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We’ve received great encouragement regarding the newly named, recently (re)opened Center for Local History at Arlington Public Library (formerly the Virginia Room).
And the Arlington Mercury news blog has captured in video form the direction in which the Center is headed.
We hope you’ll stop by soon or maybe bring us some memories to be digitized.
Your story is our story.
On Monday, June 3, the Center for Local History will hold a community scan-in for the Nauck neighborhood, at the Drew Model Elementary School, from 6:00-7:30 pm.
Community Scan-ins are events where the Center for Local History makes available its scanning equipment for the purpose of gathering local history by digitizing photographs, slides, photo negatives, or even personal documents. We keep a copy for researchers here at the Center for Local History, and give you a digital copy as well. You keep the originals, but the image can be available to researchers, students, and those interested in the collective memory of the community.
So if you have old photographs, slides, or other images that relate to the history of the Green Valley/Nauck area, we would love it if you could come out, show your support, and let us digitize them for you!
Scanned images will be donated to Drew School, to help build a local history archive for students to use.
Last Saturday was the first of what we hope will be many “community scan-ins” at the Green Valley Memorial Day Block Party, held in collaboration with the Nauck Civic Association Community Affairs Committee’s History & Heritage Program:
The Center for Local History’s Judy Knudsen and Chinn Funeral Home’s Tyra Baker look at some old photos of Green Valley to be scanned.
As this was our first time out, it was a learning experience…
One thing we learned is that weather is the natural enemy of outdoor scan-in events. Last Saturday’s strong winds meant that our new banner couldn’t be put up without becoming a sail and falling over. In addition, our tent was threatening to blow away and had to be taken down. All this meant that, with the day’s bright sun, it was difficult to see the computer monitors to actually do the scanning, which led to the use of an umbrella purchased from Green Valley Pharmacy as a sunshade.
It was an effective, if ridiculous-looking solution:
The Center for Local History’s Tad Suiter (under umbrella) and Judy Knudsen.
If you have images of the Nauck neighborhood that you would like to share but you cannot make it Monday, or if you would be interested in having a community scan-in in your neighborhood, please feel free to contact us at the Center for Local History and we will try to help you out!
This year has brought big changes to Central Library, with building-wide renovation and redesign.
The Local History Team has used these renovations as an opportunity to re-evaluate how we present our mission and projects to the public. After much consideration, as of our reopening this week, the “Virginia Room” name is being retired.
We are now the Center for Local History at Arlington Public Library.
Simply put, the name “Virginia Room” was insufficient to convey the scope of the work that we do and the resources we offer.
Our mission has not changed: we are still dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing the history of our community.
Our rich historical collections and range of projects offer the Arlington community the ability to not only learn about and research their history, but also contribute to its telling. We are, and have always been, much more than just a room; now our name will reflect this.
By changing our name to the Center for Local History we hope to provide a better explanation of who we are: our many projects and the mission that links them.
The Center for Local History has three primary components:
Later this summer, we will add another element to our Digital Initiatives program, as the Library’s Digital Projects Lab will become part of the Center for Local History.
The Digital Projects Lab will provide a variety of software and hardware to allow anyone to come in and share their own pieces of Arlington history, through scanning family photographs or recording oral histories, along with providing a space and resources to create digital projects.
The Center for Local History at the Arlington Public Library is located on the first floor of Central Library. We hope you will come and visit us, explore our collections and follow all the exciting new projects coming up this year and beyond.
This blog post represents the first in our new series, Unboxed, where we will give a behind-the-scenes view of new and interesting Center for Local History projects.
We have a lot of exciting projects in the pipeline, and this blog series will be a place where we can let you behind the scenes, show you what we’ve got in the works, and what we’re working on. Hope you follow along and enjoy it!
Website: library.arlingtonva.us/localhistory
Phone: 703-228-5966
Email: localhistory@arlingtonva.us
Research Room
1015 N. Quincy Street
Arlington, Virginia 22201
Sunday: Closed
Monday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m
Tuesday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Wednesday: 1 p.m. – 9 p.m
Thursday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m
Friday: Closed
Saturday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
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At 7 a.m. on Feb. 23, 1997, the shell of the old Arlington County Courthouse came down in an impressive, yet controlled, implosion. Located across the street from the current courthouse and correctional center, the building was opened in 1960 with great fanfare, as it was a vast improvement over the original courthouse from 1898. However, the 1960 building had lots of asbestos and no sprinkler or fire alarm system, and a major fire in 1990 was its death knell. The county completed the current courthouse building in 1995, and the 1960 building was used by the fire department for training exercises until its demolition. The area is now a parking lot.
This series of photographs by County Photographer Deborah Ernst give a dramatic view of the implosion and the rubble it left behind.
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Recorded at Central Library, January 12, 2013
101-year-old Martha Ann Miller speaks to the Arlington Branch of the American Association of University Women, sharing her years as a teacher in Arlington and particularly the struggles over desegregation in the 1960′s.
The First Century, and Not Ready for the Rocking Chair Yet by Martha Ann Miller is available in the Virginia Room.
The 1935 Arlington County Directory of Street Names represents a unique moment in Arlington history-- a time when many Arlingtonians had to re-learn the names of their streets and those of their neighbors.
Page 1 from the Arlington County Virginia Directory of Street Names, 1935, screenshot of scanned document opened in the Community Archives.
In 1932, Arlington County had already begun a boom in population that would only continue over the next several decades. Between 1900 and 1930, the population of the once-rural area had grown by over 350%--from 6,430 to 23,278--despite the annexation of sizable portions of land by the city of Alexandria in 1915 and 1929.
New streetcar suburbs began popping up all around Arlington County--between 1900 and 1910 alone, plats for seventy new subdivisions were entered into the County Deed Books.
However, these new developments sprang up with little to no coordination or central planning, and by 1932, this was beginning to create problems. The developments formed what was, in effect, a confusing archipelago of small, unconnected towns, and street names were frequently repeated throughout the county. There were, by one account, as many as twenty-five different roads named "Arlington," for example, as well as many roads known as "Washington," "Virginia," and "Lee."
Visitors found the county difficult to navigate, neighborhood names had to be attached to mailing addresses to ensure that letters arrived at the right building, and some DC-area businesses even refused to deliver to customers in Arlington. There were also concerns about the Fire Department being dispatched to a house at the same address in the wrong subdivision.
1935 Arlington County Franklin Insurance Property Atlas
The newly-established “County Board-County Manager” Government of Arlington decided very quickly to try to rectify this situation. One of the primary issues motivating them seems to have been the desire to see a Post Office in Arlington, as mail service to Arlington had been routed through Washington D.C. since 1925, and the Post Office Department had dictated that no Post Office would be allocated to Arlington until its street naming scheme was more coherent and logical. To this end, a Street Naming Committee was established, tasked with rationalizing the county's street naming scheme.
Initially, the committee considered simply eliminating duplicate street names, leaving one street with each repeated name. The committee quickly decided that this approach was insufficient, and that a more general, systemic plan was necessary. Soliciting feedback from the county’s residents, the committee got a variety of proposals, from continuing DC’s alphabetical/numeric scheme to having the residents of each street vote on a street name.
Eventually, the committee decided on essentially the county’s current street naming scheme:
The Committee’s recommendations were put forward for public comment, and were approved with several small amendments in August of 1934--thirty months after the project began. In 1936, Arlington County was assigned a local Postmaster for the first time in over ten years, and the next year, the Postmaster General of the United States of America was on hand for the dedication of the cornerstone of the new Post Office in Clarendon--the first federal government building in Arlington County.
For people researching Arlington before 1934, the street name change can present challenges. This searchable PDF of the Arlington County Virginia Directory of Street Names, which opens by clicking or tapping on the cover image, can help with navigation of Arlington before the change.
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.
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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In the 1950s and 1960s especially, American citizenry was encouraged to be proactive in protecting themselves from nuclear fallout (remember “Duck and Cover”?).
Arlington was no exception. In late 1960s, the Northern Virginia Regional Planning Commission, which covered the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church and Arlington, Fairfax, Loudon and Prince William Counties, developed a civil defense plan for a possible nuclear attack. These plans included a fallout shelter program, mapping shelters in regard to population centers and how to get people to those shelters.
The Northern Virginia Region Community Shelter Program, published in 1968, outlined these plans and processes, and also published maps of shelter locations for subsets of the region. The Arlington Edition of the map sectioned the county into color-coded zones so users could find a shelter in their area and contained tips on creating and stocking your own shelter. The above image shows the fallout shelter locations for Shirlington, and the image below lists the names of these shelters. The map itself has the following introduction:
“In case of danger from fallout from a nuclear attack upon this country, you and your family would need to know WHERE TO GO and WHAT TO DO. This Community Shelter Plan contains this information for every citizen. It is based on making the best possible use of the fallout protection now available. If you and your family take action, as this Plan recommends, you will have maximum chance for survival from fallout effects.”
Did you have a fallout shelter in your home or neighborhood? Do you remember preparing for “the Big One”? We want to hear from you.
Presented on September 20, 2012, at Central Library, as part of the Virginia Room’s ongoing Arlington Reunion series.
Hoffman-Boston High School was created in South Arlington as a segregated junior high school for African Americans. It later served as the County’s first high school, and closed after graduating its last full class in 1964.
The school was later reopened as Hoffman Boston Elementary in the Oakridge neighborhood, and remains part of the Arlington schools system.
The program included screening of footage of the 1964 Hoffman-Boston Homecoming celebration, depicting the queen’s court, parade and homecoming football game, which Mr. Milton Rowe Sr. has donated to the Virginia Room.
Learn more about Local History at Arlington Public Library.
Artists crossover from performing to producing, find parallel careers in film, literature, and the visual arts with regularity. In earlier times, this phenomenon was less prevalent, excepting well-known performers such as Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Arlington’s own Gerald M. Lewis had a rich and varied career, being involved in many different aspects of music including performing, instruction, production, and recording.
From 1954-1979, Mr. Lewis served as a band director for Gunston and Stratford Junior High Schools, and Wakefield and Washington-Lee High Schools. At his home on 216 S. Pershing Drive, Lewis also owned and operated Gerald Lewis Recording. Housed in a mobile home adjacent to his residence, Gerald Lewis Recording was a mobile recording unit that offered him the ability to record performers and public events on location.
Operating from 1964-1991, a remarkably diverse customer base utilized Mr. Lewis’ recording service. Local Virginia and Maryland schools and churches recorded public events and concerts, including performances from high school marching bands and public speakers.
Local recording artists also took advantage of Lewis’ expertise. In 1985, Teen-Beat Records artists Unrest used the mobile studio to master their debut 7” single “So You Want To Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”/ “Zelda” (Side A) – “The Hill” (Side B), which was also the first Teen-Beat vinyl release. Unrest band member and Teen-Beat impresario Mark Robinson recalls, “He [Lewis] essentially was the broker for Teen-Beat to press our first record. He put the master tape together, sent it to the pressing plant, etc. I paid him, and he paid the pressing plant. I found his number in the Yellow Pages. He also recorded and pressed up the Arlington All-County Orchestra record that I was on back in 4th or 5th grade, so I knew that this guy knew how to make a record.”
In 1996, Mr. Lewis and his wife Elizabeth, a music teacher at Wakefield High School, moved to Tennessee where he continued to be involved in music, directing, arranging, and playing trombone for the Pleasant Hill Ensemble until his passing in March of 2008, at the age of 82.
Do you have any memories of Mr. Lewis or his recording services?
The American Civil War started on April 12, 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumter, and ranged across the states from Pennsylvania to New Orleans. You probably know about the many battles waged here, in Virginia and the DC area. But did you know that you can follow the events of the Civil War in real time?
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Washington Post developed a set of linked Twitter accounts that “tweet” events of the Civil War, 150 years after they happened.
To experience the Civil War as it would have been tweeted, subscribe to the Tweeting the Civil War list on twitter, or bookmark the page link on your computer.
Tweeting characters include:
While we often think of history as incidents centered on explosive battles or an inevitable tide of history, the “Tweeting the Civil War” project reminds us in 140 characters that history is the collective experience of many individuals living their day-to-day lives.
