The Braystone

Located at the western edge of Old Town Alexandria’s historic core, The Braystone at 1300 King Street weaves preservation, historic narrative, and innovation into a unified urban response. The project reactivates a prominent corner through the restoration of two 19th-century masonry storefronts and the introduction of a four-story, 55,000-square-foot mixed-use building with 32 condominium residences above retail. Inspired by the site’s industrial past, the design introduces new density while honoring the scale and texture of its historic context.

Central to the project is the sensitive restoration of two early 1800s Federal-style commercial structures, once occupied by wheelwrights who fabricated iron-rimmed wheels essential to Alexandria’s mercantile economy. These historic buildings now serve as architectural anchors.

The new addition responds through contrast and clarity. The contemporary structure wraps the site in a quiet, L-shaped mass, stepping back along both street frontages to visually defer to the historic buildings. Its most distinctive gesture is the custom-fabricated metal tracery along the retail frontage, conceived as a modern abstraction rooted in both the site’s legacy as a wheelwright’s workshop and Old Town’s tradition of wrought iron gates, balconies, and ornamental metalwork. The tracery forms a layered montage of circular geometries, forged patterns, and radial motifs, transforming these influences into a cohesive narrative of craft, industry, and place. It offers both aesthetic and performative value, adding rhythm, shade, and layered visual depth to the street.

This project is more than a building; it mediates preservation and progress. By restoring its historic structures and expressing their artisanal and industrial past through a contemporary lens, The Braystone, becomes a design that is both respectful and forward-looking. It reflects Old Town not as a static artifact, but as a living place—where architectural memory and modern life coexist with elegance and purpose.

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