Fort Ward Observer

15/01/2025

Fort Ward Updates - January 2025

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Judy Lo
To:
Cc: Susan Cumbey , Jack Browand
Date: 01/15/2025 5:52 PM EST
Subject: Fort Ward Updates - January 2025

Good Afternoon,
Please find updates about various Fort Ward projects. Updates in 2025 will be provided through this distribution list and on the Fort Ward Park and Museum Area Management Plan webpage.
Fort Ward Playground Accessibility Improvements. At the June 2024 community meeting, City staff shared updates on plans to relocate the playground from its current location to the hilltop. The meeting included a presentation of the proposed playground layout, equipment options, and an assessment of potential impacts on trees and other resources. Since then, consultants have advanced the construction documents, and engineering firm Gordon has been hired to prepare the drawings. Gordon has completed additional field surveys, a refined 60% schematic design, and a stormwater concept plan. Work is ongoing toward the 90% construction documents, with permitting approvals anticipated by spring 2025. The procurement process will begin in summer 2025, and construction is expected to start in fall 2025. A pre-construction community meeting will be scheduled before construction begins.
Fort Ward Museum Orientation Exhibit. Office of Historic Alexandria staff have initiated development of the Fort Ward Museum orientation exhibit, which will be an overview of the site's history from the Civil War to the Fort community. This new permanent exhibit is targeted to open by the spring of 2026. Staff have also continued to plan for a Jackson Cemetery memorial in conjunction with family members.
2024 Fort Ward Tree Planting. In 2024, City staff and landscape architecture interns created a planting plan for 26 new trees in the Fort Ward Forest Conservation area, located east of the park’s picnic pavilion. This initiative reflects the City's commitment to expanding its tree canopy and enhancing natural resources. The native tree species—such as mockernut hickory, fringe tree, flowering dogwood, persimmon, and river birch—are selected to support the local ecosystem, improve air quality, and enhance the park’s beauty. Each tree will be supported by a two-year watering contract to ensure successful establishment.
Fort Ward Accessible Parking Improvements. Various parking lots at Fort Ward will be upgraded to meet current ADA standards for accessible parking. Improvements include repaving, restriping, and updated signage. In 2025, these updates will focus on the museum parking lot and the front entrance gravel lot. Construction is expected to begin in late winter or early spring 2025, weather permitting. Temporary parking closures may occur, with schedules posted on-site. Alexandria Archaeology will monitor all ground-disturbing activities.
Fort Ward Amphitheatre Streetlight LED retrofit. The Department of Transportation and Environmental Services will convert 16 streetlight fixtures located in the vicinity of the Fort Ward amphitheater to LED. This work will support Citywide conversion of streetlights to LED. Materials are on order with an expected installation spring 2025.
For more information about Fort Ward projects and programs, contact:
Judy Lo, Principal Planner, Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities
Phone: 703.746.5490 and email: [email protected]
Susan Cumbey, Fort Ward Museum Director, Office of Historic Alexandria
Phone: 703.746.4848 and email: [email protected]
This email has been sent to a distribution list. If you do not wish to receive these updates please contact me to be removed.
Sincerely,

Judy Lo, PLA, ASLA
Principal Planner, Capital Development
City of Alexandria, Virginia
Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities
703.746.5490 (office)
alexandriava.gov

15/01/2025

“Fort Ward

If an actual battle had been fought here, I would have felt more inclined to be in awe of the battlements and artillery. It would feel more like “sacred ground” which one should think deeply about (see my Gettysburg ruminations). But, to me, it seemed like they could have really let the African American community stay there and continue to grow and prosper”.


Round Barn Press
360 Degrees of Thinking Out Loud

15/01/2025

Looking Back at Fort Ward: 2013

On 05/27/2024 11:47 PM EDT Allison Silberberg wrote:


Hi Glenn,

Thanks for your note about this very important subject. I remember sitting with you on your back porch with Fran Terrell and Carol Johnson and Adrienne Washington and a number of other descendants. I think it was around 2013 or so. I was a new vice mayor and so appreciated the opportunity to hear everyone’s strong concerns and their painful history.

Your quote from me is right. And I fought hard to include a statement in the intro of the Fort Ward Park plan that said that “significant parts of Fort Ward Park are hallowed ground.” Thankfully, my colleagues on the Council finally agreed with my suggestion, but there was robust pushback. Adrienne Washington was at the Council meeting and told me later that she was texting back and forth with Councilman Chapman that “she wanted that sentence in the intro of the plan!” He was pushing back against that sentence. I was the vice mayor at the time. As I just wrote here, thankfully, that sentence about this being hallowed ground was inserted into the opening page or the intro as a result. That sentence was crucial.

Then as mayor, during a Council meeting, I made a public statement where I expressed a heartfelt apology to the African Americans in our city for the way our city had treated them through the decades, specifically with regard to Fort Ward Park and then the land where our high school and Chinquapin are today. I expressed a full-throated apology and said that our city was wrong and should and must do far better. So yes, I issued a formal apology that day in the Council Chambers. I don’t know if any of the media picked it up. By chance, I was just discussing this apology with Arminta Wood yesterday.

You could have heard a pin drop in the Council Chambers when I expressed an apology. I believe my comments were made during a meeting related to the intense debate about the proposed lights on the football field of the high school. I was opposed to the lights, primarily because the city had made a promise to the African American families that had been forced off of their land where the high school is now. The promise was that there wouldn’t be any lights on the football field. As I stated repeatedly at that time, this was a promise made, and the city had honored the promise for over 40 years. No one could find it in writing as a signed agreement, but over 40 years of mayors and city managers had honored that promise. So I believe that it was unconscionable for the city to suddenly say that the promise was no longer relevant. That was a falsehood for the city to take that position. It was sad. It wasn’t honorable to assert that the city had made no such promise when in fact that had been the policy for over 40 years after an understanding and agreement were obviously reached between the city and the African American community in the 1960s.

But regardless of my position on the TC lights, I expressed an apology to the African American community for how the city had treated them through the many decades, including Fort Ward Park and the land where the high school is currently. That day, many African American residents were in the pews of the Chambers, including Fran Terrell, Lillian Stanton Patterson, Carol Johnson, and others.

I just wanted to share that and clarify how things transpired. We could probably pull that tape if we just went back to the city videos.

Hope this helps. Please feel free to share this.

All my best to you and yours,
Allison
__________________________

Allison Silberberg
[email protected]
www.allisonsilberberg.com
cell: 703-395-0006


On May 27, 2024, at 8:30 PM, J. GLENN EUGSTER wrote:

Fort Ward Observer

Time to do the right thing at Fort Ward

Good day. I'm reposting this after ten years. The statement below was approved in the Fort Ward Park and Museum Management Plan by the Mayor and City Council, including the current Mayor, in 2014. No apology has been made to the African American families that were removed from their land and homes to create the park and museum. African American homes and graves were destroyed with malice. It is unclear whether Mayor Wilson will apologize to the families before he leaves office. Perhaps the new candidates for Mayor will pledge to apologize if they are elected. Mistakes were made when the park was created and the wounds will not heal until the City of Alexandria, VA. takes responsibility for it's disrespect toward citizens of the city and the destruction of important African American history. It is time for current, and, or future, to do the right thing.


J. Glenn Eugster
Fort Ward Observer
May 27, 2024


The Ft. Ward and Seminary African American Descendants Society
· Fort Ward's Lost Graves: Who speaks for the dead?
“This [Fort Ward Park] is hallowed ground and Fort Ward Park should never be developed. City leaders should apologize”.
Comments made by Vice Mayor Allison Silberberg to leaders of the Fort Ward and Seminary African American Descendants Society, Inc. on May 20, 2014.

14/01/2025

Fort Ward Gate. Fort Ward Park, Alexandria, VA.

14/01/2025

14/01/2025

Fairfax County Journal-Standard 18 May 1961 Edition 02 — Virginia Chronicle/ Digital Newspaper Archive.

13/01/2025

Colorized Past

Commander James Harmon Ward (USN)

James Harmon Ward was born in Hartford, Connecticut on 25 September 1806. He graduated from the American Literary Scientific and Military Academy at Norwich, Vermont in 1823 and accepted an appointment as a midshipman in the Navy on 4 March. He served on the frigate Constitution during a four-year Mediterranean cruise and then took a year's leave for scientific studies at Washington College (Trinity College) in Hartford, Connecticut.

Returning to sea, Ward saw action in the Mediterranean and off the African coast interdicting the slave trade. He then served in the West Indies, helping to prevent a resurgence of piracy. He taught course in ordnance and gunnery at the Naval School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; these courses were later published as An Elementary Course of Instruction in Ordnance and Gunnery.

On 10 October 1845, the new Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Maryland; Lieutenant Ward was one of the five founders of the academy and passed along the benefits of his experience to young midshipmen. Ward held the office of executive officer (later Commandant of Midshipmen) while also instructor of gunnery and steam engineering.

During the Mexican-American War, Ward took command of the USS Cumberland. Following the war, he was given command of the steamer USS V***n from 1848 to 1850. After serving at the Washington and Philadelphia Navy Yards, Ward took command of the USS Jamestown and hunted slave ships along the African coast. During this time, he worked on another textbook - A Manual of Naval Tactics.

In 1860, Ward served at the New York Navy Yard, where he wrote a popular treatise on steam engineering - Steam for the Million. In the spring of 1861, as Confederate forces mounted a siege of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles summoned Ward to Washington to plan for a relief expedition for Sumter. Ward volunteered to lead it, but opposition, notably from General Winfield Scott, forced cancellation of the plans.

Ward proposed that a "flying squadron" be established in the Chesapeake Bay for use against Confederate naval and land forces threatening that area south of the Union capital. The idea was acceptable, and the squadron took shape. The steamer Thomas Freeborn served as Ward's flagship, with the steams Freelance, Alliance, and three coastal survey ships making up the rest of the flotilla - later known as the Potomac Flotilla.

On 1 June 1861, the flotilla silenced Confederate shore batteries at Aquia Creek, Virginia during the Battle of Aquia Creek. On 27 June, at the Battle of Mathias Point, Ward sent a landing party ashore to dislodge Southern forces from another battery at Mathias Point, in King George County, Virginia, but it encountered heavy resistance. The Federals gave up the attack and retired under heavy sniper and cannon fire to their ships. Ward brought his flotilla in close to the shoreline to provide gunfire support for the retreating landing party. As he was sighting the bow gun in his flagship, Ward was struck by a bullet in his abdomen and fell to the deck, mortally wounded. He died within the hour.

The USS Ward (DD-139) was named for him, as was Fort Ward, one of the defenses of Washington during the American Civil War. See Less

12/01/2025