Woodlawn CDP (Fairfax County), VA

Woodlawn is an unincorporated Fairfax County community along Richmond Highway, immediately north of Fort Belvoir and a few miles inland from Mount Vernon. Alexandria mailing addresses are standard here, though the area sits well outside the independent City of Alexandria. The census place takes in a varied stretch of the Route 1 corridor: detached-house neighborhoods, garden apartments, townhouses, condominiums, schools, shopping centers, and older roadside businesses all sit close together. Little Hunting Creek and the wooded edge of Huntley Meadows shape the northern side, while Fort Belvoir creates a firm southern boundary and supplies a large nearby employment center.

The name comes from Woodlawn, the estate George Washington gave to Eleanor “Nelly” Custis Lewis and Lawrence Lewis. William Thornton designed the manor, which was built between 1800 and 1805 with labor that included enslaved people. In 1846, Quaker buyers acquired the property and reorganized it as a free-labor estate, leaving another layer of history in the Alexandria Friends Meetinghouse beside the entrance. The same grounds now hold Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House, a compact Usonian home built in 1941 and moved here after Interstate 66 threatened its original site. These two very different houses make Woodlawn one of the Richmond Highway corridor’s strongest architectural landmarks.

Most ordinary errands still revolve around Richmond Highway. The road carries local shopping, bus service, school traffic, military commuters, and longer trips between Alexandria and southern Fairfax County, so congestion and difficult crossings are part of daily life. Fairfax County’s long-range plan treats the Woodlawn commercial area as a future mixed-use village, and the planned Richmond Highway bus rapid transit line includes Woodlawn and Fort Belvoir stations. That work is still ahead, and the current landscape remains decidedly road-oriented. Residents also have unusually large pieces of open space close by: Huntley Meadows protects wetlands and forest to the north, the Woodlawn grounds preserve a historic rural remnant, and Fort Belvoir keeps development from simply continuing south without a break.