Drive the loop between Quaker Lane and Janney's Lane in Seminary Hill this month and you'll pass four street signs that were all supposed to look different by now. Three of them do exactly what they did a year ago, at least to the eye. The fourth is the one everyone in the neighborhood has an opinion about, and it's also the one where the city's own process has been stuck since early May.
Here's the distinction that explains the gap: Calhoun Avenue, Stevens Street, and Frost Street were rededicated in February. Iverson Street was supposed to be renamed. Those are not the same action, and the difference between them is why three signs never moved while one street has been sitting in limbo for four months with no new hearing on the calendar.
What Actually Happened in February
On February 10, 2026, Alexandria's City Council approved a resolution covering four streets originally flagged under a 1953 city ordinance that required every north-south street in Alexandria to carry the name of a Confederate military leader. Three of those streets got a rededication: the sign stays up, the street stays on your mail, but the person the name honors changes.
Calhoun Avenue kept its name but is now dedicated to Robert L. "Bob" Calhoun, a former Alexandria vice mayor and state senator who helped found the DASH bus system. Stevens Street is now dedicated to Moses Stevens, a Black entrepreneur in post-Civil War Alexandria. Frost Street now honors John Frost, a Union soldier from Alexandria buried at Alexandria National Cemetery. None of it required a resident on any of those three streets to update a driver's license, a deed, or a bank statement. That's the entire point of a rededication: the city gets to correct who the honor belongs to without touching anyone's address.
Iverson Street was handled differently from the start, because the proposal for Iverson was never a rededication. It was a full renaming, to Edmonson Street, and a renaming carries consequences a rededication doesn't.
Rededication vs. Renaming: The Distinction That Matters
| Street | Status | Type of Change | Resident Action Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calhoun Avenue | Completed Feb. 10, 2026 | Rededication | None |
| Stevens Street | Completed Feb. 10, 2026 | Rededication | None |
| Frost Street | Completed Feb. 10, 2026 | Rededication | None |
| Iverson Street | Pending, no vote scheduled | Proposed renaming to Edmonson Street | Address updates with banks, subscriptions, and other personal accounts if approved |
A renaming means new street signs, updated land records, and a notification process the city has said it will coordinate with the Postal Service, voter registration, and utility providers like AlexRenew, Dominion Energy, Comcast, Ting, and Washington Gas. It also means every resident on the street eventually has to go through their own list: banks, subscriptions, anything the city doesn't touch automatically. That's a real cost that Calhoun, Stevens, and Frost residents never had to weigh, and it's a large part of why Iverson has moved so much slower than its three neighbors.
The Hearing That Almost Nobody Showed Up To
The city held its public hearing on the Iverson-to-Edmonson proposal on April 30, 2026, at the Patrick Henry Recreation Center on Taney Avenue. City staff had already contacted every resident on the street directly and sent a survey in six languages, English, Spanish, Amharic, Arabic, Dari, and Pashto, specifically to make sure the people who'd actually have to change their address were heard first.
Two people spoke that night. One supported the change, one opposed it. Sixteen residents responded to the survey overall.
That's not a large sample for a decision that touches every household on the street. Councilman Abdel Elnoubi, who sits on the Naming Committee alongside chair John Taylor Chapman and Councilwoman Jacinta Greene, reported the numbers in a newsletter the following weekend. Faced with that thin a response, the committee didn't force a vote. It went the other direction.
Two Names Nobody Was Expecting
At that same May meeting, the Naming Committee voted to broaden its outreach rather than lock in Edmonson Street as the only option. Residents had suggested two additional names during the process, and the committee added both to the list: Ivy and Van Landingham.
Neither name has a public rationale attached yet the way Edmonson does. The Edmonson proposal has a documented history behind it. Mary and Emily Edmonson were sisters born into slavery who attempted to escape aboard the schooner Pearl in 1848. They were captured and held at Alexandria's Bruin Slave Jail before eventually gaining their freedom, and they went on to become prominent voices in the abolitionist movement. The city already honors them with a statue at Edmonson Plaza, near the site where they were once held.
Iverson Street currently carries the name of Confederate Brig. Gen. Alfred Iverson Jr. It's one of dozens of Alexandria streets originally assigned Confederate names under that 1953 ordinance, a list that also includes Beauregard Street, which the city has separately floated restoring to its earlier name, South Walter Reed Drive, though no formal proposal on Beauregard has been put forward.
Since the May vote, the process has been quiet. There's no second hearing on the calendar as of early September, and the city's own Street Renaming page hasn't posted a new procedural date past April 30. For a street where three of its four ordinance-era neighbors wrapped up in a single February resolution, four months of silence is worth noticing.
What This Means If You Live There
If you're on Iverson Street right now, nothing has changed yet, and nothing changes without another City Council vote. If that vote happens and the street is renamed, whichever name wins, the city has said it will handle the heavy lifting automatically: mail forwarding, property tax records, voter registration, school records, and notifications to utilities and emergency services all update without you filing anything. What falls to you is the shorter list: your driver's license or ID (no new card required, just an address update), your next tax filing with IRS Form 8822, and anything tied to a bank, a subscription, or a service the city doesn't touch. Passports don't need updating until they expire.
For now, the practical answer for anyone asking is that Iverson Street is still Iverson Street, the Naming Committee is still deciding between at least three names, and the next real update will be whenever a second hearing gets scheduled. Given how the last one played out, that hearing might draw more attention the second time around.
If you want to track it yourself, the city keeps its official timeline on the Street Renaming page at alexandriava.gov, and ALXnow's coverage of the April hearing lays out the full list of Alexandria streets still tied to the 1953 ordinance.
Seminary Hill has always been the kind of neighborhood where the interesting news is procedural rather than dramatic, a park boundary, a zoning memo, a street sign that hasn't changed yet. That's part of what makes it worth paying attention to block by block instead of assuming it holds still.
If you're weighing a move within Seminary Hill, or just want a second set of eyes on what a specific block or lot is actually worth right now, Patterson Real Estate Group offers a complimentary home valuation and strategy consultation for anyone ready to talk specifics.
