north and south from Duke Street.

The ZIP code prefix 223 uniquely identifies the Alexandria postal area.  However, the Alexandria postal area extends into Fairfax County and includes addresses outside of the city. Delivery areas have ZIP codes 22301, 22302, 22304, 22305, 22311, 22312, and 22314, with other ZIP codes in use forpost office boxes and large mailers.

Adjacent jurisdictions:

• Arlington County, Virginia – north

• Fairfax County, Virginia – west and south

• District of Columbia – northeast

• Prince George's County, Maryland – east

National protected area:

• George Washington Memorial Parkway (part) 

Old Town, in the eastern and southeastern areas of Alexandria and on the Potomac River, is the oldest section of the city, originally laid out in 1749, and is a historic district. Old Town is chiefly known for its historic town houses, art galleries, antique shops, and restaurants. Some of the historic landmarks in Old Town include General Robert E. Lee's boyhood home, the Lee-Fendall House, a replica of George Washington's townhouse, Gadsby's Tavern, the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Shop, and the Torpedo Factory art studio complex (see the "Recreation" paragraph below). River cruise boats and street entertainers frequent the large plaza at the foot of King Street; the Mount Vernon Trail also passes through. Old Town is laid out on a grid plan of substantially squareblocks. The opening of the Washington Metro King Street station in 1983 led to a spurt of new hotel and office building development in western Old Town, and gentrification of townhouse areas west of Washington Street which were previously an African-American community.

Market Square in Old Town is believed to be one of the oldest continuously operating marketplace in the United States, (from 1753 until present day),  and was once the site of the second-largest slave market in the U.S. Today it contains a large fountain and extensive landscaping, as well as a farmers' market each Saturday morning.

In the center of the intersection of Washington and Prince streets stands a statue of a lone Confederate soldier which marks the spot where CSA units from Alexandria left to join the Confederate Army at the beginning of the American Civil War.  The piece is entitled Appomattox and was cast by M. Casper Buberl in 1889. 

Just to the west of Old Town is the city's oldest planned residential expansion. Called by its creators Rosemont in honor of a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania neighborhood of the same name, Rosemont was developed between 1900 and 1920. Rosemont extends from the foot of Shuter's Hill, crowned by the George Washington National Masonic Memorial away to the north for a dozen blocks to the edge of Del Ray. Originally intended as a "streetcar suburb" connected to Washington, D.C. and George Washington's home at Mount Vernon by electric railroad, Rosemont, instead, became closely integrated into the life of the core of Alexandria. Much of Rosemont is included in a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places that was intended to focus attention on the neighborhood's role as a showcase of early 20th Century home building styles.[citation needed] Television weatherman Willard Scott grew up here. 

At the northern limits of Old Town are the remnants of a historic, predominantly African American community known by its inhabitants as "The Berg." The area was settled in 1861 by refugees fleeing from enslavement in the Petersburg, VA area and was originally known as Petersburg or Grantsville.  In 1915 the neighborhood encompassed several blocks from 1st St. to Bashford Lane and Royal St. to the waterfront railroad line.

Built in 1945, a 260-unit public housing complex covers several blocks in what is now Old Town Alexandria. Today the Berg’s most prominent landmarks are the James Bland Homes (built in 1954) named after an African American musician and songwriter, and the Samuel Madden Homes, named after the second African-American pastor of the Alfred Street Baptist Church,. 

Over the years the historic roots of the Berg’s name were lost, and many assumed it referred to the monolithic, iceberg-like buildings of this apartment complex. It was mentioned in the movie Remember the Titans, which dramatizes the integration of city public schools in the 1970s 

Arlandria is a neighborhood located in the north-eastern portion of Alexandria. Its name is a combination of the words "Arlington" and "Alexandria," reflecting its location on the border of Arlington County and Alexandria. The neighborhood's borders form a rough triangle bounded by Four Mile Run in the north, West Glebe Road to the south and south-west, and Route 1 to the east. Centered around Mount Vernon Avenue between Four Mile Run and West Glebe Road, it is home to many Hispanic, Thai, and Vietnamese-owned bakeries, restaurants, salons, and bookstores. An influx of Salvadorean immigrants into the neighborhood in the 1980s has earned it the nickname "Chirilagua," after the city on the Pacific coast of El Salvador. Arlandria is also home to the Birchmereconcert hall, the Alexandria Aces of the Cal Ripken, Sr. Collegiate Baseball League, and St. Rita Roman Catholic Church, dedicated in 1949 and constructed in Gothic style from Virginia fieldstone and Indiana limestone.  Alternative rock band the Foo Fighters has a track titled "Arlandria" on their 2011 releaseWasting Light. Front-man (and ex-Nirvana drummer) Dave Grohl is an Alexandria native. The area is also referenced in the song "Headwires" from the band'sThere Is Nothing Left to Lose release. 

The area to the northwest of Old Town, formerly in the separate town of Potomac, is popularly known as Del Ray, although that name properly belongs to one of many communities (including Hume, Mount Ida, and Saint Elmo's) in that area. The communities of Del Ray and St. Elmo's originated in early 1894, when developer Charles Wood organized them on a grid pattern of streets running north-south and east-west. Del Ray originally contained six east-west streets and five north-south. All were identical in width, except Mt. Vernon Avenue, which was approximately twenty feet wider. St. Elmo's, a smaller tract, was laid out in a similar pattern, but with only four east-west streets and one running north-south.

By 1900, Del Ray contained approximately 130 persons, and St. Elmo 55. In 1908, the tracts of Del Ray, St. Elmo's, Mt. Ida, and Hume were incorporated into the town of Potomac, which by 1910 had a population of 599; by 1920 it contained 1,000; by 1928 it had 2,355 residents; now more than 20,000 people live in Del Ray.  

The 254 acres (1 km²) comprising Del Ray were sold to Charles Wood in 1894 for the sum of $38,900, while St. Elmo, made up of 39 acres (160,000 m2), was purchased for $15,314.

The community, while still diverse, has experienced substantial gentrification  since the development of the Potomac Yard Shopping Center in the mid-1990s.  It draws tens of thousands of people from around the Washington, D.C. region during its annual Art on the Avenue  main street festival the first Saturday in October. New development under way in formerly unused land near Potomac Yard, across US Route 1 from Del Ray, will includecondominiums, offices, parks, and a fire station with affordable housing on upper floors. 

Alexandria's West End includes areas annexed from Fairfax County in the 1950s. It is the most typically suburban part of Alexandria, with a street hierarchy of winding roads and cul-de-sacs. The section of Duke Street in the West End is known for a high-density residential area known to locals as "Landmark" due to its close proximity to nearby Landmark Mall, and for its concentration of strip and enclosed shopping malls. In more recent years, parts of Alexandria's West End have seen an influx of immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Pakistan, who have settled in the areas surrounding Seminary Road west of I-395.

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