Old Town Alexandria Waterfront

Author's Comments

There is a particular moment at the foot of King Street, just before the sun drops behind the rowhouses, when the cobblestones go warm and the light skips across the Potomac toward the Maryland shore. That is the moment I wait for. Alexandria in April or October, the air still cool enough to hold its clarity, the boats in the marina shifting slightly at their lines. I usually walk south on Union Street rather than through the crush at the main pier. The blocks below Prince Street are quieter, and the Federal facades read better without the foot traffic in front of them. Brick and shutter and the occasional iron boot scraper still set into a stoop. The rowhouses here do not perform for the camera. They simply continue being what they have been for two hundred years, and the light finds them the way it always has. Waterfront Park at Strand Street is where I end up for the skyline. Facing north at sunset you get something unusual for this stretch of river - the DC monuments catching side light while the sky behind them does the work. It is not the postcard view of Washington. It is something more sideways and more interesting, the city seen obliquely from a town that predates it. The cobblestones are best when wet. A light rain an hour before golden hour is the gift you cannot plan for, but if it happens, go. The reflections change everything.

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