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Alexandria’s New Digital History Museum Invites You to Wander Through the City’s Past

More than 140 free stories bring the Port City’s people, places and surprises to screens everywhere.

Mary Wadland 1 hour ago

0 3 minutes read

A large crowd gathers beside the bow of the SS Gunston Hall during its launch at the Virginia Shipbuilding Corporation yard at Jones Point in Alexandria, 1919. — A crowd gathers at Jones Point for the launch of the SS Gunston Hall, the first vessel built at Alexandria’s Virginia Shipbuilding Corporation during World War I. The shipyard once employed more than 3,000 people and was expected to secure the city’s economic future—but it collapsed into bankruptcy just a few years later. Today, much of the former yard is part of Jones Point Park. Photo: Library of Congress/Alexandria Digital History Museum

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Every Alexandrian has done it: walked past an old brick house, a churchyard gate or a familiar corner shop and wondered what stories might be tucked behind it.

Now, there is a new place to go looking.

The Alexandria Historical Society has launched the Alexandria Digital History Museum, a free online museum filled with more than 140 stories from the Port City’s long and layered past.

It is the sort of place where you may arrive looking for George Washington and leave knowing something unexpected about Cass Elliot, a West End neighborhood or a piece of local life you thought you already understood.

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The Society officially launched the museum July 28. It is designed for residents, visitors, students, teachers, researchers—and anyone who simply enjoys a good Alexandria story.

“You can use the DHM to find both bits of history you are looking for and bits of history that pop up unexpectedly,” the Historical Society says on its website. It makes an even bolder promise: visitors will find something they did not know about Alexandria on every browsing trip.

A group of young boys, including Black and white workers, stands outside the Old Dominion Glass Company in Alexandria in 1911. — Young workers gather outside Alexandria’s Old Dominion Glass Company in June 1911, when children could work long factory shifts that often alternated between days and nights and left little room for school. Lewis Hine photographed Alexandria’s glass workers for the National Child Labor Committee, helping Americans see the human cost of child labor—and building support for stronger protections. Photo: Library of Congress/Alexandria Digital History Museum

A museum without a front door

The Alexandria Digital History Museum does not require a drive to Old Town, a parking space or a set of opening hours. It is built for computers, tablets and phones, allowing anyone to explore from the front porch, a classroom or halfway across the country.

Its stories begin with the Indigenous communities who called this area home for thousands of years and continue through the generations of Alexandrians who have made history since. The result is not a single, polished version of the city’s past. It is a broad neighborhood-by-neighborhood portrait of a place that has been a port, a hometown, a military crossroads, a commercial center and, for many people, simply home.

The museum’s opening collection ranges from George Washington to singer Cass Elliot, and from Old Town to the West End. That range matters. Alexandria history is often told through its best-known streets and biggest names, but the new site makes room for the people, places and moments that do not always get a plaque or a tour stop.

Built with Axiell’s CultureConnect platform, the museum uses digital exhibits and links to help visitors follow a thread farther when a particular story catches their eye.

The brick buildings of Gadsby’s Tavern and the adjacent City Hotel stand on North Royal Street in Alexandria, with the words “City Hotel” visible on the larger building. — By 1941, the venerable North Royal Street buildings that had welcomed George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson stood in a quieter chapter of their long life. Preservation-minded Alexandrians, led by Rebecca Ramsay Reese, helped save the complex in the 1920s; American Legion Post No. 23 purchased it in 1929 and cared for it until donating it to the City of Alexandria in 1972. Once John Wise’s City Tavern—and later John Gadsby’s celebrated tavern and hotel—the property’s story also includes the enslaved people who did the essential work of cooking meals, cleaning rooms and keeping the operation running. Today, it is Gadsby’s Tavern Museum. Photo: Library of Congress/Alexandria Digital History Museum

A reason to put on your walking shoes

The online museum is also meant to send people back out into the real city.

Its “Explore Alexandria History IRL” section points visitors toward local museums, historic sites and history organizations, creating a useful bridge between something discovered on a phone and something that can be seen, visited or walked past in person.

That feels especially fitting in Alexandria, where history has a way of hiding in plain sight. A house you pass on the way to dinner may have stood through a war. A cemetery gate may lead to the resting place of someone who helped shape the city. A familiar block may have been home to people whose stories deserve to be better known.

The new museum is not intended to be a finished shelf of facts. The Historical Society calls it a long-term public-history project, with new stories, resources and special exhibits planned over time. Future features will allow deeper explorations of particular people, neighborhoods, themes and turning points.

The project expands the mission of the Alexandria Historical Society, which has spent more than 50 years sharing local history through lectures, tours, publications, research and public programs. The all-volunteer nonprofit has also published thousands of pages in its Alexandria Chronicle and maintains audio and video archives of past programs.

Financial support for the digital museum came from the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia and Virginia Humanities.

For now, the best way to begin is the old-fashioned way: follow your curiosity. Start with a name you know, a neighborhood you love or a question that has been rattling around in your head for years.

Then see where Alexandria takes you.

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