Site Type: Invisible History

Historical Significance:

Founded during the Civil War, the Berg got its name from enslaved blacks who fled Petersburg and settled in northeast Alexandria after Union troops occupied the city in May 1861. It was one of the first black neighborhoods to develop north of King Street, the commercial center of white Alexandria. Called Petersburg at the time, it was located just west of the waterfront area known as Fishtown, a seasonal neighborhood of shacks next to the wharves on the Potomac River, and bounded to the west by the tracks of the Alexandria & Washington Railroad, which had been confiscated by Union troops.

The flood of black refugees, who clustered in small settlements throughout the town, transformed the city’s racial geography. Before the Civil War, blacks not living with their white owners or employers had congregated mostly in two neighborhoods: the Bottoms and Hayti, located for the most part south of the white residential and retail districts. But the thousands of African-Americans who came to the city in search of protection, shelter, and jobs after 1861 settled new areas.

Many liberated slaves, called contrabands, worked for the military on the wharf and at the railroad, or building barracks for soldiers and destitute freedmen. By 1864 African-Americans had filled vacant lots in the old town and as well as the outskirts with hastily-built shanties. The Berg was joined by Contraband Valley, Pump Town, Newtown, Grantville and more than a dozen other settlements.

The Berg continued to be an African-American neighborhood throughout the 20th century. In the 2000 movie, “Remember the Titans,” set during Alexandria’s school integration crisis of 1971, the Berg was used as shorthand for the black ghetto. “Whites lived on Seminary Ridge, Blacks lived in ‘the Berg’ near the waterfront,” screenwriter and Alexandria resident Gregory Allen Howard recalled in a September 2000 interview in the Los Angeles Times. “They did not ‘mix,’ a common term used then.”

Today the Berg’s most prominent landmark is the Samuel Madden Homes, named for the first African-American pastor of the Alfred Street Baptist Church. Built in 1945, the 100-unit public housing complex covers several blocks in what is now Old Town Alexandria. Over the years the historic roots of the Berg’s name were lost, and many assumed it referred to the monolithic, iceberg-like buildings of this apartment complex.

True to the neighborhood’s historic commitment to self-determination, in 1999 a tenants’ association unsuccessfully tried to buy and redevelop Samuel Madden Homes. The complex is currently slated for demolition, part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s effort to redevelop the nation’s decrepit public housing stock. Smaller, mixed-income units will replace the mammoth apartment buildings in the Berg, which is rapidly gentrifying.

Physical Description:

The Berg, in total, covers an area of about 15 blocks. Boundaries have changed over the years. The western side is bordered by North St. Asaph Street, the northern side by Madison Street, the southern side by Princess street, and the eastern edge lies along North Fairfax Street. There are no visible structures of the historic period. The most obvious landscape feature today is the two-story public housing complex covering several blocks.