Good Sunday morning, Alexandria!
⛈️ Today’s weather: Partly sunny, with a high near 83 degrees. Calm wind becoming west around five mph in the afternoon. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 59 degrees. Southeast wind around six mph becoming light and variable after midnight.
Today, Alexandria’s Market Square is an Old Town landmark, one that could become even better with a new planned overhaul, but that beauty belies a dark past a new grant could help uncover.
Beyond just being the center for one of the country’s oldest farmers’ market held continuously at the same site, Market Square was also deeply connected to the city’s history of slavery. A $75,000 Commonwealth History Fund grant from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) will fund a research project to better explore and explain Market Square’s history.
Alexandria leaders celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Alexandria Archaeological Commission (AAC), described in a release as the first city archaeological commission in the country, at a City Council meeting earlier this week
The AAC was founded in 1975. The 15-member Commission is appointed by the City Council and works in historic advocacy and preservation, working closely with City’s archeology staff and other departments.
At a meeting next week, the Office of Historic Alexandria (OHA) will show plans to preserve as 18th century home in Old Town and convert it into a City-owned museum.
The City purchased the Murray-Dick-Fawcett House at 517 Prince Street in 2017.
The Washington Revels Jubilee Voices will be performing a free concert at The Lyceum (201 S. Washington Street) on Sunday (Feb. 16) as part of Alexandria’s Black History Month celebrations.
Jubilee Voices is a group led by Alexandria’s former Senior Communications Officer Andrea Blackford which performs a mix of a cappella, drama, spoken word and dance that highlight local and regional history.
A new tool launched by the City of Alexandria will help locals access some of the city’s fascinating historical markers virtually
Some markers not items of historic significance, like the Marshall House where Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth was murdered in one of the events building up to the Civil War. Others are more fantastical, like the spot in Old Town North that was reportedly home to one of Alexandria’s local cryptids: the infamous Goosepigs.
The Office of Historic Alexandria’s weekly newsletter includes fascinating glimpses into the city’s history, and this week the newsletter explored a battle between city leadership and local children.
The Office of Historic Alexandria noted that the ban on public kite flying and marbles in 1876 came from Mayor Kosciusko Kemper, a former Confederate officer, after complaints from local businesses.
City staff have signed off on a California-based yoga chain’s request to partially demolish a 90-foot section at the front of a historic building on King Street in Old Town.
Alo Yoga is asking the city to grant a certificate of appropriateness and permit to partially demolish the wall and replace it with glass panel and two French doors at 814 King Street — the current location of the Random Harvest furniture store.
Like the discovery of the ships in Old Town years ago, new development on the waterfront has turned up some fascinating local history.
In a release, the Office of Historic Alexandria said archeologists will offer tours of the newly uncovered Alexandria canal lock and basin near the 900 block of N. Pitt Street Old Town North. According to the release, historic maps showed a fourth waterfront lock at the north end of Old Town, part of the Alexandria Canal that opened in 1845 and linked up to the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal in Georgetown.
A documentary about Alexandria’s reckoning with its racist history is airing on WHUT, a regional PBS station, this week and next weekend.
The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project’s documentary Resolve
A documentary tracking the history of racism in Alexandria will make its debut at a screening tomorrow.
The film is Resolved: Never Again by documentary filmmaker Robin Hamilton. The 50-minute film explores “Alexandria’s history, from its role in the domestic slave trade to the lynchings of Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas, and the city’s ongoing efforts to confront this past.”
