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Center for Local History Blog

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

All Aboard: The Clarendon Train Station

Post Published: November 14, 2006

Finding the best way to get from one location to another was as much of a concern to Arlington residents over 100 years ago as it is today.

Black and white photo of trolley station with trolley to the right of the building

Clarendon trolley car and station, ca. 1910.

This photograph of the Clarendon train station, ca. 1910, was located at the hub of commercial Clarendon, at the intersection of Fairfax Drive and Wilson Boulevard. The station building still stands today at Clarendon Circle.

The Washington-Virginia Railway and the Washington & Old Dominion Railway traversed Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia, providing passengers with a variety of options. Whether one chose to travel as far as Bluemont on the Washington and Old Dominion Railway or took the Mount Vernon Line to a more local destination, passengers were offered a wide range of alternatives.

The Center for Local History holds many photographs of trains, trolleys, and the stations they served, as well as railroad maps showing track routes and stops.

From their inception in 1892, peaking in the 1920s, through to their eventual decline in the 1940s, these routes were of vital importance to the communities they served and continue to trace paths not only of travel and transport but of a history and heritage that is vital to an understanding of the development and growth of Arlington.

This blog post was originally written in 2006 and was updated in 2021.

Do you have a question about this story, or a personal experience to share? 

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November 14, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages, Unboxed

Cracking the Code

Post Published: November 7, 2006

Arlington Hall, located at Route 50 and George Mason Drive, was a girls finishing school founded in 1927.

Arlington Hall

The school suffered financial problems in the 1930s, and finally became a non-profit institution in 1940. In 1942 the facility faced condemnation and was taken over by the Secretary of War under the Second War Powers Act. The property was deemed essential for the war effort, and the school became the headquarters of the Army Signal Corps, later the Intelligence and Security Command; at this time it became known as Arlington Hall Station.

Arlington Hall Station was one of only two primary cryptography operations in the United States during World War II, concentrating mostly on Japanese codes. Along with the Pentagon and other war agencies, Arlington Hall Station provided employment for many women who came to the area looking for work, as you can see in the photograph above.

In the post-war years, Arlington Hall Station continued to do work dealing with espionage and diplomacy. It housed a large portion of the Defense Intelligence Agency, founded in 1961, and today the National Foreign Affairs Training Center and the Army National Guard Readiness Center operate out of Arlington Hall.

The Arlington Community Archives holds materials pertaining to the site, including histories and photographs, and holds several yearbooks and other documents dating to Arlington Hall’s time as a girls school.

What About You?

What do you remember about Arlington Hall? What was Arlington like during World War II? Let us know what you remember!

 

November 7, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages, Unboxed

“Voting Here”

Post Published: October 31, 2006

Voting in Arlington

In 1957, there were 46,206 registered voters in Arlington County, and there were 37 election precincts.

25 years before, when the first County Board members were elected under the current County Manager system of government on November 3rd, 1931, only 6,700 people voted in 11 districts around the county.

How did Arlingtonians vote in the 1950s? Voting machines! The photograph above shows county employees moving voting machines in August, 1956. The Public Buildings Division of the Department of Public Service had 32 employees during the 1956/1957 financial year. Besides caring for all county buildings, except public schools, the unit handled the maintenance, set up and storage for all 110 of the county’s voting machines.

The information here can be found in the 1956/1957 Arlington County Annual Report. These reports, found in the Virginia Room, give statistics and descriptions of all departments of the county government from the 1940s into the 1980s. They provide a wonderful snapshot of Arlington County for any given year.

What About You?

Do you remember elections in Arlington? What was it like to vote? Let us know what you remember!

 

October 31, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages, Unboxed

Halloween Party!

Post Published: October 24, 2006

Oral History Excerpt with Tally Bowman

Speaking of a neighborhood woman who was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union who gave “interesting” Halloween parties:

“She used to give Halloween parties to all the children in the neighborhood and show them these movies on people drunk…they were silent movies. And these men [in the films] would get their paychecks and go to a saloon, you know, and then go out…and our kids had never seen anything like that and…this was trying to teach them not to do this sort of thing I guess. And it was a couple of Halloweens before we found out. She had lots of cookies and lots of punch, that’s the only thing [the kids] would talk about . . .

“Then one year a friend of Mrs. Bowman’s said to her, ‘Well, you know what happened at our house last night?’ Bill, her oldest boy…about seven years old…her husband was late coming home…he was a lawyer in the government and he had real high job over there. She said, ‘Well, I wonder what happened to Daddy?’ And he said, ‘Well, maybe he stopped by the saloon and got some beers.’ And she said, ‘Where did you get that from?’ So on questioning him and feeding him some ice cream and cake, she found out that he found it out over there at the Halloween party!

“When the neighbor who had been giving the ‘parties’ was confronted she thought what happened was great, but she quit giving the parties because she refused to give up showing the movies, and her ‘secret’ was out! Everyone, however, according to Mrs. Bowman, had a good laugh over it!”

The quote above is from our oral history collection, which you can find in the library catalog. Oral history tapes and transcripts are available in the Virginia Room.

What About You?

What kind of Halloween parties did you attend in Arlington? What was trick-or-treating like? Let us know what you remember!

October 24, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages, Unboxed

Arlington’s "Down Town"

Post Published: October 17, 2006

Clarendon in the 1940s

In 1900 when Clarendon was established as a village, it consisted of 25 acres intersected by Wilson Boulevard and bounded by Jackson Street on the west and Highland and Herndon Streets on the east.

An electric trolley line furnished transportation, and the Clarendon Citizens Association organized a firefighting force in 1909.

By the 1940’s, when this photograph was taken, Clarendon was Arlington’s “downtown” area, the place to shop, with not only Yeatman’s Hardware, pictured in the upper right, but also a Sears, J.C. Penney’s and Woolworth’s in the main Wilson Boulevard corridor. This photograph is where Wilson Boulevard merges with N. Hartford and N. Highland Streets.

What About You?

What was Clarendon like in the 1940s and 1950s? How has it changed over the years? Let us know what you remember!

 

October 17, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages, Unboxed

We've Been Published!

Post Published: October 10, 2006

Zachary Schrag, an assistant professor of history at George Mason University, used materials in the Virginia Room and the Arlington Community Archives while writing The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro. The book is a general history of the Washington metro system, and believes the system grew out of the Great Society beliefs of the 1960s and 1970s. Above is a diagram used in the book, which can be found in the Virginia Room’s vertical file. This set of folders holds clippings, brochures and other ephemera on a wide variety of subjects about Arlington and the state of Virginia. The Virginia Room also holds many county publications from throughout the 20th century, covering topics such as population, finances, community planning and education, which also helped with the author’s research.

Congratulations to Mr. Schrag on the publication of his book!

What About You?
What you do remember about the creation of the Washington Metro? What was traveling in the area like before it? Let us know what you remember!

October 10, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages

The Ashton Heights Women’s Club

Post Published: October 3, 2006

The Ashton Heights Women’s Club originally started as a sewing circle that met near the Clarendon area in 1923.

It only took a year for membership to increase so much that the members decided to establish a women’s club instead. Since there were 35 charter members of the club, the women decided they needed a permanent meeting place, and went to local real estate developer Ashton Jones. Jones not only provided a lot on N. Irving Street, near Pershing Drive, but also helped obtain a loan to purchase the lot and build a clubhouse. To show their appreciation, the new club named themselves after Jones and “his” neighborhood, becoming the Ashton Heights Women’s Club.

Over the years, the Ashton Heights Women’s Club gained recognition for their work in the community. They organized bake sales, pot-luck dinners and garage sales, and let local youth and church groups hold dances and socials in their building. They also sponsored youth scholarships.

In 1927, the club joined other women’s clubs in the county to form the Federation of Women’s Clubs of Arlington County, which later was affiliated with the Virginia Federation of Women’s Clubs and the national General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Scrapbook contests, where individual clubs created scrapbooks covering their activities in a given year, were sponsored by all three federations. The scrapbook above is for the 1940-1941 club year, and has a watercolor drawing of the clubhouse on the cover.

In 2005, the club, down to a handful of older members, disbanded and sold their property on N. Irving Street. Their scrapbooks and other records were donated to the Arlington Community Archives, along with a generous monetary donation to preserve ten of their scrapbooks. The scrapbooks selected for preservation all have hand-decorated pages and fancy lettering, making these scrapbooks not just chronicles of the Ashton Heights Women’s Club’s activities, but beautiful artifacts in their own right.

What About You?

Were you or someone you know a member of the Ashton Heights Women’s Club? Did you attend any of their events? What about other local women’s clubs? Let us know what you remember!

 

October 3, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages, Unboxed Tagged With: local history news

50 Years of Education, 50 Years of Good Friends

Post Published: September 26, 2006

2006 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the first graduating class from Wakefield High School.
Originally built to house 2,000 students, an article in the December 1955 School Board Journal described the building as “an easily maintainable, functionally designed building that cleverly utilizes local materials.”

In the first PTA Bulletin (September 1953), the staff was described as follows:

77 members hold BA’s
33 members hold MA’s
2 members hold PhD’s

Average number of years experience in the profession: 6

The goal for the first PTA night was 1,000 members and those who wished to join were asked to “bring pencils, as well as the correct amount of money for dues – $1 for each family or 75 cents for an individual parent or teacher.”

The Virginia Room holds an almost complete run of Wakefield High School yearbooks, and the Community Archives holds PTA and school records, including student-created posters for the 1970-71 school year. The Virginia Room is also the official repository for the Arlington County School Board records.

Alumni and friends will be on hand for the Virginia Room’s “Arlington Reunion” program Friday, September 29, at 10 a.m. in the Central Library auditorium to share their memories of Wakefield. If you have stories to share come join us for the program!

What About You?

Did you go to Wakefield High School? Let us know what you remember!

 

September 26, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages, Unboxed

Breaking Religious Barriers

Post Published: September 19, 2006

Herman J. Obermayer, former owner of the Northern Virginia Sun and first openly Jewish member of the Washington Golf and Country Club in the twentieth century:

“I joined in ’77 so a year or so earlier I was contacted by two friends of mine who were prominent in the community who I knew who said would I like to become a member, that they thought it was about time to have a Jewish member and I could afford it and I was prominent and blah, blah.

“I said yes if there would not be a fight. It didn’t mean that much. . . But if they wanted me I thought it would add a dimension to my life and I’d be glad to if I wasn’t going to be in a fight.

“Within a month or two they contacted me and said there wouldn’t be. These friends of mine who shepherded me through reported that there was a single member of the board who was opposed to having a Jewish member and that most of the leaders felt very positively that it was time for Washington Golf and Country Club to have Jewish members and if I was willing to be a member they would like to have me.

“I had the particularly gratifying experience of having seven or eight sponsoring letters from people when they heard this was coming up wanted to get involved in supporting us. I’d like to believe it was because we were so charming but I really believe its because they really thought it was time for Washington Golf and Country Club not to be known as a place that excluded Jews. And we have now belonged 26 or 27 years and I have never had a single question about anything. In the meantime I indicated that I hoped I wouldn’t be a token, that they would take in other Jews. I didn’t make any conditions. Within a very few years they took in several.”

The image above was taken from a Franklin Survey map book of Arlington, published in 1935. The quote above is from our oral history collection, which you can find in the library catalog. Survey and plat map books, and oral history tapes and transcripts are available in the Virginia Room.

 

What About You?
What do you remember about Washington Golf and Country Club? What are your experiences with the Jewish community in Arlington? Let us know what you remember!

 

September 19, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages, Unboxed

"The Magazine"

Post Published: September 12, 2006

The history of your neighborhood, churches, civil war forts and other historic sites in Arlington.

AHS covert

Did you know that in earlier times Arlington County was part of the District of Columbia?

When and why did Arlington adopt the county manager form of government?

When did Sears’ mail-order houses first appear in Arlington?

The “Arlington Historical Magazine” will help you answer these questions and discover other interesting facts about the history of Arlington County. Published annually since October 1957 by the Arlington Historical Society, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this fall, the Magazine is a wonderful resource for researchers and history enthusiasts.

Issues typically feature writings about the history of buildings, roads, railways, airports, Civil War camps and forts, and civic leaders in Arlington, or feature recollections of longtime Arlingtonians. Illustrations, sketches, maps and photographs often support the research and add to the reader’s education and enjoyment. Articles submitted to this journal of scholarly research are evaluated by an editorial board.

The Virginia Room has a complete run of the Magazine, with an index created by staff.

 

 What About You?

Have you attended a Historical Society function, or visited their home on Arlington Ridge Road? Let us know what you remember!

 

September 12, 2006 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Archive, Our Back Pages

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