The Neighborhood
Located northwest of Old Town Alexandria, the town of Rosemont is an unusually intact example of an early-20th-century, middle-class trolley-car suburb. The town’s initial development was closely linked to the growth of the electric rail system in the Washington, D.C. area. Its desirability was enhanced by its close proximity to Alexandria’s Union Station, a hub for steam-rail routes to the north, south and west.
Rosemont is largely a residential neighborhood, and the majority of its houses were constructed between 1908 and 1930 in designs and sizes ranging from small Craftsman bungalows to large Arts and Crafts and Colonial Revival houses. Although many of the houses were constructed from stock plans, several prominent architects are known to have made designs for buildings in the town. The best-known were D. Knickerbacker Boyd of Philadelphia, and Waddy Butler Wood and William I. Deming of Washington, D.C.
The Rosemont Historic District was listed on the National Register in 1992. The district is bounded approximately by Commonwealth Avenue, West Walnut Street, Russell Road, Rucker Place and King Street.
The Electric Railway
This cache site is the former location of the Rosemont stop of the Washington, Alexandria, and Mount Vernon Electric Railway. The photo below shows what the area looked like in the early 20th Century. This picture is taken looking west on Rosemont Avenue.
Initially the railway ran from Mount Vernon to what is now Old Town Alexandria. In 1896 the line was extended to a terminal at 12thand Pennsylvania in downtown D.C. The line was started by a group of investors from Philadelphia, who owned the land that was developed into Rosemont. Rosemont was likely named after a station on the Philadelphia main line, where some of the investors lived. The line was a full service railway that carried U.S. mail and regular freight service.
