This pole, which formerly pointed the way to Rosslyn Alley, now resides inside a closet at Continental Pool Lounge (Photo: Andrew Beaujon)

There are plenty of alleys in Rosslyn — the one where the buses turn around between North Moore and Lynn Streets, the one leading out to Fort Myer Drive from the Metro — but are any of them the official "Rosslyn Alley?"

No, as a matter of fact. TBD's own Andrew Beaujon spied a remnant of the real former Rosslyn Alley in the utility closet at Continental Modern Pool Lounge yesterday, prompting a couple of questions. 1) Why was Beaujon skulking around a bar's utility closet in the middle of the day? and 2) Where is Rosslyn Alley?

The answer, to the second question at least, is that Rosslyn Alley was a strip of small storefronts located, in very un-alley-like fashion, on the first and second floors of several office buildings between 19th Street and Lee Highway in Rosslyn.

Many of the neighborhood's buildings as designed and built in the 1960s and '70s were connected by a series of skywalks; a few of them still remain. The theory, according to Rosslyn BID/Rosslyn Renaissance executive director Cecilia Cassidy, was that they would be a fun place for people to hang out and shop. "The idea was Rosslyn as this little Minneapolis, with people accessing buildings up in the air," she says. "The thought was that there should be shopping for them."

This mini-retail corridor never expanded much beyond the very basic services though: there was one deli in the Gateway building, above The Pawn Shop restaurant (now Continental) "with a gorgeous view of the cathedral," Cassidy says. Most of the other store fronts were barber shops, salons, and small convenience stores, however.

There is still a skywalk above Continental's front door connecting the Gateway building to the one across North Moore Street, but "Rosslyn Alley" storefronts have mostly all been converted to office space. In a report to the county board in 2003, then-county manager Ron Carlee summed up Rosslyn Alley's demise:

A major commercial mall, Rosslyn Alley, was established between the buildings at the pedestrian bridge level. It was envisioned that major pedestrian movement between the buildings would occur at that level. As Rosslyn redeveloped, especially with the development of Rosslyn Metro Center and other buildings located close to the Metro, retail space located at the street level became a more viable alternative for business owners. Pedestrian movement shifted from the bridges to the street level, which has had a significant adverse impact on the retail businesses located on the upper levels of the buildings, such as Rosslyn Alley.

"The alley, and the skywalk system, is an interesting urban design artifact," Cassidy says. Eventually, most of the signs of this urban experiment will probably disappear as Rosslyn is redeveloped. Developer JBG companies is hoping to redevelop the trio of Rosslyn Gateway buildings, and there aren't any above-ground walkways in the plans.