These Places Are Closed Around Alexandria For MLK Day Of Service

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Most state and federal offices in Virginia will be closed Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader.

There will be no mail delivery. FedEx will have modified services on MLK Day, while its Freight, Office, Critical, and Logistics divisions will be open as usual. UPS will be closed for the day, but limited locations and its Express Critical service will be available.

Banks will be closed and both the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ will have the day off.

Before the holiday, Alexandria's 52nd Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Program will be held Jan. 15 at the George Washington Masonic Memorial. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Planning Committee's event is a community celebration of King's life, dream and legacy. A reception with light appetizers, drinks and birthday cake will happen from 5:30 p.m. to 6:20 p.m. before the program from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Attendance is free, but registration is requested. Donations are accepted at www.drkingmemorialprogram.org.

Here's what is open and closed in Alexandria:

City of Alexandria government offices: Closed on Jan. 20.

Alexandria City Public Schools: Closed on Jan. 20.

Animal Welfare League of Alexandria: Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Jan. 2o, with adoptions beginning at noon. For animal emergency or wildlife concerns, call 703-746-4444.

Courts: Alexandria General District Court, Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, Court Service Unit, Circuit Court, and the Clerk of Circuit Court are closed on Jan. 20.

DASH Bus: DASH bus service will operate on a Saturday schedule on Jan. 20. Lines 102, 103 & 104 will not run. The free King Street Trolley operates from King Street Metro to City Hall/Market Square with service every 15 minutes, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day. Visit dashbus.com/schedules for more information on bus schedules.

Department of Motor Vehicles: Virginia DMV locations will be closed on Jan. 20.

Health department: The Alexandria Health Department, Flora Krause Casey Health Center, and the Teen Wellness Center at Alexandria City High School will be closed on Jan. 20.

Historic Alexandria facilities: All Historic Alexandria museums will be closed on Jan. 20.

Hotlines: All emergency hotlines operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including the Child Protective Services Hotline at 703-746-5800; the Domestic Violence Hotline at 703-746-4911; the Emergency Mental Health Services or substance use crisis hotline at 703-746-3401; the Adult Protective Services hotline at 703-746-5778 or 988; and the Sexual Assault Hotline at 703-683-7273.

Impound lot: Closed on Jan. 20. Fees will continue to accrue on Saturday and Sunday, but not on holidays.

Libraries: Alexandria Library locations will be closed on Jan. 20.

Metro: Metro will be affected by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. Stations that will be closed from 8 p.m. on Jan. 19 to 5 a.m. on Jan. 21 are McPherson Square (Blue, Orange, Silver lines); Federal Triangle (Blue, Orange, Silver lines); Smithsonian (Blue, Orange, Silver lines); Mount Vernon Square/Convention Center (Green, Yellow lines) and Archives-Navy Memorial (Green, Yellow lines). The Pentagon station (Blue, Yellow lines) will be closed on Jan. 20. Station entrances closed from 8 p.m. on Jan. 19 to 5 a.m. on Jan. 21 are: Metro Center: 13th and G St. NW and 12th and F St. NW entrances and Farragut West: 17th and I St. NW entrance. The Gallery Place: 7th and F St. NW entrance is closed on Jan. 19 until 10 p.m. The Judiciary Square: F Street/National Building Museum entrance is closed at 4 p.m. on Jan. 19 until 5 a.m. on Jan. 20. The Union Station Metro station will not be accessible via the Amtrak/Union Station entrance at 4 p.m. on Jan. 20 through 5 a.m. on Jan. 21, but exterior entrances at 1st St NE and Massachusetts Ave. NE will remain available. See more information from Metro about the inauguration.

Parking: On Jan. 20, Alexandria Police Department will suspend enforcement of parking restrictions at metered spaces and residential permit parking districts. This suspension of enforcement applies only to the restrictions at legal parking spaces and does not permit parking in any normally prohibited location. Temporary no-parking signs will be enforced.

Post offices: Closed on Jan. 20.

Recreation, nature and art centers: Chinquapin Park Recreation Center and Aquatics Facility, Charles Houston Recreation, and Patrick Henry Recreation Centers will be open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Jan. 20, and all other City of Alexandria recreation facilities and nature centers will be closed. The Torpedo Factory Art Center is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Jan. 20.

Trash and recycling: Residential trash, recycling, and yard waste will be delayed by one day during the week of Jan. 20. the week of January 20. The Household Hazardous Waste & Electronics Recycling Center will be closed on Monday, January 20. Curbside food waste will follow the normal collection service schedule.

Virginia Railway Express: Running on an S schedule on Jan. 20.

Retail stores, restaurants and many other businesses are open as usual, although some, including Patch, observe MLK Day as a paid holiday.

This year, MLK Day falls on the same day as Inauguration Day. President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance will be sworn in on the Capitol grounds, which will result in the closures of the Washington Monument and Old Post Office Tower for security purposes.

Other iconic memorials along the National Mall are open, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial at the intersection of Independence Avenue and West Basin Drive SW.

King is the only non-president to have a national holiday named in his honor. He also is the only non-president with a memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. And Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the only federal holiday designated as a day of service.

King’s widow, the late Coretta Scott King, once said the greatest birthday her husband could receive “is if people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds celebrated the holiday by performing individual acts of kindness through service to others.”

Accordingly, the National Park Service waives admission at national parks on MLK Day, and several have volunteer service projects honoring King’s legacy.

Volunteer Alexandria is offering a number of service opportunities for the MLK Day of of Service.

The theme of the 2025 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance is “Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence.” Events focus on the legacy and unfinished work of King, a driving force behind watershed voting, housing and civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

In the mid-1950s, King led efforts to desegregate the South through non-violent protest. His speeches, including the “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington, are among the most iconic in U.S. history. It took 32 years for the federal government to finally approve a federal holiday celebrating King’s birthday.

At 35, King was the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the prize in 1964 for his work to combat racial inequality through nonviolence. During his acceptance speech, he reiterated the importance of nonviolent protests and called attention to poverty.

“I am still convinced that nonviolence is both the most practically sound and morally excellent way to grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice,” he said. “A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, it projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles in lands and villages all over the world. Almost two-thirds of the peoples of the world go to bed hungry at night.”

The son, grandson and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, King’s birth name was Michael King Jr. He was born to Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King on Jan. 15, 1929.

But his father, the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, had visited Germany in 1934 and was inspired by the teachings of Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther, and began calling himself and later his son Martin Luther.

King was jailed 29 times and assaulted four times. Though his message resonated strongly among many, King was often targeted by police officers who saw his call for racial equality as a threat to American society. He frequently found himself in jail for practicing civil disobedience, including in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote the "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" that became a key civil rights document.

The FBI tracked King’s every move, intensifying their wiretaps and surveillance operations after the August 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream speech,” regarded by many historians as the most important speech in the 20th century.

King traveled more than 6 million miles, gave 2,500 speeches and published five books and numerous articles. From 1957, when he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed to assist the civil rights movement, until his death in 1968, King traveled across the nation spreading the teachings of nonviolent resistance that had been inspired by Gandhi.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, as he stood on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Had he lived, King would have turned 96 on Wednesday, Jan. 15.