ALEXANDRIA, Va. – On July 17, 1946, the Alexandria City Council did something that only two American cities had done before: it passed an ordinance protecting the exterior appearance of its historic buildings, creating what would become one of the most recognized historic districts in the country.
The designation was nicknamed the “Charleston Ordinance” — after Charleston, South Carolina, which had pioneered the concept, followed by New Orleans’ Vieux Carré. Alexandria was third. The law extended the city’s zoning authority beyond simple land use — the standard since the Supreme Court’s 1926 Euclid vs. Ambler decision — into something new: the power to regulate how buildings looked from the street, not just what they were used for.
It was a radical idea at the time. Zoning codes had never been used to protect aesthetic appearance, and the legal ground was untested. Historic district ordinances like Alexandria’s would go unchallenged for more than two decades, until the landmark Penn Central vs. City of New York case — in which the Supreme Court upheld New York City’s decision to block a skyscraper atop Grand Central Station — established once and for all that historic preservation was a legitimate exercise of government authority…