Colored Rosemont: Maps and Aerial Images
The Colored Rosemont Community History Initiative is a collaboration between the Office of Historic Alexandria, and former and current residents of Colored Rosemont. The Initiative seeks to preserve and showcase the important history of this historic African American neighborhood, which was home to some of the first African American homeowners in the City of Alexandria throughout the early-to-mid 20th century. View maps and images of this neighborhood below.
Neighborhood boundaries are more than just a simple matter of geography. People in a neighborhood not only share physical space, but they share the common experience of placemaking within their surroundings. The familiarities and fixtures of a neighborhood—the longtime family that lives at the same address for decades; block parties; the open lot where kids play—these moments and events help people in a neighborhood develop a collective sense of belonging.
Although fungible, the boundaries of the Colored Rosemont neighborhood formally took shape beginning in 1926 when a local real estate broker, Virginia Fitzhugh Wheat Thomas (1893-1987), acquired and then subsequently subdivided the entire block bounded by N. West St. on the west, Madison St. on the north, N. Payne St. on the east, and Wythe St. on the south. Although she came from a world of white privilege, Thomas actively supported Black homeownership not only in words, but in deeds, quite literally in deeds. In 1928 she began selling lots to prospective Black buyers and did so for the next two decades.
Over time the neighborhood expanded onto the surrounding blocks to an area bound by N. West St. on the west, by Madison St. on the north, by N. Fayette St. on the east, and Pendleton St. on the south. This evolution of the Colored Rosemont neighborhood can be visually charted on a series of historic maps and aerial photographs. The Thomas block, and the adjacent blocks were largely vacant (aside from some light industry) until the late 1920s when new property owners began building houses. By the mid-1930s more than a dozen houses had been built. By the 1940s most of the original Thomas block had been built out, and additional houses were sprouting up on the adjacent blocks. By the 1950s the neighborhood had fully come into being.
