Places – Alexandria
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the City of Alexandria’s aging housing stock failed to meet the needs of Nor
thern Virginia’s growing population. Post-Civil War industrialization, transportation improvements, and public utilities provided incentives for would-be residents to live in the city, but few homes had the modern amenities, such
as indoor plumbing, electricity, and small yards, that people wanted.
1 City leaders realized that they needed to expand and improve Alexandria’s housing options, especially if they wanted to compete with neighboring jurisdictions. What emerged over the next several decades was a combination of housing and land use policies that attempted to remake Alexandria into a modern suburb of Washington, D.C.
Annexation, land use zoning, slum clearance, and urban renewal were tools used by white city leaders to rewrite Alexandria’s landscape. The annexation of territory from neighboring Arlington and Fairfax Counties provided the city with its first modern subdivisions. Single-family homes, often restricted by race-based covenants, dominated Alexandria’s subdivisions are located to the north and west of its urban core . Farmland and country estates, which were acquired through annexation, provided additional land for future development.
House construction at the Braddock Heights Subdivision, 1940. Courtesy, Davis-Ruffner Title Company Papers, Alexandria City Archives and Records Center, Alexandria, VA.
While this land was needed to house the region’s growing workforce, it mostly was racially restricted. Deeds for the George Washington Park subdivision, which Alexandria annexed from Fairfax County in 1915, stated that “No lot or lots shall be sold, leased, rented or in any way conveyed to any person or persons of African descent.” 2 Developers inserted racial covenants either into deeds of dedication, subdivision plans, or into bargain and sale deeds, the documents that transferred property from one owner to another, both of which were submitted to a local courthouse. Malvern Hill, one of the last Alexandria subdivisions to use racial covenants, was built on land annexed from Fairfax County in 1930. Unlike George Washington Park, its deeds of dedication included “Caucasian-only” language, creating a white/non-white divide among homeowners, as opposed to solely targeting African Americans. It also provided an exemption from this racial restriction for domestic servants. 3
A land use zoning ordinance, first passed in 1931, gave local officials the power to decide whether land would be used for commercial, industrial, or residential development. As in other jurisdictions, most of Alexandria was dedicated to single-family homes, but the city also offered tenements and, later, apartments for individual workers or low-income families. Like single family homes, most complexes were white-only. At the same time, Black-owned homes in Uptown and, later, Lincolnia, were zoned for industrial or commercial rather than residential development. This practice facilitated the creation of hyper-segregated neighborhoods or pushed African Americans out of Alexandria completely. 4
Alexandria’s Zoning Map, 1934. Courtesy, Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
By the 1930s, federal New Deal policies gave politicians the ability to declare a business or residence to be a danger to the community and acquire that property through eminent domain. In particular, Alexandria’s use of eminent domain in its slum clearance program targeted low-income neighborhoods where many of the city’s Black families lived. The city’s newly acquired land was then incorporated into public works projects, which the federal government’s urban renewal programs partially funded. These projects included public housing and greenspace along with a school and courthouse, almost all of which were segregated. 5
During the same period, criticisms of the city’s housing policies came from two distinct groups: white historic preservationists and Black residents. White historic preservationists condemned the demolition of buildings that they deemed to be historically-significant and viewed Alexandria’s value through a historical lens. However, not all historical structures were viewed equitably. Because of Alexandria’s connections to George Washington and Robert E. Lee, white historic preservationists prioritized stately homes and businesses that predated the Civil War. In contrast, homes owned by low-income residents and/or African Americans were often deemed to be blight and subject to slum clearance. In 1946, Alexandria’s white historic preservationists compelled the Alexandria’s City Council to create the Old and Historic District, or Old Town. The new ordinance included the establishment of the Board of Architectural Review (BAR), which evaluated all construction in the oldest sections of Alexandria to ensure that it did not mar Old Town’s aesthetic. Who was permitted to join the BAR, combined with their priorities, impacted historic preservation undertaken in the city. 6
Photographs from City Plan of Alexandria, 1935. Courtesy, Davis-Ruffner Title Company Papers, Fairfax County Circuit Court Historic Records Center, Fairfax, VA.
Meanwhile, Black residents were vocal about the city’s efforts to increase housing segregation or push them out of Alexandria completely. As early as 1939, Black residents wrote to city council about the adverse impact of slum clearance and segregated public housing construction on Black homeowners. A handful of residents even hired lawyers to take the city to court. While these lawyers could not stop the city’s use of eminent domain, they could ensure that their clients received appropriate compensation. 7 At the same time, Black Alexandrians demanded jobs on federally-funded construction projects, including public and defense worker housing. Executive Order 8802, signed on June 25, 1941 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, along with other New Deal policies, supported their demands. 8
After World War II, Alexandria’s city leaders continued to prioritize the construction of single-family housing for white families. These houses were mostly built in annexed territory located outside of Old Town. At the same time, white historic preservationists continued to focus on preserving structures using designations of historically significance that remained skewed along class- and racial-lines. For them, urban renewal was a major threat to the city’s historic structures. African Americans, however, had experienced little success in changing the city’s housing policies, a problem that would accelerate in the post-war period.
Only through a combination of local and federal pressures would African Americans see even modicum of change by the late 1960s.
In their own words…
Read excerpts from oral histories to learn more about how Alexandrians remember their community.
1 The Hills of Northern Virginia (Washington, D.C.: Northern Virginia Bureau, 1926), Charlie Clark Center for Local History, Arlington Public Library.
2 Deed M-7-208 (1912), Fairfax County Circuit Court Historic Records Center, Fairfax, VA.
3 Deed 567-96 (1962), Land Deed Office, Alexandria City Courthouse, Alexandria, VA.
4 Krystyn Moon “Rethinking Race, Housing, and Community: A History of Restrictive Covenants and Land Use Zoning in Alexandria, Virginia, 1900s-1960s,” Housing for All Project, Department of Planning and Zoning, Alexandria, March 2023, 18-30; https://www.alexandriava.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/Zoning-and-Covenants-KMoon-20230320.pdf.
5 Krystyn Moon, “The African American Housing Crisis in Alexandria, Virginia, 1930s-1960s,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 124, no. 1 (2016): 28-68.
6 Moon, “Rethinking Race, Housing, and Community,” 28-31.
7 Moon, “The African American Housing Crisis in Alexandria,” 53.
8 Krystyn Moon, Proximity to Power: Rethinking Race and Place in Alexandria, Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming–2025).