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Building a Community: Alexandria Past to Present, is an on-going exhibition that introduces Alexandria's history. It includes more than just the highlights of the City's past, providing a quick but well-rounded local history lesson.

The exhibition is divided into six large sections that are split between The Lyceum's two largest galleries. In the North Gallery, Clues To The Earliest Occupants examines the area's Native American residents from approximately 10,000 B.C. until English contact in the 17th century. Numerous stone tools and a very rare piece of pottery recovered from early campsites are shown along with a bow and arrow and other tools that early people used to shape their environment. Seaport City: Enterprising Beginnings is a look at the founding and commercial growth of Alexandria as a tobacco and grain port through the 18th- and early 19th-centuries, and includes the story of the British invasion in 1814, complete with an 1,800-pound carronade (or short-range cannon) from the same period. Lastly, the culture and contributions of white and black Alexandrians in building the community before the Civil War is discussed in Seaport City: The City Matures.

Three sections in the South Gallery bring the Alexandria story through the Civil War and into the modern era. An Occupied City: The Civil War Years shows the tremendously disruptive impact of the war on Alexandria, which was seized by Union forces in May, 1861 and held for the duration. The community's gradual recovery from wartime occupation and the beginnings of new industrial growth are documented in Changing Fortunes: Reconstruction Through The Great Depression. Finally, The City Looks To The Future: World War II To The Present reviews the many ways in which Alexandria has changed in this century, gradually becoming a suburb within the Washington metropolitan area.