GRANTS

The Alexandria Association was established as an all-purpose preservation society in 1932. The Alexandria Association Endowment was established in 1996 and supports the following historic properties and programs:

  • Alexandria Library’s Special Collection

  • The Athenaeum

  • Carlyle House Historic Park

  • Conservation and purchase of museum objects

  • Exhibits and publications

  • Freedom House Museum

  • Friendship Firehouse Museum

  • Gadsby’s Tavern Museum

  • Lee-Fendall House Museum & Garden

  • Lloyd House and Garden

  • The Lyceum

  • Menokin House and archeology program

  • Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum

  • Woodlawn Plantation

These exhibitions were also supported with Alexandria Association funding:

Our Town, 1749-1865 (1956)

Oriental Porcelains from Alexandria Collections (1979)

Archaeology Sets the Table (1993-1994)

Changing Perspectives: Alexandria’s Place in the World (1993-1994)

In the Neatest Most Fashionable Manner: Three Centuries of Alexandria Silver (1994-1995)

Woodlawn Smokehouse

Gadsby Tavern facade

Since its beginning, the Alexandria Association has played an important role in preserving and restoring the city’s historical treasures. Examples include:

Reinstallation of the Gadsby Tavern Museum’s original doorway that framed George Washington’s farewell address to his troops (1949)

Serving in the forefront of successful efforts to save the Lloyd House and providing the needed $7,000 to pay off the wrecking company that had already started demolition (1956)

Influencing Alexandria’s adoption of the Charleston Ordinance for preserving old buildings and the Virginia General Assembly passage of the act establishing the Alexandria Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission (1962)

Fully funding the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum’s retirement of its mortgage (1964)

Funding the reinstallation of Cicero’s and Seneca’s busts in The Lyceum’s grand second-floor meeting room used for the Association’s monthly meetings (1994)

In 1996, the Alexandria Association established an endowment fund, which has made generous gifts for:

 The manufacture and installation of period wallpaper in the Carlyle House’s parlor (1997-1998)

The commission of historically accurate curtains for the ballroom of Gadsby’s Tavern Museum (1998-1999)

A painted canvas floor covering for the front hall of Robert E. Lee’s Boyhood Home (1999)

Restoration of the Gadsby Tavern Museum’s ice well (2009 and again in 2013)

Publication of North Ridge Lore Revisited (2000)

A dendrochronology of the beams and construction of the assembly room of Gadsby’s Tavern Museum (2001)

Purchase of a Georgian pier looking glass for the Carlyle House’s dining room (2001)

Publication of the National Gallery’s exhibition catalog for “An American Vision: Henry Francis DuPont’s Winterthur” (2002)

A comprehensive paint analysis of the historic interiors of the Lee-Fendall House Museum & Garden (2003)

An analysis of interior colors and finishes of the Gadsby’s Tavern Museum (2003)

A three-dimensional computer-based modeling of the ruin of Menokin House, the home of Rebecca Taylor and Francis Lightfoot Lee (2004)

Repair of the primary structural beam of the Lee-Fendall House Museum & Garden (2005)

Restoration of the transoms over the entrance doors of the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum (2006)

Restoration of the Lloyd House’s gardens (2006)

Purchase of the 1776 engraving of “The Death of General Wolfe”; the painting of historic colors and the installation of wallpaper and borders in the Carlyle House’s upper and lower passages (2007)

Repair and restoration of the smokehouse at Woodlawn Plantation, the home of Nelly Parke Custis and her husband Lawrence Lewis (2008)

Conservation of historic gravestones for John and Sara Carlyle at The Old Presbyterian Meeting House Burial Ground (2016)

Conservation of six paintings, including John Gadsby; Humphrey Peake, Collector of Customs, and his wife; and the Bryan Family (2019)

Publication online of 5,000 historic Alexandria documents and photographs by the Local History/Special Collections branch of the Alexandria Public Library (2020)

Restoration of the hand-pumped fire engine at the Friendship Fire House Museum (2021)

Exhibit support for the Freedom House Museum (2022)

Restoration of the garden of the Lee-Fendall House Museum and a garden educational program (2013)

Restoration of the plaster (2010) and the kitchen chimney (2014) of the Lee-Fendall House Museum

Repair and restoration of the west facing windows of The Athenaeum (2015)

Historic Structure Report project for the Lee-Fendall House Museum (2023)

Repointing of the stonework in the lower level of The Athenaeum (2023)

Over the years, furniture and decorative arts objects donated to the Association were loaned to furnish Alexandria’s historic properties, including the Office of Historic Alexandria, the Lee-Fendall House Museum & Garden, Gadsby’s Tavern Museum and the Alexandria Visitor Center at the Ramsay House