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Center for Local History Blog

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

Shirlington’s Cinematic Past

Shirlington has long been a bustling shopping center in Arlington, and is home to the AMC Shirlington Cinema 7, one of four movie theaters in Arlington County.

The existing cinema at 2772 South Randolph Street is the second major theater to serve Shirlington’s movie-loving population, which began with the Shirlington Theatre nearby at 2800 South Randolph Street.

The Shirlington Theatre opened on January 31, 1946, and at the time was the County’s largest theater (and also was touted as possessing “the South’s largest screen”). The 980-seat cinema debuted with the film “Love Letters” and featured a pre-show performance by local composer Leon Brusiloff’s string ensemble.

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Advertisement from the January 30, 1946, edition of the Evening Star announcing the debut of the Shirlington Theatre. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

The theater was operated by the Alexandria Amusement Company and was part of a larger complex known as the “Shirlington Theatre Building,” which was home to other businesses including the Shirlington Radio Shop and various medical offices. In 1948, a notable addition to the Theatre Building was the Fairlington Library, which later became the Shirlington Library.

The Theatre Building was in turn part of the larger Shirlington Business Center, which until the 1960s was essentially segregated: Black patrons were allowed to shop, but were denied access to services such as eating at lunch counters or using leisure facilities like theaters. In June 1960, activists held a series of sit-ins at lunch counters around the County, including Lansburgh’s Colonial Room and Woolworth’s lunch counter in Shirlington. On June 22, Lansburgh's became the first Arlington lunch counter to desegregate, followed that same day by a number of other local restaurants. Arlington's theaters would not be desegregated until 1963, following protests led by civil rights leader Dorothy Hamm.

The Shirlington Theatre closed in 1957 and the building was demolished the following year to make way for the construction of a 150,000-square-foot Lansburgh’s department store, which operated in Arlington until the company went defunct in 1973.

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Notice in the January 9, 1948, edition of the Sun about the opening of the Fairlington Library, which was located in the Shirlington Theater building. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

Arlington Daily

A July 8, 1947, article in the Arlington Daily shows local firefighters using the Shirlington Theatre as a training location.
Seven acres of land in the adjacent County Property Yard mentioned here were sold to the corporation for parking purposes after the theater was demolished. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle. 

Shirlington Cinema 7 opened on December 18, 1987, once again bringing film to the South Arlington area. The 6-screen theater was operated by Circle Theatres, a popular local cinema chain that had been founded in 1957 by two law students at George Washington University.

The same year the Shirlington Cinema opened, Circle Cinemas was bought out by Cineplex Odeon, which later managed the Shirlington location. Subsequent mergers led to the theater being referred to as the “Shirlington Loews Cinema” and in 2006 it formally became an AMC theater.

Shirlington movie theater, advertising Jane Eyre, Flirting with Disaster, Fargo, Sense and Sensibility, and the Postman. 1996, 1 negative, b&w, 35mm.

Shirlington Cinema 7 at 2772 South Randolph Street in 1996. 

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AMC Shirlington Cinema 7 in 2021. 

In 2015, the theater underwent a major renovation that included an expansion of its concessions and a reduction of its seating capacity in favor of the reclining chairs now popular in today’s cinemas. The theater is pictured here in 1996, with films including “Sense and Sensibility” and “Fargo” displayed on the marquee.

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Arlington’s Courthouse: A Tale in Three Acts

A Central Landmark of Local Government

Arlington’s Courthouse has served the community in many ways for over 170 years.

Arlington’s first courthouse was technically not even in Arlington: from 1847 to 1920, Arlington was a part of Alexandria, and the Alexandria Courthouse (which served what is now the Arlington area) was located at North Columbus Street and Queen Street.

However, due to the long distances people would have to travel from the present-day-Arlington area to get to that courthouse, a new site for a County courthouse was selected in Fort Myer Heights, on the Civil War site of Fort Woodbury.

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Arlington County Courthouse, date unknown.

This building, which was designed by Albert Goenner, debuted for public use in 1898. The Victorian-style structure was instantly recognizable with its imposing 75-foot clocktower (though a clock was never installed).

Electricity was added around 1913 and adjoining wings were gradually constructed as Arlington’s population grew in the early decades of the 20th century.

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The original Arlington County Courthouse, circa 1898, the year it was built.

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A bird's-eye view of the Courthouse, featuring one of the later additions to the building. 

Due to increasing demands as Arlington continued to grow, the 1898 building was torn down in 1960 and replaced by a more modern building. The seven-story tower was dedicated the following year and joined the existing additions and renovated wings, but the original Victorian-style edifice was fully replaced.

In 1990, a fire broke out in the Courthouse, causing damage and exposing asbestos in the facilities. After decontamination, the 1960s-era building served the County until 1995, when the present-day Courthouse building was completed at a site across the street at 1425 North Courthouse Road (pictured in 2021 in slide three).

Arlington County Courthouse, ca. 1970

The façade of Arlington's second Courthouse, pictured in 1972.

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The current County Courthouse at 1425 North Courthouse Road., pictured in 2021

The old courthouse location was used by the fire department for training exercises until 1997, when it was demolished in a controlled implosion. That site is now a parking lot adjacent from the current Courthouse and detention center facility.

You can learn more about the Arlington Courthouse in these articles from the Arlington Historical Magazine, published by the Arlington Historical Society:

Oral History: Don Tenoso

Arlington-based Native American artist and educator

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Artist Don Tenoso is a prolific creator, known for his Lakota-style dollmaking that depicts Sioux culture. Tenoso came to the Washington, D.C., area in 1991 as the first artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, where he created new pieces and led demonstrations for the public.

 

Don Tenoso, Sioux Doll-maker and Puppeteer.

Don Tenoso, circa 1990 at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Tenoso was born in Riverside, California, and is a member of the Hunkpapa, one of the seven bands of the Teton Lakota Nation and part of the Sioux-speaking indigenous population. Tenoso’s mother was born on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota, and he is a descendant of One Bull and Sitting Bull. His father was in the U.S. military during Tenoso’s early life and the family often moved around the country and abroad.

The following interview excerpts are from a 2008 oral history with Tenoso. At the time of this interview, he had lived in Arlington for about 14 years. In the full interview, which can be accessed in print at the Center for Local History, Tenoso also discusses his family and lineage, as well as tribal traditions and the Lakota language.

tenoso

Don Tenoso, circa 2005. Image courtesy of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where Tenoso was the university’s first artist-in-residence at the Native American House. 

Narrator: Don Tenoso
Interviewer: Tom Dickinson
Date: January 23, 2008
Note: The audio for this interview is currently unavailable.

Don Tenoso: I was the first artist-in-residence in the Natural History Museum. Prior to that they had brought me in for a three-day doll demonstration where they had taken one of the glass cases out of one of the Native halls there in Natural History at Smithsonian and by different artists coming in. Me, a Sioux doll maker, was invited to come up and do that. I guess they had spent like nine months trying to find me. I started dollmaking back in the seventies.

Anyway, in the eighties, ‘86 or so, ‘87, there was an article in American Indian Art magazine that was published about dolls. In ‘86 I believe it was, I had a one-man show down in Andrew Park, Oklahoma and they collected the International Crafts Board for four of my dolls.

So one of them got in that article and then the director over at education in the outreach program saw the doll and they said they wanted to find that guy.

Don Tenoso SIA-SIA2010-0383

Don Tenoso circa 1991 outside of the National Museum of Natural History with some of his works of art. The doll beside Tenoso is called “Iktorni,” or “trickster doll.” Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Tenoso beadwork

Leather holster created by Tenoso in 2006, covered in a beadwork design. Image courtesy of the British Museum, where the piece is held. 

Tom Dickinson: How did you get started doing this [art practice]?

DT: Actually I started when I was in New York. I went out there because I heard that C. W. Post [campus of Long Island University] had a scholarship for Natives who wanted it to be teachers. It turns out they didn’t so I went to the American Indian Community House there in New York.

Actually, backpedal a little bit. I was born in Riverside, California in 1960. In ‘63 we were in France. We were there when de Gaulle kicked us out. So my earliest memories are there when the French high school kids were throwing rocks at us on the playground. They would stone our bus. I remember flying out of there and the U.S. piling up all these brand new, big boxes and stuff and just setting them on fire. Big old wrecking balls smashing holes into runways as you flew out. I also got to see some whales as we flew, that’s how low they went across the ocean. You can see the spouts and little tails going across.

So from there we go to Oklahoma City, so I got to meet all these Natives. They used to call it Indian Territory which is sort of a penal colony for Native Americans starting back through Trail of Tears, Andrew Jackson and all of that stuff.

From there we went and lived in Rapid [City] back where my grandma lived, lot of relatives in Rapid City, South Dakota, in the Black Hills which is our sacred area, which actually by federal courts is still our property. But they offered us $10 million or $100 million or something but we still don’t take it. Because our sacred Wind Cave is there and that’s one of our origin stories. We came from there. The thing about Wind Cave you stand there one hour of the day and it blows your hair back.

So geologists say, “Yeah, there’s probably an underground stream - they haven’t found it yet - flowing and air displacement and that’s causing your hair to go that way.” The only thing is you come back some hours later, same day, and now it’s sucking your hair into the cave. “I guess there’s a tilting rock or something under there that messes with it.” We say that’s Mother Earth breathing, that’s where she breathes from.

Learn more: View a program from the 1992 exhibit Contemporary Plains Indian Dolls, which took place at the Southern Plains Indian Museum and Crafts Center in Anadarko, Oklahoma. The exhibit featured a piece by Don Tenoso (“Gourd Clain Dancer,” figure 10). 
 
This interview was conducted as part of The Many Faces of Arlington oral history project, which sought to document the County’s diverse population as a reflection on the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown by English colonizers. 

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Oral History: J. Walter Tejada

Community Activist; Arlington County Board Member from 2003 - 2015

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

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Walter Tejada’s County Board portrait, circa 2007.

In 2003, J. Walter Tejada became the first person of Latin American heritage to be elected to the Arlington County Board, or to any governing body in Northern Virginia.

Tejada served as County Board Chair in 2008 and 2013.

Tejada was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the United States at age 13, first settling with his family in Brooklyn, New York, and later moving to Trenton, New Jersey. After attending college and playing soccer at Keystone Junior College and Mercer College, he eventually moved to Arlington in 1987.

Tejada got his start as an activist and organizer after witnessing inequities faced by members of the Latinx community. He initially worked in groups addressing fair housing, job opportunities, and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). He also helped to establish a Salvadoran festival in Arlington, starting in 1995, focusing on Salvadoran culture.

The front page of El Pregonero, the official Spanish-language newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., on March 13, 2003, following Tejada’s election to the County Board.

In 2003, Tejada was elected to the Arlington County Board in a special election following the death of Board member Charles P. Monroe. Tejada defeated longtime GOP activist Mike W. Clancy in the contest.

During his time on the board, Tejada continued to advocate for immigrant and Spanish-speaking communities, and served on numerous task forces and groups, including as chair on the governor’s Latino Advisory Commission.

Tejada

J. Walter Tejada speaking at the National Rally for Citizenship on the West Lawn of the Capitol on April 10, 2013. Image courtesy of C-SPAN.

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From left to right: County Board members J. Walter Tejada, John Vihstadt, Jay Fisette, Mary Hynes and Libby Garvey in 2014.

Since his time in County government, he was appointed to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Board of Directors and is president of the Virginia Latino Leaders Council.

In the following oral history interview, conducted prior to his election to the County Board, Tejada discusses his childhood, coming to Arlington, and his early work in activism. In these excerpts from the interview, he discusses first impressions of the County and his work with LULAC’S Council 4609, which encompasses Arlington. 

This interview is available in full at the Center for Local History. Note: The audio for this interview is currently not available.  

Narrator: J. Walter Tejada 

Interviewer: Ingrid Kauffman

Date: October 27, 2000 

J. Walter Tejada: One of the things I saw when I lived in DC - actually, one of the first things I recognized was that - actually since I started visiting Robin [Liten-Tejada] when she went to school here -- is that DC had a much larger Latino population than New Jersey, and I liked that. Remember, I mentioned that when we lived in New York there weren't that many Salvadorans at all, even when we lived in New Jersey, there was one person that was Salvadoran, and he lived like 10 miles away. It was odd that I came here and suddenly there was a Salvadoran population. 

Ingrid Kauffman: What year was that? 

WT: 1987. I thought, “this is great.” There were some restaurants; I hadn't eaten pupusas for years, which is one of my favorite Salvadoran dishes, just like almost every day. I saw this and it really piqued my interest. In fact, it was a determining point why I ended up moving here, when we were talking about what we were going to do with our lives. I'd come to visit and see all this and I liked that. The climate here, so many people from different backgrounds, different perspectives and accents, cultural activities - to me, it was like a paradise for these activities. When I was working in D.C. I also saw that the Latino community was really - first of all, there was no political power. Then - the community - not all but certainly a good portion of the community finds itself in a very tough socio-economic situation.

WT: Three things [LULAC Council 4609] did were voter registration, citizenship, and leadership development. That part I liked because it made it so broad for different things. I decided I was going to be involved in that aspect, because we would promote meetings, forums, community forums, where elected officials or public officials would meet with the community to address issues of concern with the community, sort of like putting a little bridge into what needed - the issues of importance. I started, and I would go to places and grab chairs, move them around, set up the coffee machine, make sure donuts were there.  

We did forums on gang prevention activities, the educational system in Arlington, how it was being responsive to Latinos or not. We've done forums in the business community - what opportunities there could be to incorporate Latinos into the business world. We did citizenship workshops where we published that on a certain day people could come in with all their material that we would specify, like passport, proof of where they lived, proof where they worked, birth certificates for their kids, and helped them fill out these applications in order to apply to become citizens. We would have lawyer friends who would come and volunteer in these workshops so that we can help people.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Remembering September 11 with Photos of First Responders

The Center for Local History has recently digitized many additional photographs from the Community Archives taken at the Pentagon at the time of September 11, 2001, by Mike Defina, a fire captain with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Fire and Rescue Department.

National Airport personnel deployed to the Pentagon Sept. 12, 2001. L to R: CCT Mike Fetsko, Deputy Fire Marshal David Norris, Captain John Durrer, Paramedic Captain David Testa, Captain Mike Defino, Tech. Ralph Cornell, Paramedic Mike Murphy, Tech. Troy Hutchinson, Tech. Paul Purcell, Firefighter. Photo: Mike Defina. 

These images are just a few of the Community Archives collection Records Related to the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks on the Pentagon, which is made up of textual materials, photographs, some memorabilia, and audio-visual materials. The bulk of the collection dates from 2001-2002 and features photographs of the aftermath and days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon. (Note: some of these photos may contain sensitive or disturbing material).

That morning a westbound plane took off from Dulles airport, was hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the Pentagon. One hundred and eighty-nine people died in the crash, including the 64 passengers on Flight 77. On the same morning two more hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City, and a fourth hijacked plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people died in the tragedy, changing both the country and Arlington forever.

Firefighters and first responders from Arlington County, Fort Myer, and Reagan National Airport were essential in coordinating the Pentagon rescue and response, arriving within minutes of the plane crash.

Arlington County Fire Department took the lead, establishing an Incident Command System across the region to respond to the emergency. Firefighters were able to get the fire under control on the first day, but it took three days to fully extinguish.

Fire fighters taking a much-needed break at the National Airport fire station at 10 p.m. on September 11, after a daylong rescue effort at the Pentagon. Photo credit: Mike Defina. 

The images in this collection depict both the horrific nature of the crash and Pentagon fires, the resilience and bravery of the first responders, and many spontaneous memorial events.

Firefighters display a large American flag on the front of the National Airport fire station, two days after the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. Photo: Mike Defina. 

The two foam units, along with their crews, that were on the original call to the Pentagon on September 11, parked in front of the American flag displayed on the front of the National Airport fire station. Photo: Mike Defina. 

A memorial of flags, flowers, and signs near the Pentagon following the September 11 terrorist attack. Photo: Mike Defina. 

View All Images

Additional physical materials in the collection are held in the Arlington Community Archives for research use, including many thank-you cards written by school children to the firefighters of the Arlington Fire Department, County Manager Ron Carlee's papers used during the response, after-action reports, ephemera from memorial services, and VHS tape recordings of memorial events.

While these additional items have yet to be digitized, those who wish to research them may use the online finding aid to determine which boxes or folders would be useful and/or contact the Center for Local History to make a research consultation appointment.

Oral histories from the five-year anniversary of September 11, 2001 are also available online in the Center for Local History's digitized Community Archive.

Arlington County Fire Department members pose with children in front of a mural created to thank them for their service. Photo: Mike Defina. 

Do you have Arlington materials related to the events September 11, 2001 that you would like to donate? 

The Center for Local History (CLH) collects, preserves, and shares historical documents that tell the history of Arlington County, its citizens, organizations, businesses, and social issues. Learn about how you can help to build Arlington's community history on the CLH Donation webpage.

Oral History: Buckingham Florist

Interview with Neil Bassin

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Arlington has a lengthy history of legacy floral shops, and among those was Buckingham Florist, a mainstay of the Buckingham neighborhood for almost 80 years.

Buckingham Florist was founded by Myer and Jean Bassin in Arlington in 1942, and the couple later opened a second location in Coral Hills, Maryland. The business did floral arrangements for a variety of events and venues, with the nearby Arlington National Cemetery among their primary sites of business.

At one point, Buckingham Florist was the primary supplier of flowers for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The shop’s federal connections didn’t stop there, however: one of the shop’s floral designers, Elmer “Rusty” Young, went on to serve as a florist in the White House in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Young was appointed the first White House Chief Floral Designer by Jacqueline Kennedy, and continued in that position throughout the rest of his career.

Buckingham Florist, right, in 1996.

The shop moved to its long-term location at 301 North Glebe Road in the bustling Buckingham Shopping Center in the mid-1950s, having previously been located on the south side of Glebe. Myer and Jean Bassin’s son Neil Bassin ran Buckingham Florist throughout the latter half of the 20th century. He sold the shop in the mid-2000s, and the Buckingham storefront closed permanently in 2017.

In this oral history interview, Neil Bassin (1932-2019) discusses the legacy of the business and how the shop supplied its flowers. The interview in full goes on to discuss other topics, such as changes in the floral industry and the business environment of Buckingham throughout the 20th century.

Narrator: Neil Bassin
Interviewer: Virginia Smith
Date: May 14, 2012

Photos of the Bassin family from the February 8, 1965, issue of the Northern Virginia Sun. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

Neil Bassin: In most aspects of the florist business, we were very successful because of the location we were in. People knew us. And that’s, I would say, the major factor in why our business was so successful, until the people met me or my mother, or you know. And just personal business, where the people knew us. I mean, we had people when they were born. We had them when they were married, and we had them when they died because the business is over sixty years.

Virginia Smith: That’s a nice legacy, isn’t it? Sixty years of business.

NB: Yeah, it’s a long time.

VS: Tell me who your suppliers were of flowers.

NB: Well, lots. Mostly, downtown florists, wholesalers. And when I first got in, it was downtown wholesalers. They were all—

VS: Is that the name of it? Downtown—?

NB: No.

VS: Oh, multiple—?

NB: They were mostly around one block downtown.

VS: Where was that block?

NB: It was between Fourteenth and Thirteenth on the street before K Street. K Street was a park in those days.

VS: Yes.

NB: Like a little park. And then down Fourteenth Street, on the right was Schaffer’s Retail Florist.

VS: Okay, but Shaffer was a wholesaler also—

NB: Then, Shaffer was a wholesaler. McCallum Sauber was a wholesaler, and they were really instrumental in helping us get in business because my uncle sort of knew the owners. And they did help us. My uncle was very artistic, and he was a big help in getting us into the business. But, there were Paul’s Wholesale Florist and Goody Brothers.

VS: Oh, I know that name.

NB: And around the corner was District Wholesale, and Flowers Incorporated, which was also a wholesale florist. And so they were all in one area until they sold that block and razed that block, where they all moved out and spread out.

Advertisement for Buckingham Florist in the Washington, D.C., Yellow Pages in 1960. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Elmer “Rusty” Young, Chief Floral Designer at the White House, prepares an arrangement in the Floral Room, August 28, 1963. Young was previously a floral designer at Buckingham Florist. Image courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library of Museum.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Washington Golf and Country Club

The Washington Golf and Country Club is considered the oldest golf club in Virginia, and its course now comprises 88 acres of land just off of Glebe Road in North Arlington.

The Washington Golf and Country Club, taken in the late 1930s. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The club was incorporated in 1894 by members of the Metropolitan Club, though evidence exists that it was first organized in 1892. The Club was a social and literary group founded by employees of the Treasury Department and whose members were of the elite echelons of Washington society, including Senators, ambassadors, and other men in high government positions.

This was around the time when golf was becoming a major recreational craze. The 9-hole golf course was built on a 165-acre tract leased from the Hoover family, just north of Rosslyn. The Hoover family home became the de facto clubhouse for the golfers. It was noted that a man named Jackson also lived and worked on the property that became the golf course. Jackson had been enslaved by the Hoover family and later became their servant and then a servant at the golf club.

The Washington Golf Club in the 1920s at the Rixey property.

The golf club adhered to a strict set of rules, including regulation dress and a ban on gambling on the premises. An annual fee was between $15-$20, and by 1897 there were nearly 200 members. About 30 women had joined the club by 1898, though they would play on “ladies’ links.”

The club was disbanded in 1907 when the property owners decided to develop the land, and the following year it was incorporated under a new name, the Washington Country Club. Between 1908 and 1920 the club and a now-18-hole course were located at the property of Admiral Rixey, the then-United States Surgeon General.

This property also included tennis courts. Theodore Roosevelt and Howard Taft were honorary members, and Woodrow Wilson was also an active member, leading it to be known as the “Playground of Presidents.”

A man identified as A.W. Howard plays at the Washington Golf Club, circa 1925. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In 1915 the club’s name was changed to its current iteration as the Washington Golf and Country Club. In 1936 a fire destroyed the clubhouse and the club’s records, though it was rebuilt on the same foundations by 1937. In 1958, another new clubhouse was built, and the current clubhouse was completed in 2006.

Want to learn more about golf history in the region? Check out Golf and Civil Rights in Washington, DC.

To learn more about Arlington's history, visit the Center for Local History on the first floor of the Central Library.

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

Use this form to send a message to the Center for Local History.

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Oral History: Public Shoe Store

Interview with Dr. Sholom “Doc” Friedman and Karen Widmayer

Public Shoe Store, 1983.

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Public Shoe Store in Clarendon was one of the neighborhood’s longest-running and most recognizable businesses, operating from 1938 to 2016. The business was operated by brothers Dr. Sholom H. “Doc” Friedman and Joel Friedman for much of that time, after being founded by the Friedmans’ father Samuel Friedman in the 1930s. Dr. Friedman was a trained podiatrist, and the business was known for specializing in comfort shoes and custom fitting. Dr. Friedman passed away in 2019.

The original location of the store was where the Clarendon Metro station currently stands, but when construction came through the neighborhood the business moved to its longstanding storefront at 3137 Wilson Boulevard. The shoe store was also a meeting place for members of the Arlington-Fairfax Jewish Congregation (now Etz Hayim), who would gather on the second floor of the shop.

Advertisement in the Northern Virginia Sun for Public Shoe Store, October 31, 1968. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

In this oral history, Dr. Sholom “Doc” Friedman and two of his children, Karen Widmayer and Mark Friedman, discuss the history of the shop and the impact it had on the Arlington community. Other details in the interview include how the children often ran the cash registers, and how the shop worked with President Carter's family in the 1970s. Here is a brief excerpt from the interview:

Narrator 1: Dr. Sholom “Doc” Friedman
Narrator 2: Karen Widmayer
Interviewer: Virginia Smith
Date: March 8, 2015

Public Shoe Store exterior in 1990.

Entrance to Public Shoe Store, 1990.

Virginia Smith: Okay. So how does the building work? What do you do? You set up the retail place in the main floor?

Sholom Friedman: Right.

VS: What’s downstairs?

SF: It used to be stored shoes, but I’ve been decreasing the stock now.

VS: Towards the end of this—the life of the business.

SF: Right.

VS: But that was full downstairs—was inventory.

SF: Right.

VS: And upstairs was—?

SF: Upstairs we had a little balcony.

Karen Widmayer: Yeah, the main floor is all selling floor and stock. And the basement had all stock and some storage. And then there’s a mezzanine level that’s about a quarter of a floor-size up in the back, and that was just some storage space.

SF: Storage, right.

View of Wilson Boulevard from east to west, including the large Public Shoe Store sign, 1991.

VS: So it was all your dad [Samuel Friedman] needed? Large enough?

SF: Oh, yeah. It was a pretty big operation back then.

VS: Sounds like it. What decade would you call your heyday, the best years, or the best decades?

SF: Probably after the war.

VS: So the ‘40s and ‘50s when families were moving and growing and all that sort of stuff.

SF: Right.

KW: Even when I worked there, I mean, there’d be ten or fifteen numbers pulled, people sitting and waiting. I mean, it was crazy on Saturdays.

VS: That’s good business—that was a Saturday.

KW: Yeah, that was still ’60—well, I was—started working there when I was about seven, so that’s late ‘60s and into the early ‘70s. I think at that point, that’s when things started changing a little bit with Arlington and the retail. But the businesses stayed.

Photos from Public Shoe Store around the time of its closing in 2016.

Photos from Public Shoe Store around the time of its closing in 2016.

The exterior of Public Shoe Store around the time of its closing in 2016.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

An (Un)familiar Tune: Arlington’s Song

Though many may not know the words to this reverential tune, Arlington has had an official song for more than 50 years.

The County Song Debuts

“Arlington,” the County’s official song, was adopted unanimously in October 1970 by the County Board. The musical occasion was marked with a performance of the tune from a chorus of the Masons’ International Order of Job’s Daughters, who were dressed in 18th-century period costume. 10,000 copies of the sheet music and lyrics were later distributed by the Chamber of Commerce throughout the County.

Agenda for the October 3, 1970, debut of the Arlington song (see item No. 3). From the October 1, 1970, issue of the Northern Virginia Sun.

The song was composed by the Reverend Ernest K. Emurian (1912-2004), who from 1962 to 1981 was minister of the Cherrydale Methodist Church. In addition to his ecclesiastical duties, Emurian was also known for being a musician, poet, and writer, and wrote geographically inspired tunes about the Virginia cities of Portsmouth and Lynchburg in addition to Arlington, and penned multiple books about national songs and hymns. He was quoted as saying “If a place is worth living in, it’s worth writing a song about.”

Read: The 2015 County article “Official ‘Arlington’: Song Sung Blue and White at 45” delves further in detail about the 1970 Arlington song and Reverend Emurian.

Sheet music and lyrics for the 1970 song “Arlington,” by Ernest Emurian.

The song caught a second wind in the 20th century when in 2000, the County Board reintroduced the tune with a performance featuring some of the daughters of the original Daughters chorus who had performed the 1970 debut of the song. And what might be called a third resurrection occurred in 2016, when Arlington TV recorded and aired a performance with some of the members of the original 1970 chorus.

Watch: The 2016 performance of “Arlington.”

A Prequel Tune

Possibly even more obscure than the official song is a precursor to that 1970 tune written in 1938, though this version was never formally adopted as a piece of official County music. In August 1938, members of the local Hoffman family orchestra presented their song, “Arlington,” to the Chamber of Commerce. The tune was composed by Theodore G. Hoffman, who wrote the song with the intention for it to be used to “’ promote the public interest in and welfare of Arlington County.’”

Hoffman was a German immigrant who performed with his three sons, and who had also composed songs used by the U.S. Army during World War II along with other patriotic compositions throughout his career. A 1938 article describes the song as a march, with the lyrics paying homage to “businessmen, the neighborly spirit of the homeowners, the healthy climate, the atmosphere of happiness and the beauty of Arlington scenery.”

Photo from August 5, 1948, Northern Virginia Sun article by Margaret Troxell about T.G. Hoffman, who composed an early song for and about Arlington.

Modern Songs About Arlington

A few mainstream songs from recent years also reference Arlington, such as the Foo Fighters’ “Weenie Beenie,” named after the beloved County eatery, or “Arlington” by Fairfax-based band Emmet Swimming off of its 1996 album Arlington to Boston. However, neither of those tunes quite capture the detail and charming local specificity of the County’s official song.

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Search Thousands of Historic Arlington Papers Online for Free

Discover Arlington's history and browse newspaper content online from 1935 to 1978.

During the past year, Arlington Public Library’s Center for Local History (CLH) has been working with the Library of Virginia (LVA) to make five decades of Arlington research material available online.

Spanning the years from 1935 to 1978, the materials include historic articles, photos, and news clippings from four Arlington newspapers: the Columbia News, the Daily Sun, the Northern Virginia Sun and the Sun.

Previously, these publications were only available in the Center for Local History as microfilm and digital scans, which were not easily searchable.

These newspapers are a fantastic resource for historians, teachers, genealogists and anyone curious about Arlington's past through the eyes of local journalism.

“Delve deeper into your family history, find information on the transformation and growth of Arlington and discover more of its unique history,” said Arlington Public Library Director Diane Kresh.

The free news archive is 100% keyword searchable by location, date, title and issue and features a clipping feature that allows researchers to save an image or text block of an article.

To access the new source materials, visit the LVA ‘s Virginia Chronicle, which is a large online depository for historic newspapers from across the Commonwealth.

The CLH collects, preserves and shares historical documents that tell the history of Arlington County, its citizens, organizations, businesses and social issues. The CLH operates the Research Room at Central Library and the Community Archives program.



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