1200
Duke Street

Thomas J. Fannon opened a wood-and-coal yard near the Alexandria waterfront in 1885, selling firewood to households and stoking coal to the small industries that lined Duke Street ^[1] Source 1 Fannon Petroleum, 'About' Website . The business survived the transition from cordwood to anthracite, from anthracite to mechanical stokers, and from coal to fuel oil in the 1920s, when T. J. Fannon & Sons made its first home oil delivery and began installing oil-fired heating equipment.

By the 1940s fuel oil had displaced coal as Alexandria’s dominant household heating source, and Fannon’s converted alongside its customers; by mid-century the firm was delivering oil and servicing both oil and natural-gas equipment from the Duke Street yard. The 1200 Duke Street site — with its cylindrical fuel storage tanks visible above the rooftops — remained in operation through the late twentieth century. In 2008 wholesale operations relocated to a Gainesville, Virginia facility, but the Fannon family still owns and operates the business; the Alexandria yard continues to serve residential heating-oil and HVAC customers under the T. J. Fannon & Sons name ^[2] Source 2 T. J. Fannon & Sons, 'About Us' Website . It is among the oldest continuously family-operated businesses in Alexandria.