By Bob Tagert In 1749, when Alexandria was founded, only the fish and the seagulls ate and drank here. Where Chadwicks stands today (203 South Strand street), you would be treading water or riding a shallow-draft scow onto the sandy bank that bordered a high bluff behind you. The first person to leave his mark on this southern part of the waterfront was George Gilpin. Gilpin didn’t just build on this property, as had been required by an early law. Slicing into the cliff and using the excavated clay and rock to grade the slope, he created two new city blocks to the east. The town appointed him its engineer to supervise “banking out” all along the Alexandria shoreline. By 1812, the Strand was a recognized The three-story brick warehouse with its wooden roof stood 50 feet from the river. On the evening of Sept. 24, 1810, a candle left burning in a cooper’s shop toppled onto some shavings, igniting a fire that raged for four hours and destroyed every building on the block from Duke to Prince and Union Street to the river. The following fall a new brick warehouse facing the Strand, three stories high with a smaller brick warehouse attached at the rear, both roofed with slate and boasting iron fittings and stone door-and windowsills. The combined dimensions of 34 by 78 feet created the same footprint as for Chadwick’s kitchen and main dining room today. By 1847 tax ledger lists a “wharf and house on the alley and the Strand” with a value of $15,000. It is this structure that, incorporating perhaps some of the 1811 foundation, left parts of its grand stone and lower brick walls to Chadwicks. In 1861 Federal troops crossed the Potomac and occupied Alexandria. The properties were confiscated by the U.S….