From “The Boys of Ewald Park” – What do we call our neighborhood?

There are many names for the geographical area of Alexandria that surrounds Ewald Park. On the old city maps, it was called Tarleton or Wakefield. But I don’t know too many neighborhood folks of our generation that ever used those terms. Ours were more along the lines of L.A. (Lower Alexandria), or the Block.

But, when I go back to the 1970’s, some questions remain. Growing up, I recall everything south of Duke St. being called the Southside, whether it was our area, or even on the eastern end of town, in the neighborhood that encircled Lee Elementary School, where a lot of our friends from the Eugene Simpson baseball team lived. By contrast, the Northside was reserved for Del Ray, Arlandria, and especially the public housing units that made up the north end of Old Town along Rte. 1.

For the sake of argument, here is Wikipedia’s definition of Lower Alexandria. Since I wrote the original submission, it’s hard for me to disagree with this.

“South of the Duke Street corridor, Lower Alexandria is a collection of communities of small homes, row houses, townhomes along with commercial and retail real estate, including the Shops of Foxchase. The section between Wheeler Ave. and S. Jordan St. is also known as the "Block." In the 1960’s and 1970’s, this section of Alexandria was also known because of Shirley Duke, a complex of 2,214 low-priced rental apartments, which became the Foxchase development in the early 1980’s after five years of stagnancy. There are also areas of industrial businesses south of Duke Street, primarily off Wheeler Ave., South Pickett St., and South Van Dorn St. In the very southern part of this area is the Eisenhower Ave. corridor running parallel to the Capital Beltway (I-95/I-495) and west of Telegraph Rd, which is primarily industrial and commercial in nature.“

But my questions have more to do with the geographical boundaries. If Duke Street borders L.A. to the north, then Shirley Duke or Duchess Gardens apartments wouldn’t have counted as part of the old neighborhood. Given that most of the kids who played at Ewald Park were from one of those two areas, should they be?