1005
Mount Vernon Avenue
Brick Stripped Classical / Art Deco school on Mount Vernon Avenue in Del Ray, built 1934 and opened 1935 as George Washington High School — a consolidation of the city’s earlier Alexandria and George Mason high schools. The first integrated high school in Alexandria after the 1959 collapse of Massive Resistance. Successive reconfigurations took it from a four-year high school (1935-1971) to a two-year campus, a junior high, and finally — since 1993 — George Washington Middle School. National Register of Historic Places, 2021. The granite WWII memorial obelisk at the front walk lists the names of fifty GW alumni killed in the war.
- 1934
- Stripped Classical / Art Deco (PWA Moderne, 1934); later additions
- Extant
- National Register of Historic Places
Place narrative
The school opened in 1935 as George Washington High School, consolidating the city’s two earlier high schools — Alexandria High School and George Mason High School — under one roof on Mount Vernon Avenue in the Del Ray neighborhood [1] Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)" Website . The four-story building, completed in 1934, is in the Stripped Classical / Art Deco register typical of Public Works Administration–era civic schools: a strong vertical rhythm of full-height brick piers, limestone bands at the parapet and entrance, a geometric stripped-classical massing, and the kind of austere, dignified front elevation the federal building programs of the early New Deal preferred. The campus was extended eastward in the late twentieth century with a glassy clock-tower addition; the two together frame the front walk from Mount Vernon Avenue today.
Integration, 1959
Like the rest of public Virginia, GW was segregated by law into the late 1950s. The state’s Massive Resistance statutes — passed in 1956 to nullify Brown v. Board — closed schools across the Commonwealth in 1958 rather than admit Black students. After the statutes were struck down by both the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and a federal three-judge panel on the same day in January 1959, Alexandria’s public schools desegregated, and George Washington became the first integrated high school in the city.
The transitions, 1971–1993
GW operated as a four-year high school until 1971, when the city consolidated its high schools and reconfigured GW as a two-year campus for freshmen and sophomores. In 1979 the building became a junior high school with grades 7–9, and in 1993 it transitioned to its present configuration as George Washington Middle School, grades 6–8, operated by Alexandria City Public Schools [1] Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)" Website .
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
The war memorial obelisk
A granite obelisk on the front lawn — between the marquee and the main entrance — is the school’s memorial to its alumni killed in World War II. The inscription reads:
George Washington High School
Dedicated to the memory of those of our boys who served in World War II and did not come back
Erected by the graduating classes of 1943 · 1944 · 1945 · 1946 · 1947
Two faces of the obelisk carry the names of fifty alumni: twenty-five on the west face — Robert Rumshin, Herbert Joseph Petrello, Benjamin J. Vos Jr., George William Rutledge, John B. Myers, Elmer R. Bartlett, Elwin Irving Brawner Jr., Charles E. Woodruff, Charles Thomas Scott, Charles Alvin Dunn, Archie Baynes Norford, Douglas R. Drake, Israel Kleinman, Clifford Henry Wayland, J. D. Gill, Robert Hatfield, George Francis DuFrane Jr., William Francis Deeton, Eugene A. Barry, David Lester Gillett, Alphus Eugene Arthur, Charles Herbert Grimm, Ossie F. Snellings, Stewart Delaney Saffelle, and Samuel Hobart Fleming Jr. — and twenty-five on the east face: Raymond Carlyle Wood, Hirst Mayes, Edward Ralph Barclay, Harlan Eugene Amandus, James Sinclair MacLean Jr., Robert B. Gills Jr., Earl N. Tutt, Joseph Anthony Tutt, Joseph Anthony Tull, John Duvall May, Richard McGowan, Robert Dunn McIlwaine, Robert Phillip Brawner, Joseph Leonard Goodrich, Lyman Stephen Schlesser, Winfred Amos Pearson, Edmund Hunt Roberts Jr., Donald G. Covey, Samuel Haslett Meeks, Dabney M. Cruikshank, Ralph W. Fleming, Frank Dudley Cahill, Milton Rand Norton Jr., Carlin G. King, and Joseph M. Gay Jr. The north face is blank [2] HMDB, "George Washington High School, a War Memorial" Government record .
Erected by the graduating classes who themselves had lived through the war, the obelisk is one of the rare American school monuments whose roster of the dead was assembled by their own immediate contemporaries.
Notable alumni
Per public roster, GW’s documented alumni include U.S. Navy Medal of Honor recipient Francis Hammond (1953, Korean War, posthumous); longtime NBC Today weatherman Willard Scott; astronaut Guy Gardner; the actor Dermot Mulroney; John Phillips, of the Mamas & the Papas; and Jim Morrison Jim Morrison b. 1943 · d. 1971 Lead vocalist and lyricist of The Doors. Son of a U.S. Navy admiral; attended Alexandria's (then George Washington High School) class of 1961 while his family lived in Alexandria … of the Doors, who arrived as a second-semester sophomore in January 1959 and graduated with the Class of 1961 — though, in keeping with the persona he would soon make famous worldwide, he refused to attend the ceremony [1] Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)" Website .
Timeline
10 chronological entries across 3 eras.
George Washington High School building completed [1] Source Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)"
School opens, consolidating Alexandria HS and George Mason HS [1] Source Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)"
- –
Ellen "Cass" Cohen attended George Washington High School during her family's late-1950s residency in Alexandria but left in 1960 without graduating to pursue a singing career in New York — her tenure at GW ended one year before Jim Morrison's class of 1961 graduated. [1] Source Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)"
- –
James Douglas Morrison arrived as a second-semester sophomore in January 1959 and graduated with the Class of 1961. Remembered by classmates and teachers as detached and cynical but staggeringly well-read; spent much of his off-campus time at the Alexandria Library, where the poetry and beat literature he encountered shaped The Doors' lyrical sensibility a half-decade later. He refused to attend his own graduation ceremony. [1] Source Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)" [2] Source The Doors — band history (Morrison Alexandria years)
First integrated high school in Alexandria [1] Source Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)"
Jim Morrison graduates — and refuses to attend the ceremony [1] Source Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)" [2] Source The Doors — band history (Morrison Alexandria years)
Reconfigured as a two-year freshmen-and-sophomores campus [1] Source Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)"
Becomes a junior high school (grades 7–9) [1] Source Wikipedia, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)"
The building
- Stripped Classical / Art Deco (PWA Moderne, 1934); later additions
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Connected
Cass Elliot
b. 1941 · d. 1974
Founding member of The Mamas & the Papas. Spent her teenage years in Alexandria in the late 1950s, where her family ran a delicatessen in the Del Ray / Mount Vernon Avenue area.
Visitor notable · Education · %!d(float64=1957)–%!d(float64=1960)
Jim Morrison
b. 1943 · d. 1971
Lead vocalist and lyricist of The Doors. Son of a U.S. Navy admiral; attended Alexandria's (then George Washington High School) class of 1961 while his family lived in Alexandria …
Visitor notable · Education · %!d(float64=1959)–%!d(float64=1961)
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Now
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Mount Vernon Avenue
Named for George Washington's Mount Vernon estate to the south, c. 1894.
Interpretive signs nearby
The City of Alexandria has installed 1 historical interpretive sign within walking distance of this place. Each link below opens the sign's page on this site, with the full image and trail context.
1005 Mount Vernon Ave
Sources
- 1.
Wikipedia contributors, "George Washington Middle School (Virginia)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, accessed 2026. Used here for the 1935 opening as a consolidation of Alexandria and George Mason high schools, the 1971 / 1979 / 1993 reconfigurations from four-year HS to two-year campus to junior high to middle school, the 2021 NRHP listing, and the alumni roster.
Website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Middle_School_(Virginia) →
- 2.
Historical Marker Database, "George Washington High School, a War Memorial," marker #80571, accessed 2026 via web.archive.org snapshot (the HMDB site is gated by Cloudflare bot-protection). Records the full inscription of the granite obelisk on the GW front lawn, including the 50 names on the west and east faces and the dedication text "Dedicated to the memory of those of our boys who served in World War II and did not come back / Erected by the graduating classes of 1943-1947." Coordinates 38°48.961′ N, 77°3.394′ W. Marker photographed by J. Makali Bruton, January 31, 2015.
Government record https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=80571 →
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