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Preservation Today

Rediscover Lutrelle Fleming Parker, Sr.

Lutrelle Fleming Parker, Sr. was a tireless advocate for progress in Arlington County who left a legacy of remarkable civic engagement that spanned the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation of the County’s schools and businesses.

Photo of Lutrelle – Source: Susanna McBee, “Arlington County See Fervent Donor Plea,” The Washington Post, January 5, 1961.

Born in Newport News, Virginia in 1924, Parker served in the U.S. Navy on the HSS Manderson Victory during World War II as one of the Navy’s first black officers. His commitment to the Navy lasted 40 years, retiring from the Navy Reserves in 1982.

After the war, Parker worked at the U.S. Patent Office in 1947 while also studying engineering at Howard University. He began as a patent examiner and later performed a wide range of jobs for this office during his long career, including being a trial attorney, examiner-in-chief, and deputy commissioner of the office. He received his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Howard in 1949, the same year that he moved from Washington, D.C., to the predominantly African-American Arlington neighborhood of Green Valley with his wife, Lillian Madeleine Parker.

He continued to pursue his education and was among the first four African American students accepted to Georgetown University Law School, graduating in 1952. They purchased a house at 3024 18th Street South in the Nauck Neighborhood (present-day Green Valley) by June of 1950.

Parker was engaged in numerous Arlington civic organizations following his move to the County, including the Nauck Citizens Association and Arlingtonians for a Better County. On November 21, 1959, Parker became the first African American appointed to Arlington County’s Planning Commission and served as its first African American chairman in 1962 and 1963. He served at least two subsequent terms and chaired the Planning Commission’s Capital Improvements Committee. Much of this time included the hotly debated statewide discussion about building I-66 across northern Virginia and through Arlington into Washington, D.C.

Parker did much to promote the overall welfare of Arlington County during his tenure on the Planning Commission and through his service on numerous local boards and committees. In his civic work, Parker also championed the built environment and educational opportunities in the historically African American communities of Arlington. His efforts included preventing the construction of the proposed “Southside Freeway” that would have displaced African American businesses and homeowners, and fighting the proposed rezoning of Green Valley’s business district that would have made the area completely residential.

In our Rediscover Shirlington blog post, there was mention of the proposed suggestion to build a parallel shopping center to the Shirlington Business Center to provide facilities available to customers of color. Parker, as chairman of the Nauck Citizens Association, spoke to The Washington Post about how this proposed development was not meant to detract from desegregation efforts but instead provide needed services to the African American community until desegregation provided all Arlingtonians with equal access to resources.

Photo of Lutrelle Fleming Parker Sr. Image courtesy of Arlington National Cemetery Website.

Parker also petitioned the Arlington School Board to address persisting inequities between Arlington’s traditionally white and black public schools following their 1959 desegregation. Thanks to his outstanding work in education policy and his time working with the PTA for the Hoffman-Boston and Drew-Kemper schools, Parker was on the list of potential candidates for the Arlington School Board in 1970.

Parker’s long list of professional and civic accomplishments includes Judge on the Court of Patent Appeals, Secretary of the Board of Trustees at Arlington Hospital, President and Board Chairman of the National Capital Area Hospital Council, Board Chairman for the George Mason University Foundation, and member of the Virginia State Council of Higher Education. We recognize Lutrelle Fleming Parker, Sr., for his decades of service to Arlington and to the generations of residents whose lives are improved thanks to his civic dedication.

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Rediscover The Arlington Property Yard

Real Estate, Race, Fraud, Politics and Equipment Sheds

Up until the early-1900s, Arlington County stored its essential facilities equipment, which at that time consisted of donkeys and wagons, behind the County Courthouse building, a beautiful Richardsonian Romanesque-styled building.

But by 1925, in response to a relocation order by Virginia Attorney General William C. Gloth, the Board of Supervisors (precursor to the County Board) began actively searching for a new, permanent Property Yard location.

Trades Center, circa 1950s. Image courtesy of Arlington County Government.

Race and Geography

In August 1925 the County purchased a 4.26-acre tract in Fort Myer Heights near the present-day intersection of Fairfax Drive and North Rhodes Street, from Charles A. Douglas, which it still owns today. The Board planned to beautify the new storage area with green lawns and flower beds to create a welcoming public space once the County relocated its equipment.

But by the 1920s, the targeted subdivision had developed into a largely segregated white streetcar suburb, and there was considerable public opposition to the County’s plan. More than 50 people attended a public meeting to protest relocating the Property Yard to this site.

Prominent white local developer Frank Lyon spoke on behalf of those assembled and argued for the development of a public park instead. Lyon owned the weekly newspaper The Monitor and had developed more than 465 acres (almost 3%) of Arlington’s land, routinely including restrictive racial and religious covenants in his deeds of the subdivision. The Board responded by agreeing to put the Fort Myer Heights parcel to another public use and continuing to evaluate potential sites for the Property Yard.

On August 9, 1926, the County purchased an approximately 41-acre parcel from Ashton C. Jones (also known for developing neighborhoods with white-only deed restrictions), Margaret V. Jones, E. Wade Ball, and Maude L. Ball across Four Mile Run, adjacent to the historically black Green Valley community.

The Four Mile Run vicinity tended toward commercial and industrial use, so the move to place the Property Yard here was a natural one. However, the fact that the County moved its project from a historically white area to a historically black area after pressure from the community is indicative of the outsized social power that white residents exercised in local politics.

Scandal in the Treasurer's Office

At the time of the land purchase, E. Wade Ball had been Arlington County’s Treasurer since 1906. Six years later, he was discovered to have been inflating the County accounts to increase his commission, leaving Arlington with only $7,000 in assets instead of the reported $419,000. Ball served 2 1/2 years in federal prison before taking up a career in local real estate.

Arlington County Property Yard, 1935. Pink markings indicate brick buildings and yellow indicates frame building. Visible in the top left is James B. Peyton’s land, including the land he allowed for use as the Green Valley Ball Park.

Development on Four Mile Run

The first buildings and storage structures at the Property Yard included a garage, workshop, stable, and office building. In order to move most of the County’s Water Works to the Property Yard from the Lyonhurst Water Works in North Arlington, in 1938 the County Board voted to enlarge the Property Yard’s storage and services.

The Property Yard continued to expand alongside the boom in Arlington’s suburban development during and after World War II. By the end of the 1940s it housed an underground fuel storage tank, facilities for the Department of Public Service’s Equipment Division, the County’s Water Works and the School Board. The County had also approved the construction of a new building, paid for by the Animal Welfare League, to replace the dog pound.

Bird’s eye view of the Arlington County Property Yard looking south, 1960.

Storage and Space

Despite the improved storage facilities built in the 1940s, the County still stored 90% of its equipment outside in 1950 and there was insufficient indoor shop space to accommodate all the equipment maintenance staff and activities.

In 1957, the County Board approved a deal with Shirlington Corporation to exchange land to improve both their operations. Work on the new section of the Property Yard successfully increased the workspace and efficiency of operations. The County’s 1959 annual report boasted that the renovated Property Yard had “14 working stalls, a painting room, a wash rack, a machine shop, tire storage, parts storage, office space, and toilet and locker rooms.” But it was not until 1962 that the County’s Equipment Division reported that nearly all the County’s equipment was stored under roofed structures.

By 1960 the Property Yard also included special storage facilities for voting machines, training facilities for the Fire and Police departments, and storage for school buses. The 60s also brought planting of a shrubbery border along the property line facing South Arlington Mill Drive, to add to the beautification and public service aspect of the facility.

Shirlington and Shirley Highway

Originally, the entrance road to the Property Yard ran through the area that later was developed as Shirlington Shopping Center in 1942-1944.

As early as 1944, the County Board began to consider changing the entrance to the recently constructed Arlington Mill Drive, away from the shopping center, and in response to the planned construction of the Henry Shirley Memorial Highway (Interstate 395).

The 1960s brought the opening of a new building for the Shirlington Branch Library at 2700 South Arlington Mill Drive (no longer extant).

Trades Center, dated 2019. Image courtesy of Arlington County Government.

By 1979, the Property Yard had been renamed the Arlington County Trades Center, and it is owned and operated jointly by Arlington County and Arlington Public Schools.

In 2000, as part of a Phased Development Site Plan, Arlington County contributed 2.4 acres of land from the Trades Center site to negotiate a public-private partnership designed to increase density and mixed-use development at the Shirlington shopping center.

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Rediscover Shirlington

Before European colonization, a Necostin Native American village was located on the land near the current Village at Shirlington shopping center.

Shirlington Branch Library, circa 2007.

On January 21, 1705, William Struttfield, one of 48 original settlers who owned land in present-day Arlington, patented a 543-acre tract south of Four Mile Run that included what is now Shirlington. He sold the land to Colonel John Carlyle and it stayed in the Carlyle family into the mid-19th century.

The hill southwest of present-day Shirlington served as a fortification within the Defenses of Washington that were erected by Union forces during the Civil War. Fort Blenker, later renamed Fort Reynolds, was built in 1861 and selected by the Union due to the view it afforded of the valley along Four Mile Run.

Map of the Environs of Washington: Compiled from Boschkes’ Map of the District of Columbia and From Surveys of the U.S. Coast Survey showing the Line of Defenses of Washington as Constructed during the War from 1861 to 1865 Inclusive. The red arrow points to Fort Reynolds and the blue arrow points to the approximate present-day location of the Village at Shirlington. Source: Library of Congress.

Joseph Cherner, a Jewish immigrant from Russia with a successful car dealership and repair shop, considered opening an airport near Four Mile Run but decided to invest in a shopping center instead. He purchased 200,000 cubic yards of fill to raise the grade by as much as 13 feet, channelized two creeks, and constructed roads and alleyways through the property. Cherner attracted new businesses to the development by offering tenants very low rental rates in exchange for a percentage of the businesses’ profits. He combined the names of nearby Shirley Highway (Interstate 395) and Arlington to name the area. The proximity to this still-under-construction roadway was meant to promote traffic to the new shopping center.

The shopping center opened in December 1943, with a supermarket, gift shop, clothing cleaners, beauty parlor, and shoe repair shop in one-story storefronts of limestone and granite construction with Art Deco architectural detailing. The layout of the streets was as it is now, with the shops facing each other across a central median. More stores opened in 1944, including a Gulf filling station which is likely the extant gas station but with substantial changes

While stores allowed African Americans patrons to shop, they were barred from services, such as eating at lunch counters and restaurants and using leisure facilities. This was particularly difficult for residents of Fort Barnard Heights and Green Valley, the primarily African American communities next to the shopping center.

Following Joseph Cherner’s death in 1956, his wife Ruth (née Schlom) Cherner, assumed the role of the president of the Shirlington Corporation. She led the company through a land swap with Arlington County’s Property Yard in May 1957 that increased acreage at the north boundary of the Shirlington Business Center by seven acres. She became a prominent businesswoman in the Arlington real estate market. Lansburgh’s Department Store opened in September 1959 on the former Property Yard land and served as a new retail anchor for the shopping center.

Bird’s eye view rendering of Lansburgh’s Department Store at the Shirlington Shopping Center, 1962. Source: Arlington Blu Book, 1962, Center for Local History Archives, Arlington County Public Library.

In January 1960, the Nauck Citizens’ Association (a precursor to the present-day Green Valley Civic Association) proposed a business district along South Shirlington Road to offer services to people of color. This business area would include a motel, theater, restaurant, bowling alley, and office space for professional services. Lutrelle F. Parker, chairman of the Nauck Citizens’ Association, asserted that they did not intend for the business center to detract from desegregation efforts that were currently being undertaken throughout the south. Rather the citizens’ group aimed to supply necessary services to African American citizens until other commercial areas were desegregated.

In June 1960, spurred by protest movements across America, black and white college students held sit-ins at lunch counters around Arlington including Lansburgh’s Colonial Room and Woolworth’s lunch counter in Shirlington. Both businesses responded by closing their counters. After negotiations between demonstrators and business owners, Woolworth’s in Shirlington was the first lunch counter to desegregate on June 22, serving a group of black and white students. Woolworth’s action was followed that same day as Lansburgh’s, Kahn’s, Peoples, and Drug Fair desegregated their Arlington restaurants.

June 10, 1960, Gwendolyn Green (later Britt) and David Hartsough sit at the People’s Drug Store counter. Protests such as this happened at counters in seven locations in Arlington including two in Shirlington. DC Public Library, Star Collection, ©Washington Post.

The popularity of Shirlington declined in the mid-1960s and into the 1970s with the opening of several new shopping centers. In the early-1970s, Shirlington Business Center saw the closure of many of its anchor retail stores. Jelleff’s closed in 1972, followed shortly by Lansburgh’s (which was replaced by Best Products) and the Shirlington Motor Company’s Ford dealership, both in 1973.

Several revitalizations were considered, including one featuring a manmade lagoon. The owners abandoned this project before construction began. In July 1982, a new $250-million renovation began, led by developer Oliver T. Carr. Carr’s plan called for up to 429,000 square feet of additional retail space and 694,000 square feet of office space in 8- to 12-story buildings. It also included the construction of a 400-room hotel and 590 condominium units. The limestone and granite façades of the existing buildings were reused while most of the ground level architecture and all the interiors were demolished. The 1987 finished design included copper turrets and domes crowning the buildings at the entrance off South Randolph Street, Victorian-era inspired street lighting, cut-throughs for increased pedestrian circulation, and a large Beaux-Arts fountain in the central median.

Redesigned 28th Street South (renamed Campbell Avenue in 2007), 1986. Source: Benjamin Forgey, “In Shirlington, Main Street Revisited,” The Washington Star, November 1, 1986, Center for Local History Archives, Arlington County Public Library.

Federal Realty Investment Trust purchased what is now known as the ‘Village at Shirlington’ in 1996. In November 2006, the new Shirlington Town Center was unveiled, including the Shirlington Branch Library and a new location for the Signature Theatre Company. In July 2007, the County changed the name of 28th Street South to Campbell Avenue in honor of Edmund and Margaret Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell, who were instrumental in desegregating Arlington’s public schools. Elizabeth Campbell founded and was later president of WETA public broadcasting station, located in Shirlington.

Joseph and Ruth Cherner’s 1943 vision is still a destination shopping location in Arlington. The popularity of this neighborhood hub is evidence of the Cherners’ shrewd perception of the retail services the community needed.

View of the Shirlington shopping complex looking east from the median on Campbell Avenue, 2019.  Source: Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Rediscover The Arlington Post Office

If you live in Arlington County, you have the Arlington Post Office in Clarendon to thank for the name of your street.

Arlington County Rural Delivery Routes, Library of Congress, 1920.

After the boom of World War I, Arlington’s previously bucolic countryside began to develop into small sleeper communities, off-shoots from Washington, D.C. The rural roadways of Arlington evolved organically, along with the neighborhoods. They took unexpected turns, dead-ended, and had different names from one end to the other, using local neighborhood names rather than official ones. Among the more than 200 duplicate roads in Arlington in 1930, there were eight Arlington Avenues and two Arlington Streets, five Cedar Streets, five Maple Streets, three Hamilton Avenues, and ironically, two First Streets.

Much of the County was served by rural mail delivery from the Georgetown post office in Washington, whose service was unreliable partly because of the disconnected, changing, and unpredictable Arlington street names. The U.S. Postal Service required clear enumeration systems for properties to provide dependable service, so Arlington established a committee of citizens to create a coherent street naming system. This also provided an opportunity for the County to create a unified sense of identity for all its residents.

In September 1934, Arlington changed its street names to embrace an alphanumeric system which had latitudinal streets taking numeric names, and longitudinal streets taking alphabetical and syllable-based names. Since the County had not developed strictly along a grid system, many streets did not fall within this pattern, so some allowances were made for major thoroughfares whose names did not follow this standard.

This standardization of Arlington’s street names paved the way for a county-wide postal system, and within two years the sum of $200,000 was allocated for a new postal building whose service would cover everywhere from Georgetown to Glencarlyn. The land was purchased for $24,850 in August 1936 (equivalent to roughly $3.7 million in 2020) and by the end of that year designs for the building were already underway. Louis A. Simon, Supervising Architect of the Treasury, was the highest authority on the project; however, there were so many individual designers on the plans that no one author could be identified.

From a guide on Arlington’s complicated street system, Arlington County Department of Public Works “Arlington County Street Naming System,” September 1984.

The construction of the Post Office - first federal building in Arlington County - attracted a lot of attention. Thousands of people attended the May 1937 ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone after watching a 40-float parade. The Postmaster General, James Farley, and Arlington’s Congressman, Howard Smith, watched as the cornerstone was laid with same trowel that was used to lay the founding stone of the U.S. Capitol and Washington Monument.

The Sun noted on May 7, 1937, “The fact that Uncle Sam decided it was time to build us a ‘real’ post office means we are not the only ones who think we’re an important community.”

Construction moved quickly, and the office opened for business on December 13, 1937.

Laying the cornerstone for the Arlington Post Office, S.I. Markle, 1937. Courtesy of the Arlington Historical Society.

The architectural style of the Arlington Post Office (APO) is considered Georgian Revival, which is characterized by exaggerations and adaptations of the 18th-century Georgian style popular in New England. The Georgian style was denoted commonly by two-story rectangular buildings with five window/door openings on each floor and decorative embellishment around the central door.

The APO building is a common bond brick single-story with a full basement. The domed portico is a signature characteristic, flanked by stylized tri-partite (or Palladian) windows which are typical of Georgian design. The imposing throwback to classical architecture and the use of imposing fluted concrete columns at the entrance is typical of the 1930s style.

Arlington Post Office, 2018, Historic Preservation Program Archive

After the Great Depression, the Federal government began to invest in many infrastructure systems, both to provide jobs and to improve national morale. Although the Federal Art Project of the Works Projects Administration (WPA) is the best-known New Deal-era funding program, the murals in the Arlington Post Office were funded by the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Art (The Section) which had been established by President Roosevelt in October 1934. Roosevelt had been inspired by a friend to develop The Section modeled after a Mexican project which paid artists to paint murals in government buildings.

Over nine years, The Section paid for 1,309 murals and 332 sculptures for courthouses and post offices nationwide. These were meant to depict America’s values - hard work and simple lifestyles - to encourage people during an era of economic hardship.

"I, too, have a dream - to show people in the out of the way places, some of whom are not only in small villages but in corners of New York City - something they cannot get from between the covers of books -some real paintings and prints and etchings and some real music." - Franklin Roosevelt to Hendrik Willem Van Loon, January 6, 1938

Auriel Bessemer won the national competition to paint the Arlington Post Office murals and based his images on local sites and occurrences. His painting style was characteristic of the Art Deco era. The scenes include picnicking at Great Falls, romanticized visualizations of the encounter of Native Americans and settlers, the lives of enslaved people in Virginia, and the apocryphal story of John Smith’s journey. Bessemer produced sanctioned work for the Federal Government, while also owning a progressive art gallery in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. and writing anti-fascist poetry, including the stanza “Prepare mankind, yet blind, for mutual slaughter.”

Auriel Bessemer, Tobacco Picking in the Late Colonial Era, 1940. Arlington Post Office Mural. 

Auriel Bessemer, Early Indian Life on Analostan Island, 1940. Arlington Post Office Mural.

The Arlington Post Office, renamed for County Board chair and Congressman Joseph L. Fisher in the 2000s, became an Arlington County Local Historic District in October 1984, which provided it with protections from demolition and unregulated exterior alterations. It was added to the honorary National Register of Historic Places in February 1986 for its role in creating a single Arlington identity, and for its distinctive architecture. As Clarendon grew, the landscape changed around the APO, transforming a mid-century single-story commercial streetscape into a growing multi-use corridor. When a site plan project was proposed adjacent to the historic building and its 1946 commercial neighbor (originally the Scheff Store, then the Dan Kain trophy store, now Lyon Hall), the Local Historic District status of both historic buildings protected them during redevelopment.

The Arlington County Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB) helped preserve the single-story streetscape while allowing new development behind the historic buildings to provide commercial and residential density in the popular downtown area. During the development, the Keating Partners funded the restoration of the murals which were on display in the Arlington Public Library before they were returned to the post office.

Visit the original Arlington Post Office (once it is safe to) to patronize a mail center with an 83-year history, as well as to see the restored Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Art murals in place.

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Rediscover Haunted Arlington

Four stories to keep you up at night this October...

The Spirits at Overlee

Have you met the ghost of Margaret Febrey?

Febrey-Kincheloe House, from Poolside, 1997

In 2012 construction workers at the Overlee Community Center pool site reported that they were not alone - they would often see a little girl in Victorian clothing climbing through the debris and walking the site.

The construction site was on the grounds of a former historic mansion, known most recently as the Febrey-Kincheloe House, which stood for more than a century. Ernest Febrey constructed the grand home in the 1890s, where he raised his daughter, Margaret.

The Kincheloe family eventually bought the house from the Febrey family. When Mr. Kincheloe suddenly died, Mrs. Kincheloe converted the house into a rest home for Washington dignitaries called the Crestwood Sanitarium in 1947. In 1957 the house was converted into a community center clubhouse, and a pool was installed for the neighbors to enjoy. For many years clubhouse caretakers reported hearing music and laughing late into the night, but when they would investigate the noises, the sounds immediately ceased. The caretakers attributed the unseen source of the noises to the home's time as a sanitarium.

Young Margaret died in January of 1913 of a tubercular infection of the spine called Pott’s disease, and rumors are that the Febrey family abandoned the home soon after she passed away. But unlike the unseen clubhouse spirits, Margaret is not shy. Not only has she been seen around the property often, many people have reported speaking to her. Before the sale of the Febrey-Kincheloe House, contractors and realtors spoke of seeing a strangely dressed girl in the house standing by the basement stairs, and demolition workers spoke to her when they were razing the house in 2012. She’s been seen poolside and swimmers have reported speaking to a girl in a grey Victorian dress.

Children, if you meet Margaret at the pool, don’t be afraid. It’s said she likes to make friends with the children she meets.

Old Post Chapel

Fort Myer, now Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, has always had a storied history...

Old Post Chapel and New Gate at the Arlington National Cemetery

In 1864 the United States government began converting what had been the Lee Family’s estate into a burial ground for Union Army dead, housing for freed slaves and land for various military purposes. In 1861 Fort Ramsey, later renamed Fort Cass, was built on part of the land. However, after the end of the Civil War, it was abandoned.

In 1862 the Army built Fort Whipple a short distance southeast of Fort Cass. Its fortifications likewise were abandoned after the war ended, but its grounds were converted into the Signal School of Instruction for Army and Navy Officers in 1869. In 1881 it was renamed Fort Myer after Brigadier General Albert J. Myer, who had led the Signal School until his death in 1880.

In 1908 Fort Myer was the site of the first aviation fatality during one of Orville Wright’s first exhibition flights. And it was the location of the “Three Sisters” radio towers, which were the first to broadcast a voice across the United States and eventually over the Atlantic.

The Old Post Chapel, the only chapel on the grounds of the former Fort Whipple, holds the most claims of paranormal presences.

The Old Post Chapel was commissioned by Major George Patton Jr. in 1933 when he toured the chapels on the grounds of the Walter Reed Hospital. Patton told Post Commander Colonel Kenyon Joyce that the new chapel should combine the functions of a principal chapel with those of a mortuary chapel in one building.

Workers broke ground in February 1934, and the chapel was officially dedicated on April 21, 1935, where it was known for its attractive spire and intricate stained-glass windows. The chapel serves as a place of worship for the community, a wedding chapel, and a place of final honors for those laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Many fallen service members have lain in wait in the Old Post Chapel for their final trip, and it has allowed family members to grieve in private.

So it is unsurprising that many active duty service members have reported hearing disembodied voices and footsteps in the chapel when they have been alone.

Locked doors have unlocked themselves and opened on their own. K9 units patrolling with service people will refuse to go into the building, and balk at the door, especially at night. And visitors describe a young grief-stricken woman dressed in white who waits for her sweetheart; rumors are that she threw herself from the bell tower, which remains locked to this day.

Wakefield High School

Phantom of the Theater

Wakefield High School in 1996

Who knows where the Wakefield High School ghost has chosen to perform since the school theater it used to haunt was demolished in 2013...

Students and staff said that if you sat very quietly in the balcony seats of the theater, you might see and hear things you could not explain. The piano would begin to play even though no one was sitting at the keyboard. The lights would operate even though no one was in the lighting booth. And the light fixtures themselves would turn to impossible angles, sometimes coming to rest on the person in the balcony or the lone audience member.

Who was the ghost? Rumors say a crew member fell from the catwalk and died in the early 1960s, and was sometimes seen high up on the catwalk, once again reliving his last moments.

Arlington Hall

Who was that woman?

Arlington Hall Girls off for Sight-Seeing Trip - Washington, D.C.

The stately building near the intersection of Arlington Boulevard and South George Mason Drive may no longer be home to military codebreakers, but it's still a place of mystery.

In 1927 Dr. William Martin founded the Arlington Hall Junior College for Women. The rolling 100-acre campus included an award-winning riding club, and the stately Arlington Hall itself was home to many enviable social events including dinners, teas, balls, and formal dances.

In 1942 the Arlington Hall Junior College for Women quietly became the secret headquarters for the Signal Intelligence Service, a department dedicated to breaking German and Russian codes. Unbeknownst to the men and women working to end the war, the KGB had already infiltrated the center, spying via a long-time analyst who had defected to the U.S.S.R. After the Signal Intelligence Service expanded and transferred its headquarters, the building began its third life as a research center, and then as a satellite office for the State Department in 1989.

The building still holds its secrets - not only the unexploded Civil War-era rifle shell found sitting precariously under the hall during an excavation in 2008, but the unexplained noises that occupants hear in the quietest hours.

It is said that if you are downstairs when it is silent, and you know you are alone, you will hear footsteps above you, walking across the hard floor and then stepping onto the carpet and continuing their journey. If you go upstairs to investigate, you’ll see a young woman in a floral dress walking into and out of the women’s powder room on the way to a party. She stops to check her make-up in the mirror before she turns and vanishes...

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Rediscover Grace Murray Hopper

Mathematician, Navy Veteran, Arlington Resident

Grace Murray Hopper broke down gender barriers throughout her career in the emerging field of computer science.

Ironically, her many accolades even included being named the first computer science ‘Man of the Year’ in 1969 by the Data Processing Management Association.

Grace_Hopper

Grace Hopper 1984 - US Government Public Domain

Born in 1906, in New York City, Grace Murray Hopper, nee Grace Brewster Murray was raised in a time most when women were expected to not pursue careers. After the Great Depression employed women were perceived as taking jobs from men deemed to have a greater need to support their families.

However Grace Brewster Murray was raised in a family where education mattered. Murray attended Vassar College for her undergraduate degree in mathematics and physics. She completed her master’s and doctoral degrees in mathematics at Yale in 1930 and 1934, respectively, while continuing to teach at Vassar. Between 1934 and 1937, Yale awarded only seven doctorates in mathematics, and only one to a woman, Murray.

Grace Hopper LOC (002) Resize

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

Hopper, as she was then known (she married in 1930 and divorced in 1945 but kept her married name for the remainder of her life) taught until 1943 when she felt that she should enlist in the military to support the war effort.

During World War I, women were accepted into the Navy as Yeomen (F), which was the first time women were allowed into the armed forces as anything but nurses. Navy enlistment was once again opened to women in 1942 via the women’s auxiliary WAVES unit (Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service). The Rear Admiral who presented the idea to the Senate stated they expected enlistment “will probably go up around 10,000 before we get through with it,” clearly not expecting the almost 100,000 women who served in the Navy before the end of World War II.

Hopper was accepted on her second enlistment attempt and she graduated at the top of her WAVES class after a 60-day officer training. Gender bias was evident, however, as Hopper received a commission that read “I do hereby appoint him a Lieutenant (junior grade) of the U.S. Naval Reserve.”

When Hopper reported to the Navy Liaison Office at Harvard in 1944, she did not expect to be given only one week to comprehend the workings of the Mark 1 computer. Fortunately, Hopper’s lifelong interest in many disciplines and deep understanding of mathematics provided her the foundation to quickly interpret the groundbreaking technology.

While working on the Mark II computer in 1947, Hopper and her team found a moth inside the inner workings of the machine, which had prevented the relay from operating. Although at the time they did not use the term ‘debugging,’ to describe the incident, this anecdote has been widely used to source the phrase. The remains of the moth are preserved safely inside the group’s log book at the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1949, Hopper entered the private sector to work on the UNIVAC I commercial computer, but remained in the Naval Reserve. The UNIVAC I required original work on a compiler system that would convert one programming language into another. FLOW-MATIC was developed for the UNIVAC system, and via the CODASYL (Committee on Data Systems Language) consortium, Hopper developed COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) which was adopted by the Department of Defense and standardized in the 1960s.

Hopper remained in the Naval Reserve after she entered the private sector in 1949 to work on the UNIVAC I commercial computer. Here, she began original work on a compiler system that would convert one programming language into another. FLOW-MATIC was developed for the UNIVAC system, and via the CODASYL (Committee on Data Systems Language) consortium, Hopper developed COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) which was adopted by the Department of Defense and standardized in the 1960s.

Grace_Murray_Hopper_in_her_office_in_Washington_DC_1978_Lynn_Gilbert

Image courtesy of Lynn Gilbert copyright 1978

Although Hopper attempted to retire from the Naval Reserve as a Commander in 1966, she was recalled to active duty in 1967 and served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group as a Captain. Hopper retired a second time in 1971 but was recalled to active duty once again. She was promoted to Commodore, later renamed ‘Rear Admiral (Lower Half),’ making her one of very few female admirals.

Hopper had a passion for collecting, filling three apartments in RiverHouse in Pentagon City with the objects she treasured throughout her extensive travels and career. Six years after her final retirement, Grace Murray Hopper died at her home in RiverHouse on New Year’s Day, 1992. She was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors and posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, one of many military awards she received during her life. Her other awards include the World War II Victory medal, the Defense Distinguished Service medal, two National Defense Service medals and three Armed Forced Reserve medals.

Her biographer, Kathleen Williams, describes her as a person with “an intense focus, a tireless dedication, and an irrepressible urge to innovate.” In addition to her many honorary degrees, titles and accolades, the largest gathering for women in computing is named in her honor, with more than 15,000 women attending each year. Arlington County maintains a park on the grounds of RiverHouse in her honor.

References

Billings, C. W. (1989). Grace Hopper, Navy Admiral & Computer Pioneer. Hillfield, NJ: Enslow.

Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992): A legacy of innovation and service. (2017, February 27). Retrieved from https://news.yale.edu/2017/02/10/grace-murray-hopper-1906-1992-legacy-innovation-and-service

Lee, J. (n.d.). Grace Brewster Murray Hopper. Retrieved from https://history.computer.org/pioneers/hopper.html

Learn More

“Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea” by Kathleen Williams in Library of Naval Biography, Naval Institute Press, 2012.

“Grace Hopper: Queen of Computer Code” by Laurie Wallmark

“Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age” by Kurt Beyer

Watch a popular video of Grace Hopper lecturing at MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR0ujwlvbkQ

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Rediscover Brandymore Castle

Want to Hike to the Local "Castle"?

An easy walk within Madison Manor Park, off the paved bicycle/pedestrian path next to I-66, stands a quartz outcrop of rock near the border between current City of Falls Church and Arlington.

Photo take 2018, Arlington County Historic Preservation Program

In 1649, Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, granted seven Englishmen all the land between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers as a proprietary colony - despite being in exile and not having the power to do so. The grant was known as the Northern Neck land grant as it encompassed 5,282,000 acres of Virginia’s Northern Neck. This land had previously been (and partially still inhabited by) the Monacan Indian Nation, the Doeg, the Mannahoac, and the Powhatan, among other groups, and had been transferred without their permission.

Surveyor Charles Broadwater had travelled from Surrey in England, to Virginia several times in the six years prior to finally settling in the area in 1716. He and his wife Elizabeth Semmes West had two children. He immediately became very involved with the community, building a wharf near Great Hunt Creek (now Alexandria) and becoming a vestryman for Truro parish (largely in southern Fairfax County.)

On January 15, 1724, Charles received one of the Northern Neck land grant parcels NN-A-113, a 151-acre tract straddling the line between Fairfax and what is now Arlington. This was only a small part of his land holdings; between 1724-1726 he owned 2,089 acres.

Land grant to Charles Broadwater with Brandymore Castle noted as a wayfinding marker, courtesy of the Library of Virginia, Virginia Land Office Patents and Grants, Grants A 1722-1726

Landowners were required to fulfill a number of requirements to ‘perfect’ or take complete claim of the grant, including paying taxes, surveying the property boundaries, and constructing a building. Virginia was still only minimally developed, with hundreds of acres with barely a sign of European presence, so memorable natural elements in the landscape were important wayfinders for surveyors and early settlers.  The earliest named record of the quartz outcrop near the border between current City of Falls Church and Arlington is by Charles Broadwater himself, who described it in 1724.

The origin of the name is unknown- there is no Brandymore in Surrey, and Charles Broadwater made no reference to how he settled on the name, or who had named it before him. However, the name stuck not only in his notations, but also in official land records. Brandymore Castle went on to be mentioned in five other Northern Neck land grants as a key landmark in the earliest proprietary land surveys of Virginia.

In 1986, Arlington County’s Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB) recommended that the County Board designate Brandymore Castle as a local historic district to recognize its role in and representation of early settlement in Arlington.

The limestone outcrop has changed over the centuries as it has weathered almost 300 years since it was first seen by Charles Broadwater. It stands as a tangible reminder of the natural beauty that once dominated a rural landscape. This oft-forgotten stone outcrop was once a beacon for hundreds of acres of undisturbed forest.

In 2001 one of the larger stones was defaced by vandals. This required specialized cleaning with environmentally safe methods on the part of the Arlington County Parks Department. Because regular cleaning agents can be extremely harmful to the stone, and the runoff would have been toxic to the natural environment around it, the stone had to be sandblasted and then hand cleaned with water.

If you visit today, you’ll notice that even now one of the stones is noticeably brighter than the rest!

large boulder painted bright blue

Photo taken 2001, Arlington County Historic Preservation Program

In the area and want to hike up to visit? It’s a fairly easy walk within Madison Manor Park off the paved bicycle/pedestrian path next to I-66.

Open in Google Maps

References

Wise, Donald A. “Some Eighteenth Century Family Profiles, Part 1”, Arlington Historical Society Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 1, October 1977.

“About the Virginia Land Office Patents and Grants/Northern Neck Grant and Surveys”, Library of Virginia, accessed December 5, 2018 http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/opac/lonnabout.htm.

Moxam, Robert M., “The Re-Discovery of Brandymore Castle”, Arlington Historical Society Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 1, October 1973.

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Rediscover Zitkála-Šá

Native American Advocate and Author

On January 26, 1938, Zitkála-Šá, life-long advocate for Native American rights and a resident of 261 North Barton Street in Lyon Park, died at age 61. She was buried under the name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, in Arlington National Cemetery.

Image of Zitkála-Šá ca. 1921, courtesy of the Library of Congress

A nationally recognized Native American author and activist, Zitkála-Šá was a vocal proponent for citizenship rights for Native Americans. Born in South Dakota into a Yankton Dakota Sioux family, she thrived on the Yankton Indian Reservation until Quaker missionaries recruited some of the reservation’s children to attend a Quaker manual labor school where she was given the Christian name Gertrude Simmons. Although she enjoyed learning to read and write, she experienced first-hand the damage of having her heritage stripped away. Feeling torn between her life on the reservation and her forced assimilation into white mainstream culture, Zitkála-Šá pursued higher education and distinguished herself as a public speaker on social and political issues.

“Folded hands lie in my lap, for the time forgot. My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand. Drifting clouds and tinkling waters, together with the warmth of a genial summer day, bespeak with eloquence the loving Mystery round about us.”  

"Why I Am A Pagan," Atlantic Monthly, Volume 90, 1902

Her largely autobiographical work on indigenous life was published by the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly, including “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” and “The Trial Path” among many more. She collected tribal stories and legends into collections, and authored poems examining the intersection of nature, Native American life, and mainstream white American life.

In 1910, she began a collaboration with composer William F. Hanson, and the subsequent “The Sun Dance Opera” was the first opera authored by a Native American (under the name Gertrude Simmons).

“It was next to impossible to leave the iron routine after the civilizing machine had once begun its day's buzzing; and as it was inbred in me to suffer in silence rather than to appeal to the ears of one whose open eyes could not see my pain, I have many times trudged in the day's harness heavy-footed, like a dumb sick brute.”

"The School Days of an Indian Girl," Atlantic Monthly, Volume 85, 1900

As a member of the Society of American Indians, Gertrude Simmons (the name she used in records and public affairs) lectured nationally and lobbied for citizenship rights for Native Americans who were not naturalized U.S. citizens by birth but could apply through pathways such as military service, renouncing tribal affiliations, or accepting land allotments. As a previous clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she criticized the bureau for its mistreatment of Indigenous children placed in national education systems that forced assimilation and Christian values.

In 1916, her husband, Captain Raymond Talefase Bonnin (also of Yankton descent), lost his position at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Utah and they moved to Washington D.C.  where, as editor of the Society of American Indian’s publication American Indian Magazine, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin wrote about and exhibited treatises on many controversial issues. In 1923, she co-authored “Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribe, Legalized Robbery” which discussed theft and murder by corporations seeking access to Native American-owned oil-rich lands. The article is credited with influencing the development of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which returned government and land management to Native Americans.

On November 3, 1925, Gertrude and Raymond Bonnin purchased the stone bungalow at 261 North Barton Street in Arlington. from the first owners, Loyd and Bernice Claire. The Claires had built the house only one year earlier, having bought it from the well-known Lyon & Fitch real estate development. The Lyon & Fitch real estate team sold the Lyon Park subdivision properties with deed restrictions and covenants, including one preventing the property from being sold or rented to non-whites for a period of 99 years. The census recognized people of Native American ancestry as white and therefore the Bonnins were not prevented from purchasing the property.

In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship to all Native Americans, but did not automatically afford voting rights. In response, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin co-founded and presided over the National Council of American Indians to unify First Nations in the movement to gain voting rights, healthcare, legal standing, and land rights. She also created the Indian Welfare Committee of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, speaking often in Washington, Arlington, and Fairfax.  

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin spent the remainder of her life in Arlington as president of the Council of American Indians, speaking and writing about the continuing political and social mistreatment of Native Americans. After her death, her husband continued to live in their home until his death in 1942 when the property was left in trust to their grandchildren.

References

United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.

Arlington County Land Records Office, various deeds pertaining to Gertrude S. Bonnin and R.T. Bonnin: Deed Book 609, p. 237, book 319, p. 64, and book 174, p. 152.

Zitkála-Šá, “The School Days of an Indian Girl”, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 85, 1900.

Zitkála-Šá, “Why I Am A Pagan”, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 90, 1902.

Further Reading

Lewandowski, Tadeusz. Red Bird, Red Power: The Life and Legacy of Zitkala-Ša, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. (Available from the Library)

Susag, Dorothea M., Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin): A Power(full) Literary Voice, Studies in American Indian Literatures, University of Nebraska Press, Series 2, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter 1993), pp. 3-24.

Tsjeng, Zing, Forgotten Women: The Leaders. London: Cassell Illustrated, 2018. (Available from the Library)

Capaldi, Gina. Red Bird Sings: the Story of Zitkala-̈Sa, Native American Author, Musician, and Activist, Carolrhoda Books, 2011. (Available from the Library)

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

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