(Updated at 4:25 p.m.) Herman Boone, the T.C. Williams High School football head coach for the school’s 1971 state championship-winning team, has died at 84 years old.
Boone was famously memorialized in the 2000 biographical film Remember the Titans, where he was played by Denzel Washington. The film dramatizes the Titans’ famous 13-0 season after Alexandria’s high schools were integrated.
A driver in Alexandria may have inadvertently contributed to a long-running fight to get the Appomattox statue commemorating Confederate soldiers removed from its pedestal.
Someone crashed into the statue at the intersection of S. Washington Street and Prince Street this weekend, Alexandria police confirmed to ALXnow.
A lawsuit to try to prevent the owners of a late-18th century home in Old Town from demolishing parts of the historic property has been thrown out, but the plaintiff in the case has filed an appeal.
The house at 619 S. Lee Street has been owned by various local dignitaries over the years, from former mayor and editor of the Alexandria Gazette-Packet Edgar Snowden to Hugo Black, a member of the Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971. Black notably wrote the majority opinion in a decision justifying the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, filibustered an anti-lynching bill while a U.S. senator, and was at one point a member of the KKK.
Before it was a Starbucks, before it was the Seaport Inn, the restaurant at the corner of King and S. Union Street was a bawdy little tavern with a petrified pig.
As early as 1893, records refer to the location as Brill’s Restaurant, and local newspaper reports from a year later detail a curious incident with a slab of ham. These details, and others about local Alexandria restaurants, are featured in a new book by local journalist Hope Nelson called Classic Restaurants of Alexandria.
Officially, there are two lynchings in Alexandria’s history, but a new investigation by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) hopes to discover whether there were more that went unrecorded.
The two documented lynchings were of Joseph McCoy in 1897 and Benjamin Thomas in 1899. At a meeting of the Equal Justice Initiative on Nov. 16, Audrey Davis, director of Alexandria’s Black History Museum, said that one of the seven committees in EJI’s Alexandria branch is dedicated to conducting research to “find out if there were any other lynchings in Alexandria we’re not aware of.”
The City is planning to host a meeting to gather feedback on its plans to revitalize the Fort Ward Museum and Park.
The Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities is scheduled to hold a community meeting about Fort Ward Park on Wednesday, Dec. 11, at 7 p.m. in near St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes Middle School (4401 W. Braddock Road).
The new art project coming to Waterfront Park (1 Prince Street) next year will feature a series of silhouettes representing the city’s history of slavery.
The concept renderings from artist Olalekan Jeyifous feature four three-dimensional silhouettes, each roughly 11 feet tall, with industrial imagery carved into the bodies. The figures will face out towards the river. The ground of the plaza will be covered with a pattern referencing African-American quilting — mixing traditional symbols with ones that represent industries from the city’s past — like an armory and rail tracks.
City Phone Service Restored — The City of Alexandria’s non-emergency phone lines are working again after service was restored Tuesday night. A cut to a fiber optic line caused the outage, a city spokeswoman said. [Twitter/@AlexandriaVAGov]
House With George Washington Connection on Airbnb — “George Washington may have slept here, and now so could you… in the heart of Old Town Alexandria in Virginia, where a house that once belonged to the first U.S. president is available to rent. The George of Old Town is a 6000-square-foot townhouse on Cameron Street, and it is available on Airbnb.” [WTOP]
Alexandria’s historic Torpedo Factory Art Center will honor two big anniversaries this weekend as the building turns 100 and the Art Center turns 45.
A celebratory Anniversary Ball will take place this Saturday, November 16 from 7-11 p.m. at the Torpedo Factory (105 N. Union Street). Guests are invited to “dress to impress and celebrate like it’s 1919 or 1974,” per the event website, and tickets are still available for $75.
The Lyceum (201 S. Washington Street) will host a screening next Saturday, Nov. 16 of Peter Jackson’s acclaimed World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old.
The film stabilizes and colorizes footage from World War I and plays audio from interviews with servicemen who fought in the war.
If your property is damaged by a city vehicle, there’s a good chance you could be out of luck when it comes to seeking payment.
With its blue background and city seal, the marker set up in the yard at Shuter’s Hill within eyeshot of the backside of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial could be mistaken for an official sign, but the sign tells the story of one resident’s struggle with the City of Alexandria over an archaic legal precedent.
