Old Town North has played an important role in Alexandria’s history. The local environment would have been conducive to various traditions and customs of Native American life. With European colonization, plantations developed along the riverfront in the 1700s, and the northern part of the area remained relatively rural into the twentieth century. The construction of the Alexandria Canal, followed by the arrival of the railroads in the mid-nineteenth century, changed the character of the southern part of the neighborhood, which transitioned into an industrial hub. Neighborhoods for workers developed around the factories and industrial facilities, many of which were occupied by thriving African American communities In the early twentieth century, the George Washington Memorial Parkway, a National Park Service property connecting the District of Columbia with Mount Vernon, was constructed along what is now the western boundary of the Old Town North area. By the mid-1900s, Old Town North had become a mixed-use neighborhood with several industrial uses extending into the latter decades of the twentieth century.