Contents

Stories

Longform essays that braid multiple places into a single argument — arsenals, fortifications, the plan that became the parkway.

1. 01
   9 min read · April 27, 2026

   Episcopal Alexandria: a corridor of schools

   From Bishop Meade's 1839 boys' school to a three-campus K–12 in Seminary Ridge

   Five Episcopal schools, one corridor: Hoxton House and the founding of EHS in 1839; Lloyd House and the opening of St. Agnes in 1924; a Russell Road residence and the opening of St. Stephen's in 1944; the 1961 desegregation of St. Stephen's; the absorption of Ascension Academy on Braddock Road; and the 1991 merger that …

   Antebellum Era Civil War and Occupation Jim Crow Era Mid-Century Transformation Modern Alexandria 7 places 5 people
2. 02
   7 min read · April 22, 2026

   Arsenal on the Potomac

   Samuel Cummings, Interarms, and four decades of surplus arms at Alexandria's waterfront

   From a 1953 start-up to a Cold War global clearinghouse of military surplus, Interarms kept its inventory — sometimes hundreds of thousands of rifles — at a stretch of warehouses on the Alexandria waterfront.

   Mid-Century Transformation Modern Alexandria 3 places 2 people
3. 03
   5 min read · April 22, 2026

   The Fortified Ring

   Alexandria inside the Defenses of Washington

   For four years Alexandria sat inside the largest continuous defensive perimeter in North America. The city the Union built inside its own forts shaped what would come after.

   Civil War and Occupation 4 places 2 people
4. 04
   5 min read · April 22, 2026

   The Parkway Was a Plan

   George Washington's River Farm, the Memorial Parkway, and a Roy Rogers by the Potomac

   The scenic river road from Mount Vernon to Memorial Bridge was a 20th-century political project, authorized in 1928 and threaded through the old Washington farms. The landscape it ran through was never really an accident.

   Mid-Century Transformation Modern Alexandria 2 places 2 people