Lyonhurst, or Missionhurst as it is now known, is a Spanish Mission-style stucco house originally built in 1907 as a residence for Frank Lyon, an early developer in the County.

Lyon had traveled a great deal and was influenced by the Spanish missions he had seen in the American West. The house was built with large porches to catch the breeze in the hot summer weather, and he built a water tower on the property in the same Spanish style. The Lyon family was also one of the first to have electricity in the County. The house currently serves as the headquarters for the Immaculate Heart Mission Fathers.

Frank Lyon was a lawyer and social reformer who was the editor and later publisher of the Alexandria County Monitor. It was through this newspaper that he waged a campaign against the lawlessness that was rampant in the Rosslyn and Jackson City areas of the County in the early part of the 20th century. Lyon was also a prominent developer intent upon establishing the area as a residential community and who promoted increasing the powers of local government to thus broaden and strengthen the ability of the County to protect its citizens.  He developed additions to Clarendon and later developed both Lyon Park and Lyon Village.

What About You?

Do you have memories of the development of Lyon Park or Lyon Village?

Arlington and Fairfax have a football rivalry that goes back many years!

The insert to the game program for the Washington-Liberty (formerly Washington-Lee) Generals/Fairfax Rebels football game on Friday, Sept. 11, 1964, reads:

“The Generals are defending their Northern Virginia Championship tonight when they come up against their first and one of the toughest teams of the season – the Fairfax Rebels.

“Fairfax’s 18 returning lettermen that helped leave last year’s game scoreless will be W-L’s biggest headache. General Coach John Youngblood also feels Fairfax is going to have the heaviest team in the league.

“Coach Youngblood claims that depth is the team’s problem and that he will be depending on half a dozen men to play both ways… [b]ut Coach Youngblood is optimistic about the whole thing. ‘We will beat them if we can manage to get more points.'”

What About You?

What are your Arlington high school football memories? We want to hear from you!

With Halloween lurking just around the corner, it seems only appropriate that we should rummage through some of Arlington’s own “X-Files” and blow the dust off of an incident alleged to have happened at Arlington Hall, a girls finishing school turned intelligence post.  Though anecdotal in nature, this recollection from an anonymous military policeman has much more detail than is the norm and is a fascinating story.

One evening, while on patrol, the policeman overheard various discussions on his police radio about a number of odd occurrences in a certain building. In fact, the building was one in which the policeman himself had previously heard strange noises while on duty. During the course of the evening, MPs assigned to the first floor desk in the building were hearing footsteps from the floor above. The footsteps had the characteristics of a person walking on a hard, wooden floor, and then stepping onto a carpeted, softer surface. After a supervisor was summoned to the scene, this activity was heard again, causing the supervisor and additional personnel to investigate the second floor, to no avail. At the same time, a second patrol which was en route to the scene, noticed what appeared to be a female figure clad in a floral print dress who repeatedly entered and exited an upstairs ladies bathroom, pausing to regard her reflection in front of a mirror. After observing this behavior, the patrol notified the MPs at the downstairs service desk, who again investigated the area in which this activity is alleged to have taken place, with a similar lack of results.

One would think that all of this is mysterious enough, but, it was later learned that the building in which this incident occurred was rumored to have been haunted by the ghost of a young woman from the time when Arlington Hall was a girls finishing school. Supposedly, after becoming pregnant by a stable hand, the young woman took her life out of fear of the embarrassment and shame that it would have brought to her family.

What about you?
Do you have a spooky tale to tell? Tell us about any hauntings or mysterious occurrences that you have encountered in Arlington.

One of the busiest areas of Arlington can be found in Clarendon, where Washington Boulevard, Wilson Boulevard and Clarendon Boulevard all meet. In the early 1900s, the presence of the trolley in Clarendon led to an outgrowth of merchants and businesses in that neighborhood.

Although the names, owners and buildings themselves may have changed over time, what has remained constant is the steady parade of shoppers, pedestrians, and commuters that flock to the businesses and restaurants in Clarendon. Long before malls and multiplex cinemas became the mainstays of the present day consumer, customers packed the Ashton Theater, Little Tavern, Sears, and numerous other businesses in Clarendon.

Clarendon Circle was conceived around the time of the onset of World War I, when a parcel of land donated by Arthur J. Porter was used to make the circle.  Sometime in the late 1920s-early 1930s, the American Legion began construction on a War Memorial Monument in the center of the circle, supposedly using stones from a retaining wall from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was being dismantled at that time. After its dedication on November 11, 1931, the memorial remained at Clarendon Circle until 1940, when concerns about the structure being a possible traffic hazard resulted in its relocation to the Court House that same year. Eventually, in 1986, the memorial was returned to a spot very near its original location.