The Cross Canal area centers around the 900 block of North Fairfax Street between Montgomery and First Streets. It is bordered on the west side by North Royal Street.

In 1982, Alexandria Archeology interviewed Virginia Knapper and recorded her oral history of the Cross Canal neighborhood. Ms. Knapper was born in 1897 in a house on North Fairfax Street. She remembers the area was always known as Cross Canal.

**Cross Canal Map**
**Legend:**
3 Cross Canal neighborhood
4 Canal lock
5 Ralph’s Gutt

It was a neighborhood of black residents who settled in the northeast portion of the City, across from the canal, shortly after the Civil War. The canal was located just to the north of a modern historical marker near 901 North Fairfax Street, and extended from the Potomac River to Washington Street, then north to Rosslyn.

Cross Canal was quite distinct from the more developed City. A quiet rural area during the Civil War, it retained much of that bucolic character as a neighborhood with dirt roads. Families lived in small frame houses with gardens and raised farm animals in their backyards.

The wharves of the canal provided employment for many residents until the canal closed in 1886. Later, as the area industrialized, many residents worked at nearby industrial plants, such as the Bryant Fertilizer plant on the wharves, and the Old Dominion Glass Factory, a bottle manufacturer located on North Fairfax Street from 1902 to 1925.

No structures survive from the Cross Canal neighborhood. It is now part of the area known as Old Town North, served by the Old Town North Alliance (OTNA), Old Town North Community Partnership and NOTICe civic organization.

Across the Canal…