Alexandria’s Gayle Converse is leading a three-week walk to Richmond next month for women’s equality.
The 133-mile “Women Going the Extra Mile” trek will start next Saturday, Aug. 5, and stop along the way at the Kate Waller Barrett Branch Library (717 Queen Street), the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial in Lorton and a number of other locations before ending at the Virginia Women’s Monument at Capitol Square in Richmond on Women’s Equality Day, Saturday, Aug. 26.
Curtains will be closing this Friday on a temporary tour of Gadsby’s Tavern Museum inspired by the musical “Hamilton” but an encore may already be in the works.
Tickets for the specialty tour, dubbed “Hamilton’s BFFs and Frenemies,” have already sold out for the summer run, which is ending this week, a city spokeswoman said. The city’s Office of Historic Alexandria is making plans to offer the same tour this fall at the museum, located at 134 N. Royal Street, though dates have not yet been set, she said.
Old Town’s Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum (105-107 S. Fairfax Street) is a fascinating place, and the Office of Historic Alexandria is looking for volunteers to help show it to visitors.
The museum contains a collection of medicinal herbs, shop furnishings, apothecary pottles and more that are largely original to the 141-year-old family business. The museum tells the story of medicine and business as they evolved in Alexandria. The museum has a collection of journals, letters, diaries and more — including a note from Martha Washington.
You might know Brian Hilton better as George Washington, but soon, you’ll also know him as Albert Einstein.
For the last six years, Hilton has been Alexandria’s official portrayer of the first U.S. president at the George Washington Birthday Parade in Old Town and at dozens of annual events around the country. He was most recently invited by the National Park Service to appear as Washington on July 4 at Mount Rushmore.
One year after Alexandria re-sunk historic ships into the pond at Ben Brenman Park, City Archeologist Eleanor Breen said studies show the unconventional preservation project is working as intended.
Back in 2018 during work on the Robinson Landing project, a group of somewhat intact hulls were discovered underground. They’d been scuttled beneath the ground, likely as part of the foundation of the new waterline.
If you can sort out your archeology digs from your mystery goosepigs, there’s a trivia event tonight just for you.
The staff at the Carlyle House Historic Park and the Lee-Fendall House Museum have collaborated to create a new bi-weekly trivia event and tonight’s topic is focusing on something ALXnow readers should know well: Alexandria history.
The Office of Historic Alexandria (OHA) is hoping to take a hammer to a dozen later additions to the Freedom House Museum (1315 Duke Street) to take the building back to its mid-19th century look.
The museum was once the Franklin and Armfield Office, a slave trafficking hub that forcibly shipped thousands of Black men, women and children around the country between 1828 and 1861.
Little fun fact about Alexandria: last week marked the 160th anniversary of Alexandria becoming the capital of Alexandria — kind of.
The Office of Historic Alexandria’s weekly newsletter noted that June 20, 1863, marked the start of Alexandria serving as the capital of “the Restored Government of Virginia.”
Alexandria is finally making progress on fixing issues as a historic Black cemetery thanks in part to a city employee who spent years flagging ongoing problems at the site.
Douglass Memorial Cemetery (1421 Wilkes Street) has faced repeated flooding that has already washed away some of the grave markings.
Renovations are doing what the Confederacy couldn’t: temporarily shutting down Fort Ward (4301 W Braddock Road).
While the park itself will remain open, the central Fort Ward Museum is closed for the next month. A release from the City of Alexandria said the museum is scheduled to reopen on July 6.
This upcoming Monday is Juneteenth, a federal holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. Around Alexandria, that means some services will be reduced or fully unavailable.
Yesterday, the City of Alexandria released a list of affected local services.
