ing on the site. Yet only nine years later the _Alexandria Daily
Advertiser_, April 8, 1809, carried an invitation for bids to build a
jail at Fairfax Court House. Moreover, although the records of the
county court for the next fifty years contain references to repairs
and construction work for the jail, they customarily fail to include
descriptions of work to be done. Accordingly, little can be gleaned
from these sources to aid the architectural history of the courthouse
complex.

[Illustration: The jail, built about 1886. Photo taken in 1972.]

[Illustration: Police Department, about 1947. Photo courtesy the
Fairfax County Historical Society.]

Along with the other public buildings at the courthouse compound, the
jail suffered during the years of war from 1861 to 1865. When civil
government ceased to function at the courthouse, competing groups that
claimed civil authority in Fairfax County used jail facilities in
neighboring Alexandria and Leesburg when the need arose. During the
latter years of the war, when Union troops occupied the courthouse,
the jail offered its facilities as a storehouse as well as a place of
detention for military prisoners. But the Army of the Potomac had
little time or incentive to keep the jail in good repair, and so, like
the courthouse, it suffered extensively from the war.

During the 1870's, repairs and construction of additions to the
original building restored the jail to service. The 1879 G. M. Hopkins
_Atlas_ showing the courthouse complex depicts the jail as being
larger than the courthouse in size. In 1884, fire destroyed this
building, and arrangements had to be made to use the Alexandria city
jail until a proper new jail could be constructed for the county.[133]

The new jail was located directly behind (west of) the courthouse,
facing onto the Little River Turnpike. Its materials and construction
indicate that the original portion was added to on two later
occasions. When finally completed, the jail was a two-story T-shaped
brick building, with a one-story wooden porch across the full length
of the front. In the original section (facing onto the turnpike) the
windows have plain wooden pediments. The cornice and chimney tops are
corbelled, and there are iron cresting and finials on the ridge of the
hipped roof. In the second section, which forms part of the stem of
the "T," there are segmental arches over the windows and an ornamental
cornice consisting of a course of brick