4401
West Braddock Road

The 4401 West Braddock Road campus has been a school continuously since the mid-twentieth century. Its first half-century was as Ascension Academy, an independent college-preparatory school operating off the Braddock Road corridor with no formal Episcopal Diocese affiliation — a separate institution from the Church Schools that produced 1200 North Quaker Lane Place 1200 North Quaker Lane The first high school in Virginia, founded 1839 by Bishop William Meade of the Episcopal Diocese on a 100-acre campus west of Old Town. First principal William Nelson Pendleton … , 1000 Saint Stephens Road Place 1000 Saint Stephens Road Upper School (grades 9–12) of St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School, occupying the Saint Stephens Road campus opened in January 1957 by St. Stephen's School for Boys. In 1961 the school … , and the original St. Agnes School at 220 North Washington Street Place 220 North Washington Street Late-Georgian 1797 townhouse at the corner of North Washington and Queen built by merchant John Wise. Charles Lee, U.S. Attorney General and brother of Light-Horse Harry, lived … .

Ascension Academy is documented in the Washington Post as a going concern at the same address through the 1980s — a 1984 city-council article covers a development pact between the City of Alexandria and the school ^[1] Source 1 Washington Post: Alexandria Council Approves Pact With Ascension Academy (1984) Article . During the integration of Northern Virginia’s private schools in the 1960s, Ascension admitted Terry Adkins Person Terry Adkins b. 1953 · d. 2014 Sculptor, conceptual artist, and musician whose interdisciplinary practice — his "recitals" — built large-scale installations around the lives of Black historical figures. As a … — later one of the most-acclaimed sculptors and conceptual artists of his generation — as its first African American student ^[2] Source 2 Google Arts & Culture — Terry Adkins Website .

Acquisition and the SSSAS Middle School

Ascension Academy did not survive the late twentieth century as an independent institution. After the 1991 SSSAS merger created a single co-educational school spanning kindergarten through twelfth grade, the new school needed a dedicated middle-grades campus to relieve the Saint Stephens Road site. The West Braddock Road property was acquired and reconfigured as the SSSAS Middle School for grades 6–8, completing the modern three-campus arrangement that the school occupies today ^[3] Source 3 SSSAS School History Website ^[4] Source 4 Wikipedia, St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School Website .

The institutional lineage of the Middle School is therefore property and buildings, not Episcopal continuity — the Ascension Academy chapter is its own story, but it is entirely contained within the boundary of this address. Visitors familiar with both eras sometimes still call the campus by its older name.

A note on the modern Ascension Academy

A separate institution called Ascension Academy, founded in 2000 in Texas and later in other states, is unrelated to the Alexandria Ascension Academy that operated here. The two share a name but no institutional history.