AMERICAN HISTORY, IN FULL BLOOM

ALEXANDRIA, Va. —  Though it lies just five miles south of Washington, D.C., Alexandria seems a whole world--and time--away. Because it languished as a backwater across the Potomac while our nation’s capital grew by leaps and bounds, much of Alexandria’s past survives today. Amazingly, it is not Williamsburg that has more 18th and early l9th century buildings. It is Alexandria.

Washington may have its grand monuments and big hotels, but nearby Alexandria has history reduced to a human scale. Yet many visitors to Washington do not know of the city’s existence, which is a pity.

In fact, if I were a visitor to the capital area instead of a resident, I would stay in Alexandria and absorb its charm before venturing into downtown Washington, D.C., reached by subway in only 20 minutes. Besides its own share of historic sites, Alexandria has more than 40 antique stores and as many art galleries, a wide assortment of good restaurants and several fine hotels. And being a southern city, it is a hospitable one. On April 19, for example, it will open many of its best private houses and gardens to the public as part of Virginia’s annual Historic Garden Week. It is then that the whole town bursts into bloom.

Laid out on a grid plan in 1749, Alexandria attracted some of the British colonies’ wealthiest citizens who put up homes and churches on the newly cleared lots. Among the most famous of the locals was George Washington, who often came to town from his Mt. Vernon estate eight miles upriver to conduct business and amuse himself. When he was only 17, he produced what is considered the earliest extant map of Alexandria. And despite the revolt he later led against the British crown, several streets he identified in his neat penmanship continue to bear their royal names: King, Queen, Prince, Princess and Duke.

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If the Father of Our Country were to return to Alexandria in 1997, almost 200 years after his death, he would find much that he knew during his lifetime unchanged, especially at the city’s core, called Old Town. His pew waits for him in Christ Church. Houses where he and Martha were entertained still stand. Gadsby’s Tavern, his frequent watering hole, even has his favorite meal--roast canvasback duck with cranberry sauce, creamed onions and a string bean ragout--set out on a table in the private dining room he used on many occasions. Only one disappointment would attend him there today: The food is wax.

Despite being known as George Washington’s hometown, Alexandria can boast more than a Colonial past. It is also the place where Confederate commander in chief Robert E. Lee grew up and the spot where the first blood of the Civil War was spilled in May of 1861. (A plaque on the Holiday Inn on King Street marks the location.) You have only to pause at the corner of Washington and Prince streets to behold the symbolic embodiment of this other past.

Islanded in the middle of four traffic lanes stands the bronze statue of a Confederate soldier on a high granite pedestal. Head bowed in reflection, his right hand clutching his crumpled hat, he faces forever southward. Commemorating the Alexandria men who served in the War Between the States (as the event is yet referred to by some Old Town residents), the statue has been knocked down more than once by an errant car but has always been hoisted back in place.

As so often happens when you live and work in a historic place like this, you leave the sightseeing to others. That is not to say that I took Alexandria and its past for granted. I had merely failed to visit its most famous sites. Last spring my wife and I set out to correct this wrong. By the time our explorations ended, I found a whole new civic pride welling up in me.

We began our tour at Ramsay House, on the northeast corner of King and North Fairfax streets, across from Market Square. Here the oldest continuously operated outdoor market in the United States takes place on Saturday mornings. The 1724 original of this dormered, clapboard structure was floated downriver on a barge and set in place on a high stone foundation as the temporary office and home of William Ramsay, a Scotsman and town founder. Today the reconstructed building serves as the Alexandria Convention & Visitors Assn., where free maps and brochures are available and walking tours given by passionately knowledgeable docents can be arranged.

After picking up literature on the sites we intended to visit, we walked along North Fairfax Street to the Georgian-style Carlyle House, the most imposing of Alexandria’s earliest homes, erected between 1752 and 1753 by the Scottish merchant John Carlyle. We approached it through a formal walled garden that continues around back, pausing for a moment on the path to enjoy the stone building’s pleasing symmetries. Beneath a steep hipped roof from which double chimneys rise, a stone facade with an elegant entrance gained by a broad flight of steps still announces the self-proclaimed importance of John Carlyle. But the house was not always so visible. Inside, a docent--a former chemist at the CIA--pointed to old photographs that showed how a 19th century hotel had obscured the structure. When the mansion underwent restoration in the 1970s, the hotel was torn down and the house returned to view.

As the docent led us through the stately rooms, we were increasingly impressed by the efforts of the conservators. He explained that a steel frame had been inserted into the house to keep the stone walls from collapsing, with electrical wiring, heating and a fire-retarding system added. All this had to be accomplished without destroying the mansion’s architectural integrity. In the process, two interesting discoveries occurred. Removing the woodwork around the twin doorways of the main parlor, the restorers could see that a subsequent owner had increased their height by raising the lintels and extending the jambs 6 inches, enabling someone as tall as me to pass through them more easily. When the decorative scroll pediments on top of each were taken down as part of the work of lowering the doorways to their former level, the original color of the room--a pinkish tan, which it is painted today--became apparent.

This color scheme came as a surprise to us, accustomed as we have been to thinking of the 18th century as one of muted tones dominated by white. But if the hues of the salon gave us pause, we were shocked by the master bedroom, painted a bright Paris green, prepared in the 18th century by scraping the verdigris from copper plates kept over acidic fumes rising from vats of vinegar. The restored rooms have been authentically furnished with exquisite antiques, and it is exciting to walk freely among them, thus gaining an impression of what it was like to live in such distinguished surroundings.

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Heading to the northern end of town, my wife and I entered what I call Lee territory. No less than three houses with Lee associations sit close together at the intersection of Oronoco and North Washington streets. Two of them are open to the public. One on Oronoco is the boyhood home of Robert E. Lee, a stately, red-brick mansion dating from 1795, which his father, Gen. Lighthorse Harry Lee of Revolutionary War fame, rented. The family had fallen on hard times when it moved in, but the grandeur of the place must have done much to conceal their financial straits. From this house Lee went off to West Point. A portrait of him as a dashing young officer hangs in the broad entrance hall.

Diagonally across the way, on the corner of Washington and Oronoco streets (Oronoco is an Indian trail that became a conduit for barrels of Virginia tobacco rolled down to the harbor by slaves for overseas shipment), stands the clapboard Lee-Fendall house, built in 1785. Thirty-seven Lees dwelled under its roof over the 118 years the family owned the house. Among its subsequent tenants was labor leader John L. Lewis.

Since we were only a few blocks from Christ Church on North Washington Street, we decided to make it our last destination of the day. We had been there several times before, but knew we would enjoy again reading some of the old inscriptions on the tombstones in its cemetery before resting our feet in its lovely white interior. The pulpit is shaped like a wine glass and on either side of the large Palladian window behind it are two tablets bearing the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments, painted in 1773 when the church opened.

The following day my wife and I returned to Old Town to complete our tour. Our first stop was the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Shop on South Fairfax Street. Founded in 1792, it operated until 1933 when the Depression forced its closing. The Quaker family that had owned it for generations simply locked the door behind them. The shop and its contents would have gone on to gather dust had they not been rescued by caring citizens who saw to it that these were preserved as one of the city’s (and country’s) great treasures.

To go inside is to be caught in a time warp. The Gothic-style shelves are lined with handblown jars for medicines, their contents identified on gilt-edged labels. (Upstairs, drawers hold herbs, seeds and potions.) In one corner sits a chair used by Lee, a frequent visitor. Indeed, it was in this room in 1858 that Lee, then a lieutenant colonel in the 2nd United States Cavalry, received orders to go to Harpers Ferry and put down the insurrection led by Abolitionist John Brown. “I’m afraid this is only the beginning of more trouble,” he said prophetically to the proprietor as he departed.

Having visited Christ Church the day before, we decided to walk the two blocks from the Stabler-Leadbeater Pharmacy to the equally venerable Presbyterian Meeting House, which opened its doors in 1774. When Washington died at Mt. Vernon on Dec. 14, 1799, its bell tolled nonstop for four days. His memorial service, scheduled for Christ Church a mile away, had to be held here because of poor weather: “the walking being bad,” as a newspaper reported.

Though heavily damaged by fire in 1835, the building was restored instead of being torn down. And a good thing. The white interior is the most serene in all of Alexandria and possibly the entire Washington area, a windowed space of utter simplicity, filled by day with pure light and silence. In the cemetery outside sleeps the Unknown Soldier of the Revolutionary War.

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Because we were not far from Gentry Row on Prince Street, we headed for this block of handsome 18th century townhouses to savor the measured grace of the architecture. Seeing these you know why it is so named; only people of distinction could have owned them. Outside the home of Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick, one of the doctors who attended Washington in his final illness, a small crowd had gathered. We stopped to see why. At the center stood an enthusiastic docent, holding forth in full 18th century attire--a long skirt, an apron, blouse and ruffled cap. She held her audience rapt as she told how Dick had opposed the bleeding of Washington. But his colleague Dr. James Craik insisted on the procedure, doubtlessly hastening the president’s death.

In a town with so much of its past still present, I think it wonderful that the city supports an active archeology program. Archeologists, working side by side with volunteers, have dug down into gardens, backyards and abandoned privies for clues to how the inhabitants lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the process they have unearthed a wide range of objects, everything from a loaded musket to a forlorn dental plate. To see some of their finds, we made our way down Captain’s Row, the cobbled end of Prince Street (legend says the stones were laid by Hessian prisoners during the Revolution) to the waterfront and our final stop, the Torpedo Factory. During World II it manufactured the lethal weapons used to sink enemy ships. Today, it offers studio space to about 160 artists and craftsmen, who have made it into a living museum of their own work, all of which is for sale.

We found the archeology center tucked away in a corner of the third floor. As we strolled between the cases, we were touched by the humbleness of the objects--bone toothbrushes, clay pipes, fractured china, wine flagons, medicine bottles, bisque doll heads--the necessities and luxuries of people, rich and poor alike, who once called Alexandria home and still haunt the city today.

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GUIDEBOOK

Around Alexandria

Getting there: United and American fly nonstop to Washington’s Dulles Airport. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at $350.

Where to stay: Morrison House Ltd., 116 S. Alfred St., Alexandria, VA 22314; telephone (800) 367-0800. Alexandria’s top hotel is the 45-room Morrison House, conceived as an 18th century manor house and furnished with antiques and Federal-period reproductions. Rates: from $185 for a double to $480 for a two-bedroom suite.

Visitors wishing to stay in one of 31 private Old Town Alexandria residences, all with air-conditioning and private baths, can book accommodations through Princely Bed & Breakfast Ltd., Box 325, Port Haywood, VA 23138; tel. (800) 470-5588. Rates: $85 to $150 for a double, including breakfast.

Where to eat: East Wind, 809 King St.; tel. (703) 836-1515. The cuisine is Vietnamese and dishes include cinnamon beef roll, pork with rice pancakes, crispy noodles. Entrees are $7 to $14.

Gadsby’s Tavern, 138 N. Royal St.; tel. (703) 548-1288. On the menu are roast beef, meat and game pies, Scottish apple gingerbread with cinnamon icing and George Washington’s favorite roast duck, with prices ranging from $17 to $23 for entrees.

Gaulois, 1106 King St.; tel. (703) 739-9494. The cuisine is French and entrees are $6.50 to $22.50.

Geranio, 722 King St.; tel. (703) 548-0088. The cuisine is Italian and dishes include deep-fried calamari, risotto and cold trout marinated in red wine. Entrees are $11 to 17.

Pita House, 407 Cameron St.; tel. (703) 684-9194. The cuisine is Lebanese and dishes include falafel, chicken shawarma, kafta. Entrees $8 to $11.

Taverna Cretekou, 818 King St.; tel. (703) 548-8688. The cuisine is Greek and dishes include moussaka, stuffed grape leaves and lamb with figs and chestnuts. Entrees are $5.25 to $20.

For more information: Virginia Division of Tourism, 901 E. Byrd St., Richmond, VA 23219; tel. (804) 786-2051.

Alexandria Convention & Visitors Assn., 221 King St., Alexandria, VA 22314; tel. (800) 388-9119.