The Potomac River waterfront in Old Town Alexandria where neighborhoods are compact and walkable is attractive to residents and tourists alike. Over the centuries, King Street has remained the primary commercial area. George Washington drew survey maps of the land and the city in 1748-49 showing the old colonial settlement beginning to form its distinctive chessboard grid oriented to the waterfront rather than by the compass. A bluff near the water’s edge was excavated and used to fill in the shallow water to improve the port. The native people who once fished these shores were displaced by the growing city with warehouses mainly for flour, tobacco, cotton, wine, and sugar. By 1779, it was a port of entry for foreign vessels and its waterfront was soon filled with brigs, schooners, and other vessels which engaged in coast-wide and international trade. Alexandria was also home to one of the largest slave trading operations for the south. Many Alexandrians owned slaves, their labor helping to build and maintain the City. In 1791, Alexandria was included in the area chosen to form a part of the ten-mile square District of Columbia. The City was retroceded back to Virginia from the Federal Government in 1846, probably in part to facilitate the trade in enslaved humans.   

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At the beginning of the Civil War, Alexandria was quickly occupied by the North. Shuter’s (Shooter’s) Hill, a little more than a mile from the foot of King Street, was changed into Fort Ellsworth. In the twentieth century, the 120-foot hill became the site for the 333-foot tall George Washington Masonic National Memorial that stands today. Likened to a chess piece, this towering building marks the other end of King Street. However, this tower was designed from a reconstruction of the lighthouse in Alexandria, Egypt – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

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On the day after Armistice Day – November 2, 1918 – the Torpedo Factory was opened on the waterfront flanking King Street to the north. Torpedoes were produced at this location through the Second World War. In 1974, it reopened as the home of the Art League and later added the Alexandria Archaeology Museum.  

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The slow extension of the City into the River over the years was facilitated with fill from ballast, building waste, early wharves, and sinking old vessels such as the 200-year old fifty-foot hull recently discovered during excavation for a new hotel near the waterfront site. This fill created the low ground at the end of King Street that is in the 100 year floodplain and nuisance flooding occurs fairly frequently in the area. Here the Potomac River is tidal, and fluctuates approximately three feet between high and low tide.

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In recent years, with much spirited public debate, the waterfront has been changing from its industrial past into a place for public enjoyment. A free trolley service on King connects the waterfront with the King Street Metro station.