Alexandria
— — a port town the capital grew up next to.
Not only on a wall.
“A port on the Potomac River laid out in 1749, seven miles south of Washington and a century older. King Street still runs from the waterfront to the Masonic memorial along the original grid; brick row houses face cobblestones; the Torpedo Factory turned its munitions floor into artist studios in 1974.
Alexandria, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Alexandria sits on the western bank of the Potomac about seven miles south of the National Mall. The town was chartered in 1749 by an act of the Virginia General Assembly, twenty-three years before the District of Columbia was carved out around it. Population is roughly 160,000. The Old Town historic district covers about a hundred blocks of the original eighteenth-century grid: King Street running east to the river, with cross streets named for the kings and queens of the colonial period.
The fabric of Old Town is Federal and Greek Revival brick, much of it laid in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Christ Church on Cameron Street, where George Washington and Robert E. Lee both worshipped, was completed in 1773 in the Georgian manner. Gadsby's Tavern at 134 North Royal dates to the 1780s. The Torpedo Factory on the waterfront, built in 1918 to make submarine torpedoes for two world wars, was converted in 1974 to studios and galleries housing more than 160 working artists.
Old Town is walkable end to end in about twenty minutes along King Street, which runs from the Potomac waterfront uphill to the George Washington Masonic National Memorial. The Torpedo Factory is open daily and free; Carlyle House and Gadsby's Tavern Museum keep regular tour hours. The King Street Metro on the Blue and Yellow lines lands at the western end of the historic district; a free King Street Trolley runs the full mile down to the river. Parking on the cobblestones is metered.