How Old Town's streets got their names

ForGeneral Edward Braddock — British commander killed at the Monongahela, 1755

One of the original wagon routes from the port of Alexandria into the western hinterland, named for General Edward Braddock, who held his April 1755 council of governors at Carlyle House before marching to his death at the Battle of the Monongahela. The road predates the city plat and traces a line that long predates pavement.

ForThomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron

Originally laid out as the principal east-west thoroughfare of the new town, Cameron Street is named for the Cameron baronetcy held by Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron — the Scottish peer who held the Northern Neck Proprietary that included the Alexandria tract. Until King Street eclipsed it commercially in the early nineteenth century, Cameron was the heart of the city.

ForRoyal duke (likely the Duke of Cumberland, son of George II)

The southernmost of the three royal east-west streets south of Cameron. Through the antebellum decades the lower Duke Street corridor became a hub of slave-trading firms, including Franklin & Armfield at 1315 Duke (now the Freedom House Museum).

ForThomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron

Named, like Cameron Street, for the Northern Neck proprietor on whose land Alexandria was platted. The original main intersection of the town was Cameron at Fairfax. Carlyle House sits at 121 N Fairfax — built 1753 by John Carlyle, Lord Fairfax's brother-in-law.

ForKing George II of Great Britain (reigning 1727-1760)

The dominant east-west commercial street, named for King George II in the original 1749 plat. Of all the British-royal names, King survived the Revolution unchanged — its commercial weight by the 1780s made renaming impractical.

was “Water Street” until 1865

ForGeneral Robert E. Lee

Originally Water Street — the easternmost street, running just inland from the Potomac shoreline before the waterfront was filled in. It was renamed for Robert E. Lee in the post-Civil-War period, part of the Lost Cause-era memorialization wave that also produced the Appomattox Statue at Washington and Prince in 1889.

was “Duchess Street” until 1780

ForOronoco — a sweet variety of tobacco grown around the Chesapeake

Originally called Duchess Street to complete the royal pageant north of Cameron, it was renamed for the Oronoco tobacco grade. The tobacco-inspection warehouse at the foot of the street put Oronoco tobacco constantly in view and conversation along the street, and the trade name displaced the royal one. The Lee family clustered on Oronoco — both the Lee-Fendall House (614) and Robert E. Lee's boyhood home (607) sit on this street.

ForWilliam Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham

Named for William Pitt the Elder, the British prime minister whose defense of colonial liberties made him a hero in the colonies during the Stamp Act crisis. The name signals the founders' political sympathies on the eve of the Revolution.

ForThe Prince of Wales (Frederick, then his son George, later King George III)

Part of the south-of-Cameron royal pageant — King, Prince, Duke. The lower 100 block at Prince and Lee held Burke & Herbert Bank's first premises in 1852.

ForA British princess (likely Augusta, daughter of George II)

Second of the royal women's streets, immediately north of Queen. Continued the symmetrical royal pageant the founders intended around Cameron Street.

ForThe Society of Friends (Quakers) who farmed the western hinterland

One of the wagon routes between the port and the agricultural hinterland west of the city, named for the substantial Quaker population who lived and farmed along it. The Quaker presence contributed to Alexandria's complex antebellum stance on slavery — Friends petitioned for abolition while the city remained a major slave-trading hub.

ForQueen Caroline (consort of George II)

The first of the royal women's streets north of Cameron. Site of the Alexandria Library at 717 Queen — the location of the August 1939 sit-in that is among the earliest documented civil-rights direct actions in the United States.

ForCrown of Great Britain (general)

The principal north-south street west of Fairfax, named generically for the Crown rather than any specific royal. Site of Gadsby's Tavern at 134 N Royal — host of George Washington's last birthnight ball in 1799.

ForJonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph (Wales)

Named for the Welsh bishop Jonathan Shipley, who publicly defended the American colonists in the British Parliament. Like Pitt and Wilkes streets, the choice signals where Alexandria's elite political sympathies were on the eve of revolution.

ForAlfred the Great, ninth-century King of Wessex

Named for the ninth-century English king Alfred the Great — a pre-modern, universally-respected royal whose name survived the Revolution where post-1066 monarchs did not. Alfred Street Baptist Church at 313 S. Alfred is one of the oldest African-American Baptist congregations in the United States, founded in 1803.

ForRobert Brockett — local property owner

ForChristopher Columbus

Named for Christopher Columbus during the early-Republic period when "Columbia" was an emerging name for the new nation (compare District of Columbia, 1791).

ForBenjamin Franklin

Named for Benjamin Franklin, then in the early-Republic pantheon of universally-celebrated Patriots.

ForEdward Gibbon, English historian (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

Named for the eighteenth-century English historian Edward Gibbon — a cosmopolitan-Enlightenment choice typical of the early-Republic naming wave that also produced Pitt and Wilkes streets.

ForPatrick Henry (likely)

Henry Street is part of the divided U.S. Route 1 pair (Henry running one direction, Patrick the other) — together forming "Patrick Henry" across the city's western edge. The naming is colloquial; municipal records do not always make the eponym explicit.

ForPatrick Henry (likely; paired with Henry Street)

The other half of the Patrick Henry pair carrying U.S. 1 through Alexandria's western edge.

ForLocal nineteenth-century landowner (further research needed)

ForEdmund Pendleton — Virginia jurist, president of the 1788 ratification convention

Named for Edmund Pendleton, the Virginia patriot and jurist who presided over the state's ratification convention for the U.S. Constitution in 1788.

was “Swift's Alley” until 1790

ForThe Virginia Journal printing press, established here in 1784

Originally Swift's Alley; the name shifted as the Virginia Journal printing press operated out of the alley from 1784 onward.

ForWilliam Ramsay — town founding trustee

ForThe federal union of American states

Union Street runs along the waterfront, the easternmost of the named streets. The Interarms warehouse complex along the 200-400 block of South Union held millions of surplus military small arms during Samuel Cummings's late-twentieth-century operation.

ForA local Wales-family landowner (further research needed)

ForGeorge Washington

Washington Street was added west of the original royal grid as the town expanded after the Revolution and named for the first president, who lived at Mount Vernon nine miles south. The George Washington Memorial Parkway, completed 1932, runs along the same axis through the city.

ForWestern boundary of the original town extension

ForJohn Wilkes — English politician and Patriot ally

Named for the English radical politician John Wilkes, whose press-freedom and reform campaigns made him a hero to the American Patriots. The Alexandria National Cemetery sits at 1450 Wilkes.

ForGeneral James Wolfe, hero of the Battle of Quebec (1759)

Named for the British general who died winning the Battle of Quebec in 1759 — a transatlantic military hero claimed by the colonies as one of their own.

ForGeorge Wythe — Virginia signer of the Declaration of Independence, jurist

Named for George Wythe, the Williamsburg-based legal scholar who taught Thomas Jefferson and signed the Declaration of Independence. The Parker-Gray School site sits on the 900 block of Wythe.

was “Old Leesburg Road” until 1900

ForVirginia Theological Seminary (founded 1823 on the hilltop)

Originally called Old Leesburg Road — the western road out of Alexandria toward Loudoun County. The name shifted to Seminary Road after the Episcopal seminary was established on the hilltop in 1823; Arthur Herbert's 1856 deed for the Muckross tract still refers to "Old Leesburg Road." The seminary is at 3737 Seminary Road today.

ForThe optical (later electric) telegraph line that ran along the road

Named for the early-19th-century optical telegraph line — and later Samuel Morse's electric telegraph — that ran along its length between Washington and points south. The road itself is much older; the name is antebellum.

ForThe Beverly Hills subdivision name (echoing Beverly Hills, California)

Principal street of the Beverly Hills neighborhood, developed in the 1920s as upper-middle-class car-suburban housing. The name borrowed glamour from California's Beverly Hills, then becoming famous through Hollywood.

ForCambridge — generic English place name typical of 1920s subdivision naming

Beverly Hills street; site of Bishop Ireton High School at 201 Cambridge Road (founded 1964). The English place-name pattern (Cambridge, Norwood, Beverly) was common in 1920s suburban developers' marketing — a gentrified-aspirational naming convention.

was “Washington Avenue” until 1942

ForThe Commonwealth of Virginia

Originally Washington Avenue, the name was changed in the early 1940s to avoid confusion with Washington Street in Old Town. The avenue runs the length of Del Ray as the neighborhood's western arterial.

ForFrank Hume (likely) — a former Confederate soldier and Virginia legislator

Named for the Hume family who owned and developed the Hume Springs tract that became part of Del Ray. Frank Hume was a Confederate veteran and post-war Virginia legislator; documentary detail tying the avenue to him specifically remains thin.

ForGeorge Washington's Mount Vernon estate to the south

The principal commercial spine of Del Ray, platted twenty feet wider than the rest of the neighborhood's streets. Named for Washington's estate to the south. The Birchmere music venue (3701) and George Washington High School (1005) are anchor properties along it.

ForThe Rosemont subdivision name

Spine of the Rosemont streetcar suburb developed from 1908 onward west of King Street Metro. The neighborhood is on the National Register of Historic Places (1992).

ForA founding Del Ray-area landowner (further research needed)

Western boundary of Del Ray, running parallel to Mount Vernon Avenue.

was “Cameron Run”

ForDwight D. Eisenhower (34th President; died March 1969)

Renamed for President Eisenhower shortly after his March 1969 death. The valley road follows Cameron Run — the small Potomac tributary whose floodplain Federal engineers studied when siting Fort Worth in 1861. The corridor was developed as a commercial and residential district from the 1990s onward.

ForFort Worth — Civil War earthwork on the Seminary Hill hilltop

Residential street in the 1970 Seminary Ridge subdivision built on the former Muckross tract. The name preserves the memory of Fort Worth, the Civil War earthwork that occupied the hilltop from 1861 until the war's end. The actual fort site is on St. Stephens Road west of North Garland Street, not on Fort Worth Avenue itself.

ForA vicar (Anglican parish priest) — generic; reflects proximity to VTS

Cul-de-sac off Quaker Lane in the residential strip directly across from Virginia Theological Seminary. The street's vocational name acknowledges the seminary; Wernher von Braun lived at 816 Vicar Lane from 1970 until his 1977 death.

was “Early Street” until 2024

ForLt. Col. Charity Adams Earley — highest-ranking Black woman in the WWII U.S. Army

The City rededicated North and South Early Street as Earley Street in June 2024 — preserving the homophone but redirecting the honor. The original Early honored Confederate general Jubal Early; the added "e" honors Charity Adams Earley (1918-2002), commander of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.

was “Forrest Street” until 2024

ForGeneric nature reference (spelling correction from the Confederate cavalry general's name)

Forrest Street had honored Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate cavalry general and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The single-letter spelling change in 2024 redirects the name from a person to a generic woodland reference.

was “Breckinridge Place” until 2024

ForHarriet Jacobs — abolitionist who founded the first free school for Black children in Alexandria

Renamed in June 2024 from Breckinridge Place — which honored John C. Breckinridge, U.S. vice-president-turned-Confederate general — to Harriet Jacobs Place. Jacobs (1815-1897) escaped slavery, wrote *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* (1861), and during the Federal occupation of Alexandria established the city's first free school for African American children.

ForLocal Holland-family landowner (further research needed)

Service street through the Carlyle / Eisenhower commercial district; home to the Alexandria African American Heritage Park (500 Holland Lane), which preserves a historic Black cemetery and several AAHP-trail interpretive signs.