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Arlington Public Library

Center for Local History Blog

Dedicated to collecting, preserving and sharing the history of the community.

Jacobs Castle

Over the years, Arlington County has seen many residences and buildings rise and fall, but few can claim to have such an unusual story as that of Jacobs Castle.

While on vacation in Europe in the 1930s, obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. J. Bay Jacobs and his wife, Eva Harris Jacobs, saw a castle in Bavaria that they both greatly admired. Upon returning, the couple decided to build a similar one for their residence in Arlington.

The property chosen was a section of the former Thomas B. Dawson Estate, located near Rosslyn on a bluff of the Palisades overlooking the Potomac River. Construction started in 1938, with ongoing additions and improvements taking place into the 1950s.

Among the many features of the property was a fish pond, a striking wrought iron spiral staircase housed in the turret, and the oak flooring of the first floor living room, which had an unusual motif of carved butterflies in the shape of a man’s bowtie.

Following the deaths of the Jacobs (Mrs. Jacobs in 1979, Dr. Jacobs in 1988), the ornate antique furnishings were sold at auction, and, the castle was then deeded to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists by Dr. Jacobs’ son John Bay Jacobs II. Later, the property was sold to developer Conrad Cafritz, who envisioned developing some of the land while turning the castle itself into a community center. These plans came to naught when Cafritz went bankrupt and the property was foreclosed upon and later destroyed in November 1994.

A somewhat macabre coda to Jacobs Castle occurred when demolition workers unearthed the body of a baby, found inside a crate behind a small, boarded passageway. Dr. Jacobs’ son said his father preserved the bodies of stillborn infants for use in his teaching.

What About You?
Do you have any memories of Jacobs Castle? Let us know what you remember!

 

Close Encounters

UFOs in Arlington!

 

Arlington’s X-Files, Pt. 1

At some time in our lives, most of us have seen something puzzling in the sky that left us looking for some type of explanation. From early Biblical accounts to present day sightings, it’s a phenomenon that has become part of our modern folklore and whether one is a believer or skeptic, it is a topic that will continue to be debated.

Arlington has had its share of sightings over the years, and even played a part in the much publicized “UFOs Over Washington” flap that took place from July 13 to July 29, 1952, over Washington, D.C., when, on July 13th, a green, oval shaped object was reportedly seen circling the Arlington and Washington D.C area.

Other notable reports of UFO activity in Arlington County include a May 5, 1990 report of an object that was sighted by an amateur astronomer using binoculars, a May 27, 1997 sighting of 2 rapidly moving discs, and a 10 minute sighting of a disc shaped object with revolving red and white lights on Sept. 19, 2000.

What About You?

Have you had a close encounter of the Arlington kind? Let us hear from you!

 

Snowy Fun and Games on "County Hill"

Presbyterian Church of the Covenant on Military Road

Presbyterian Church of the Covenant on Military Road, date unknown.

Excerpt from our Oral History with Clyde Shepard

Interviewer: What did the kids do around wintertime? Did you sleigh ride like we do now?

Narrator: Yes, in the wintertime, that’s exactly what we did. We’d stayed on that Glencarlyn hill down there where the Seven Eleven is. We call that the County Hill. Of course, you only had a car come by there occasionally. When I was very young, the cars would only come by every fifteen minutes, one car. It was a very dangerous thing we did, you want to talk about some of the things we did. I’ll say this, we used to catch on the back of the bus when he’d slow down and hit the tracks down there and we’d get a free ride, you know, we had gloves on, and we’d be on our bellies on the sleigh, right, and then we’d catch the bus and he’d pull us up and we’d slide back down and wait for the next car or bus. That’s one thing we did all winter long. We’d get a big fire on the top of the hill, there’s plenty of wood around. A big old barrel we had down there and we’d start a fire, we spent the winter nights, it seemed like to the winters were more severe back when I was a child. We had snow all winter long. Seems that way to me.

The Best Kind of Activist

Remembering Ellen Bozman

When Arlingtonians attend a Neighborhood Day celebration, shop at retail stores built in high-rises across the street from an Arlington metro station, or buy produce at the Arlington Farmer’s Market, they can thank Ellen Bozman.

Bozman, who moved to Arlington from Illinois in 1950, was a believer in good government and smart community planning. She was first active in Arlington’s League of Women Voters, pushing for school desegregation and becoming the league’s president from 1963 to 1965. Over time, Ellen was drawn into county work by her civic responsibility, culminating in her election to the Arlington County Board in November of 1973. She kept that seat, holding the chairmanship six times, until her retirement from the Board in 1997. One of her most long-lasting achievements was the success of Smart Growth, which surrounded metro stops along the Courthouse-Ballston corridor with urban retail and residential high rises while keeping areas further out more open and suburban. In 1986, Washingtonian magazine named her “Washingtonian of the Year.”

Bozman’s tireless work on behalf of all Arlingtonians continued even after her retirement from the County Board. Until her death on January 8, 2009, she was a board member for the Arlington Community Foundation and appeared at Neighborhood Day celebrations, of which she was the founder. Today, you can find out more about Ellen Bozman’s work on behalf of Arlington County residents in the Virginia Room. There are oral histories and county publications that document Bozman’s time on the County Board, and maps that document Arlington’s development over the second half of the twentieth century.

What About You?

What are your memories of Ellen Bozman? Let us hear from you!

 

A Parkington Christmas

The commercial area now known as Ballston was called Parkington from the 1950s into the 1980s.

The name referred to the large parking garage built there to accommodate the growing suburban population of the Washington area. The main shopping attraction of Parkington was the Hecht’s store, which was included into the formation of the Ballston Mall and is now known as Macy’s. The Hecht Company, as it was known at the time, constructed the garage themselves.
During the holidays, Hecht’s advertised it’s “Kiddies’ Train Ride” in local papers, including the Alexandria Gazette. The ad read

“Clear the tracks for the Disneyland Special! Kids, get your Mommie and Daddy to bring you to the Hecht Co. at Parkington today and every day till Christmas! Take the most exciting train ride you ever had! Buy your ticket for just 9 [cents] and hop aboard for a wonderful, magical train ride through Disneyland…where you’ll see your favorite Disney characters – Donald Duck, Alice-in-Wonderland [sic], the Mad Hatter, and many, many more! Buy and armful of tickets and go ’round as many times as you’d like!” There was even a “bucking bronco” nearby. Of course, the train was only for kids, but “doting parents can watch too!”

What About You?

Do you remember the train ride at Hecht’s, or Christmas shopping in Parkington? What other Arlington holiday traditions do you remember? Let us hear from you!

 

The Old Oaken Bucket

Oral histories are a vibrant and personal part of the Virginia Room's collection.

GW-WLgame 1963bl

Here, Barbara Ball Savage, a W & L alumnus, talks about one of Arlington's Thanksgiving traditions, the Old Oaken Bucket game.
This interview was conducted in February of 2000.

Barbara Ball Savage: The Oaken Bucket was very big between W & L and George Washington High School in Alexandria. And you could count on a few fights there every Thanksgiving morning because the tempers would get pretty high. I can remember Forest Tucker, the actor - do you remember who Forest Tucker was? He was a W & L graduate. He graduated with my sister-in-law as a matter of fact. And he would come back for that game, so I can remember him being there while I was in high school. But it was a big thing. Thanksgiving morning we would all bundle up and I swear the days were colder then than they are now. I can remember just freezing. And if it was down in Alexandria we would all pile in cars and go down there and go to that game. It was really a big thing for Arlington and Alexandria. And then we’d come home and the turkey would be just about ready because Mother had things ready. She’d have dinner on the table for 21, 22 people by 2:00 at the latest.[…]

And Thanksgiving was a wonderful time, and then we all went out in the back yard and played touch football. Everybody got in the games and played. Or, we’d finish raking the leaves…[s]o Thanksgiving was a very special day. But that football game, you’d talk about it for a month ahead of time, you know, how important that game was going to be.

What About You?

What do you remember about the Old Oaken Bucket game? What about other Arlington high school traditions? Let us hear from you!

 

Protest!

July 2, 2019 update: Staff from the Center for Local History were recently contacted by a former firefighter who was involved in the demonstrations described in this post. He told us that both police and firefighters are pictured in the photo.  In addition, he clarified that both fire and police did get a new contract that included a pay raise.

This photograph, taken on July 13, 1974, shows an Arlington County police officer and firefighter protest outside the courthouse after a County Board meeting.

A month earlier, the County Board had recommended an 8 percent pay raise for county police officers; the police, represented by the Arlington Policeman's Beneficiary Association, requested a 10.8 percent increase to keep up with the rising cost of living in the Washington, DC, area. At the board meeting on July 13th, representatives for the police and firefighters urged the County Board to reconsider, but to no avail. After the meeting, this protest was held. County police, along with all Virginia county employees cannot, by state law, strike.

However, Arlington's finest protested in another way. Throughout the month of July and the beginning of August, police officers dramatically reduced the amount of traffic tickets issued, about 75 percent. Many of those that were written were for "violations of state statutes" instead of "violations of county ordinance," so the fines collected would go to the state treasury. The county was losing about $7700 per week, and Arlington motorists were very happy.

The crisis was resolved in mid-August with a new contract for Arlington police and firefighters. Concessions were made on both sides, but the crisis spawned a movement within county employee groups to push for more open and flexible collective bargaining for county wages across all departments.

What About You?

Do you remember this protest? Let us hear from you!

To see more items like these, or to learn more about Arlington's history, visit the Center for Local History on the first floor of the Central Library.

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Time Marches On

The ruins of Abingdon Plantation sit on a hill by a roadway in busy Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The property began as a 6000 acre land grant to Robert Howson in 1669, which was traded to John Alexander for 6000 hogsheads of tobacco. A member of the Alexander family built the first part of the plantation house in 1746.

Abingdon Plantation was purchased in 1778 by John Parke Custis, stepson of George Washington, who wished to locate his young family close to Mount Vernon. The Custis family’s plans were cut short when John Custis died from camp fever at Yorktown in 1781. His widow, Eleanor Calvert Custis, married Dr. David Stuart, an Alexandria physician in 1783 and had 13 more children. The two oldest Custis girls, Elizabeth and Martha, resided with the Stuarts, while Nellie and George Washington Parke Custis grew up at Mount Vernon. The Stuarts returned the Abingdon Plantation to the Alexander family in 1792.

In the years following Abingdon Plantation was occupied by Union troops during the Civil War. The plantation’s productivity was hampered by the nearby development of several brick manufacturing companies and the region’s growing transportation needs, with the Washington Alexandria and Mount Vernon electric railway, the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad and the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway (later GW Parkway) cutting into the land.

A fire destroyed the abandoned and deteriorating Abingdon home on March 5, 1930. In 1938 President Roosevelt selected the site for National Airport which opened in 1940. Today, the airport’s parking area surrounds the ruins of the main house, which can be seen by the nearby metro line. Visitors can see artifacts from the Abingdon house site in a special exhibit hall inside the airport, and the site is open to the public.

What About You?
Have you visited the Abingdon Plantation site? Let us hear from you!

From Mann to Huske, Arlington butterflies better

Before Arlington's Torri Huske took home gold for the 2024 Paris Olympics 100-meter butterfly, local celebrity Shelley Mann was the first to do so in the same event.

This article was originally written in 2008 and has been updated by Center for Local History staff in celebration of the 2024 Olympics.

Shelley Mann moved to Arlington as a preschooler with her parents, Hamilton and Isabel Mann. She started swimming at age 11 when her parents enrolled her at summer camp to get her involved with other children. Shelley excelled and enjoyed it so much she joined the swim club at Walter Reed Hospital, where Hamilton Mann was stationed.

Shelley Mann poses at the pool, circa 1950s.

While at Walter Reed, the team won American Athletic Union indoor and outdoor championships from 1953 to 1956. The AAU was a national network of sports teams that produced dozens of Olympic athletes during the middle of the twentieth century.

Though training for several hours a day, Shelley was still an ordinary, though popular, teenager. She attended Thomas Jefferson Junior High and graduated from Washington-Lee High School in 1955.

Shelley Mann meets with then-vice president Richard Nixon circa 1955 on an Olympic-related visit.

Cover from an April 27, 1958, issue of the Syracuse Post-Standard featuring Shelley Mann, who had retired to enroll at Cornell University.

While a student, Shelley sang in the choir, was a member of the social group the Sub Deb Club, and attended dances, football, and basketball games, and went out to eat with her friends. However, as Shelley's trophies and awards mounted, she became a local celebrity.

In the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, Shelley Mann won the gold medal in the 100-meter butterfly, the first year the butterfly stroke was part of the Olympic program. She was also part of the silver medal-winning 4x100 meter freestyle relay team. Her gold was the only one brought home by an American woman, and one of only two gold medals won by the entire US swim team.

Once Shelley returned to the US, she was a national sensation and claimed as Arlington's own. On December 17, 1956, only home for a few days, Shelley received the key to Washington, DC, and was feted at Washington-Lee High School by Arlington's county board and citizens.

Page from the Olympic Trials program. This was the first year butterfly was included as a swim event, and Shelley Mann is listed here as a record holder. 

What About You?

Do you remember Shelley Mann and her swimming exploits? Did you know her? Let us hear from you!

A Day at the Beach


Arlington Beach and Amusement Park opened May 30, 1923, on the Potomac River in the vicinity of the Long Bridge (the old Fourteenth Street Bridge).

The beach flourished until 1929 when it was bought by the Washington Airport Corporation to provide additional landing space.

In addition to a sandy beach, there were bath houses, a dance pavilion, merry-go-round, Ferris wheel, and many other amusement park features. The park also touted excellent parking facilities. Dancing was advertised as one of the chief attractions in the opening season.

Unfortunately, due to its location next to the airport, visitors to the beach were all too often witnesses to airplane accidents and fatalities. Aviation was in its early days and was a largely unregulated industry so such accidents were not uncommon.

The beach also served as a recreational site for many organizations holding annual picnics, etc. At one such event it was decided, as a “lark,” to “burn” someone at the stake. When the fire got out of hand, and the seat of the victim’s pants actually caught on fire, he was quickly untied and beat a hasty retreat to the river where he doused himself to put out the flames. In spite of this incident it was later reported in the newspaper that all had a very good time!

 

What About You?

Do you remember Arlington Beach? What other things did you do during the summer in Arlington? Let us hear from you!

 



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