Spotlight On - Glencarlyn
Celebrate Arlington County’s First Public Library!
Glencarlyn Citizens Association | County Map of current Glencarlyn Civic Association [pdf]
Background
Samuel S. Burdett (pictured at left), a former Missouri congressman, planned the first residential community in the county. In 1887, the Glencarlyn neighborhood began to take shape. Burdett died in 1914 and bequeathed his personal library, real estate, and money for the building and maintenance of a library in Glencarlyn. Nine years later, Arlington’s first public library opened at the site where the current branch is located.
Read A Short History of the Burdett Library and notes on the life of Samuel S. Burdett
Glencarlyn Oral Histories
These are just a few snippets - Stop by the Virginia Room to view complete transcriptions of these oral histories.
NARRATOR: Cecil King
INTERVIEWER: Spencer Burton
DATE: Nov. 8, 1989
NARRATOR: The park was really a great place for kids. There was the stream down there and the kids would go down and get tadpoles and crawfish out of it and bring them home and also salamanders and all kinds of stuff like that. There was a train that ran through the park and it went through, I think, twice a day. Railroad hobos would hang out in the park and Emily would tell our boys, "Don't go down in the park where those hobos are," but anyway it was never a big problem, it was just part of those times."
NARRATOR: Betty Masi
NARRATOR 2: Miriam Scull [sisters]
INTERVIEWERS: Stuart Davis with Joshua Davis
DATE: February 1988
NARRATOR 2: We played jump rope, dodge ball, prisoner's base, whatever one of those funny circle games were. The boys used to go across the street in a field and play baseball.
NARRATOR 2: After all, from Jefferson Street to Columbia Pike was woods – and that was our playground. East was practically to Pershing Drive. We played all the time in the woods. We practically knew every tree.
NARRATOR: We had a little swimming hole and a big swimming hole.
NARRATOR 2: The big swimming hole was where the boys went in.
NARRATOR: Half the time they didn't wear any clothes.
NARRATOR 2: We drank water out of those springs all the time. It was just super.
NARRATOR 2: There was a time when I counted about five hundred and some souls, including dogs and cats that lived in Glencarlyn and knew every one of them. Everybody knew everybody. Fortunately, they weren't very nosy, and we lived far enough apart, didn't know what everybody else was doing.
Historical map
Arlington County, originally part of the nation's capital: possesses unsurpassed residential and commercial advantage, prepared by W.F. Sunderman, landscape architect. Other Title(s) Map of Arlington County, 1932. Relief shown by contours and hachures. Includes key to map listing schools, buildings of note.
VA/MAP 975.5295 R1 SUNDE 1932
Photographs
Carlin Hall has served the people of Carlin Springs at various times as a community center, church, school, library and nursery school ever since it was built in 1892.
The original Glencarlyn branch was called the Burdett Library. The trash can on the right says "Tip my Hat for a Cleaner Arlington."
The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Company, later taken over by the Southen Railroad Company, made a train station on the Carlin property. The first station was "just a shed," according to resident Hadassah Backus. Later on a bigger station was built.
Andrew Carlin once lived in the Ball-Sellers house and owned acres of surrounding land. After he died in 1885, Curtis and [Samuel] Burdett bought his land and began the Carlin Springs subdivision, the first planed community in Arlington, in 1887.
Stop by the Virginia Room to view these historical maps and photographs
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