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The city of Alexandria has rededicated Calhoun Avenue as Robert L. "Bob" Calhoun Avenue, honoring a former vice mayor and state senator who died in 2020 after more than two decades in elected office — and whose surname happened to match the Confederate figure the street had long honored.
City Council approved the rededication on Feb. 10, 2026, as part of its ongoing effort to strip Confederate honors from city streets. The original Calhoun Avenue name dates to a 1953 city ordinance that directed that north-south streets be named for Confederate military leaders — a directive city officials say was issued in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
According to the city's street renaming website, former Mayor Justin Wilson, who introduced the renaming initiative in January 2023, said the Confederate street names were indefensible. "Our predecessors used street naming policies as a form of permanent protest against the burgeoning civil rights movement and growing political power for African-Americans," Wilson said. "These honors are not defensible and should be removed."
Bob Calhoun, born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1937, graduated from Yale Law School in 1963. He served on the Alexandria City Council from 1976 to 1982 as a Republican, rising to vice mayor after his party finished first, second, and third in the 1979 council elections — what The Washington Post at the time described as a historic sweep, according to his Living Legends of Alexandria profile. He was known for his work on transportation policy, his role in founding the city-owned DASH bus system, and his service on the WMATA board. He also championed an overhaul of Virginia's child custody statutes. He later served in the Virginia Senate from 1988 to 1996.
According to the Living Legends of Alexandria, former state delegate and city councilman David Speck called Calhoun "the smartest, most well-read, curious, broadly knowledgeable politician I have ever known." The organization inducted Calhoun in 2012.
The Calhoun rededication was one of three approved by the council in February. Frost Street was rededicated as John Frost Street, honoring a Union soldier from Alexandria buried in Alexandria National Cemetery. Stevens Street was rededicated as Moses Stevens Street, honoring a pioneering Black entrepreneur who operated a livery business, founded Mt. Jezreel Baptist Church, and was an early adopter of telephone and automotive infrastructure in post-Civil War Alexandria.
The three rededications are part of Phase 2 of Alexandria's multi-year street-renaming process, which launched in 2023 under the City Council Naming Committee. Phase 1, completed in June 2024, renamed or rededicated four streets, including renaming North Breckinridge Place as Harriet Jacobs Place. The city is also undertaking a public process to rename Iverson Street to Edmonson Street, with a public hearing scheduled for April 30.
Because rededications reassign historical meaning to an existing name without altering it, no changes to addresses, mailing information, voter registration, or official documents are required.
More information is available at alexandriava.gov/StreetRenaming.
