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Early Emergency Fire Response

From an oral history with Walter R. De Groot:
“Like I said, Fillmore Gardens [an apartment complex in South Arlington] before that was done, there was kind of a farm area there.  The county didn’t pick up trash.  You burned your trash and if you had a lot of waste, limbs and stuff breaking off the trees or raking leaves in the fall, you just drug them out [and] what you would have called “curbed” them…most of them were just drainage ditches and folks just dragged them out in the street and set them on fire.  And I think that’s how some of those field fires got going; either kids deliberately set them or farmers just burning waste and just caught the field on fire.

An interesting thing I had to learn was sound of sirens.  Every fire house had a code and you heard like the sound of the fifth cycle up and down, up and down, and you had to count those.  As I recall, Clarendon was three.  If they didn’t get many people they turned the siren on again and it would cycle up and down…  If you heard the siren, you called the dispatcher and the dispatcher would just immediately spit out an address and hang up, he was so busy.

Then of course later on, a lot of the volunteer firemen company’s would buy radios and all the boys would have what they called scanners, and they’d pick up any of the radio messages.  And of course whatever units were being dispatched you’d pick that up, that’s not my company, forget it.”

Virginia Room Oral History Collection
Walter  R. De Groot, Series 3, # 103
2004-05

The photograph above is the Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department building and trucks, ca. 1951.

What About You?

What are your memories regarding Arlington’s Fire Department or large fires in your neighborhood?

Homes of Character

Brumback Realty Company of Clarendon, founded by a father with six sons, was a builder in Country Club Hills in 1928-29. Country Club Hills was developed from 126 acres of beautiful hills and wooded land from the old Civil War era Grunwell estate and commanded a view of Washington, D.C. One of their architects was A.F. Thelander, who designed and built his own home in Country Club Hills at Rock Spring Drive and Avondale Avenue, facing the Washington Golf and Country Club.  The English Tudor, Colonial, and Spanish style homes combined brick and stone and included two car garages, variegated tile roofs and copper gutters and flashing. The first 15 homes sold for an average of $20,000 in 1929. The Virginia Room has some photos from Brumback Realty showing tastefully furnished interiors and the distinctive exteriors of homes that are still admired today.

The Virginia Room has a copy of Arlington Historical Society’s 1987 driving tour of Brumback Homes in Country Club Hills, Woodlawn, Woodmont, Lyon Park, Lyon Village and some individual streets.  The driving tour includes a quotation from Keith A. Brumback, President of Brumback Realty, Inc.  about the Burmback Policy of Doing Business:  “In my opinion, one of the most important and worthwhile lines of work any individual can undertake is that of providing families with attractive, comfortable homes in which all the joy of home-ownership can be experienced, without financial strain or worry on the family, and at the lowest possible price consistent with sound construction methods and good business practice.”

A Virginia Room Oral History interview of George and Frances Brumback provides more information on the Brumback Realty Company, the building of Country Club Hills and Mrs. Brumback’s career as a teacher at Cherrydale and Woodmont Elementary Schools.

What about you?  Do you live in a Brumback home?  Do you have any photos of your home and neighborhood? The Virginia Room wants to know.

When Arlington Did the Right Thing

"The time is always right to do the right thing." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On August 28, the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial will be formally dedicated in Washington D.C. Located in West Potomac Park and flanked by the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the addition of the King Memorial creates a monumental trifecta of leadership and inspiration.

As a child of nine in August of 1963, I had little knowledge of the man whose eloquence and personal courage undergirded a movement. I had no knowledge of the civil rights movement itself. African-Americans were just not a part of my everyday experience. Just as it is often observed that there are two Virginias, in 1963 there were two Arlingtons: the well-to-do, predominantly white North Arlington and the less prosperous, racially mixed South Arlington. It was a distinction that was more than just directional. There were few students of color in my elementary school, Stewart-Tuckahoe, when I attended from 1960-1966--a fact consistent with the 1960 Census, which reported only 7,063 foreign–born persons or 4.3 percent of the County’s total population.

High View Park in North Arlington and Arlington View and Green Valley (Nauck) in South Arlington were all that remained of the County’s African-American communities. High View Park, known in my day as "Hall's Hill," was a neighborhood not far from where I grew up. It epitomized the less prosperous and segregated Arlington: an enclave of substandard housing and dead-ended, unpaved streets that for much of its history had been literally walled from the white neighborhoods it bordered by a series of 7-foot fences.

The year of King’s speech, the Arlington Planning Commission established a committee to study how best to maintain residential neighborhoods, a study that led to the creation of the Neighborhood Conservation Program. On Feb. 13, 1965, the County Board approved a Neighborhood Conservation Plan for High View Park hailing the tireless efforts of the residents who spoke up for their neighborhood’s civic rights. Abraham Lincoln, whose 156th birthday was celebrated the day before, would have been proud.

As significant as this moment was in Arlington's pursuit of racial parity, it was but the latest example of the County’s black and white residents working together for common cause. A few years earlier, some of the High View Park champions--E. Leslie and Dorothy Hamm and Peggy Deskins – had joined Edmund and Elizabeth Campbell and others to face down Sen. Harry Byrd’s "massive resistance" and integrate the County’s schools.

The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision to end school segregation "with all deliberate speed" rocked Virginia to its core in May 1954. The "political museum piece" that was Virginia, as characterized by political scientist V.O Key in his classic, "Southern Politics in State and Nation" [1949], was stuck on the horns of a dilemma, caught between the moral imperative to do right by Virginia and remain segregated, or to do the right thing. It was an issue that pitted being a Virginian against being an American. Arlington, having evolved from a bedroom community in the shadow of the nation's capital to a thriving, socially progressive community of residents whose political views were markedly different from those of the rest of the state, found itself at the center of the fight.

By 1956, political passions were running high in Richmond as "massive resistance" to the High Court's mandate was gaining momentum, giving rise to a plan to prevent any integrated schools from receiving state funds and authorizing the governor to order any such school to close. Meanwhile the NAACP was filing lawsuits across the state to force integration, including a suit brought on behalf of 15 African American and white parents and 22 students in Arlington.

The case was named for Clarissa S. Thompson, an African American student who wanted to attend Arlington's all white Washington-Lee High School instead of the all black Hoffman-Boston. After hearing oral arguments, Alexandria Federal District Judge Albert V. Bryan, who only four years before in writing the opinion in the original Prince Edward County school integration case* stated that racial segregation caused no hurt or harm to either race, ordered that the schools in Arlington be desegregated. Suits and countersuits ensued--deliberation without speed.

Finally, on Jan. 19, 1959 (birthday of Virginia native son Robert E. Lee), the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals, by a ruling of 5-2, overturnedthe Virginia legislature's "massive resistance" laws and its threat of schools closures, declaring them in violation of the Virginia Constitution. The issue of school integration had assailed Virginia’s traditional political culture, a culture that was oligarchic, parsimonious, suspicious of "big" government, discouraging of public participation in the affairs of state, obeisant to the way things were. Throughout the long, slow march to integration in Virginia, rhetoric trumped reason; fear mongering triumphed over fairness; delay prevented "deliberate speed." Traditional Southern values were pitted against unwanted northern influence--ideologues against pragmatists.

The press, too played a powerful role on both sides of the integration issue. For every Richmond News Leader editorial that intrepidly egged on the resisters, editorials in both the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and The Washington Post and Times Herald, penned by Lenoir Chambers and Robert Muse, respectively, eschewed moral turpitude and urged action and acceptance.

Virginia fought the law, but the law won. On Feb. 2, 1959, Ronald Deskins, Michael Jones, Lance Newman and Gloria Thompson (sister of Clarissa) entered Stratford Junior High School, splitting a phalanx of approximately 100 helmeted Arlington police officers who were Little Rock-ready with gas grenades, masks and batons. Their walk to school irrevocably changed Virginia although at the time, they were unaware of its historical significance.

Years later, reminiscing at a panel discussion with 500 students at Stratford Junior High (now H-B Woodlawn), the four understated their roles on that important day citing their parents and other community leaders – blacks and whites -- as the true heroes of Arlington’s integration story. The integration of Stratford was but the first of many small steps toward integration. It would still be years before black and white children could sit alongside one another at drug store counters and drink Cokes, attend dances together, or compete on the same sports teams.

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* Prince Edward County Public Schools chose to close rather than integrate and remained closed from 1959-1964. It was the only county system in the country to do so.

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The material for this story came from the archives of the Virginia Room of Arlington Public Library. The attached bibliography will help interested readers learn more about these important events in Arlington’s history.

VA Room Oral Histories about Desegregation

  • Series 3, no. 26 Edmund Campbell
  • Series 3, no. 48 Dorothy Hamm
  • Series 3, no. 110 Ray Reid
  • Series 3, no. 112 John Robinson
  • Series 3, no. 061 Theda Henle

DVD:

Segregation/Integration Collections in the Arlington Community Archives

  • RG 7: Arlington County Public Schools
  • RG 7B: Hoffman-Boston High School Records
  • RG 9: Records of Citizen’s Committee for School Improvement
  • RG 18: Personal Papers of Barbara Marx
  • RG 19: Personal Papers of Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell
  • RG 69: Arlington County Public Schools: Desegregation Materials (copies culled from RG 7)

Vertical Files:

  • 5 Folders containing clippings, articles, memos, reports, etc. relating to desegregation

Books:

 

The Chain Bridge

The first bridge to cross the Potomac in the Washington area was constructed in 1797 when Georgetown merchants built the “Falls Bridge” at the “Little Falls.” 

The bridge was built to replace ferry service and was primarily used to drive cattle across to the Georgetown auction markets after the cattle had drunk heavily at Pimmit Run.

There have been eight bridges built on this site.  The original one was a covered wooden structure that collapsed in 1804, and the second was destroyed by floods after only 6 months.  In 1810, a third bridge was constructed that was truly a “Chain Bridge,” the name by which all subsequent bridges have been known.  Two chains were made from four-foot links of wrought iron and suspended from massive stone towers at either shore.  The bridge itself was 136 feet long and 15 feet wide.

This was a toll bridge which reported $9,000 in collected tolls in 1810.  Tolls, thought to be high, were:

  • Four Horse Carriage: 1 ½ dollars
  • Two Horse Carriage:  1 dollar
  • Four Horse Wagon:  62 ½ cents
  • Two Horse Wagon:  37 ½ cents
  • Gig:  36 ½ cents
  • Man: 6 ½ cents

It was a relatively low bridge, and floods were a continuing problem.  The third, fourth, and fifth structures were all swept away by high water.

The present Chain Bridge, a simple continuous steel girder structure, was built in 1939 with a vertical clearance between the bridge and the river of 45 feet.  Nevertheless, in times of severe flooding, such as that experienced during Hurricane Agnes in 1972, the water level was so high that it became within a few feet of the bridge’s floor.

 

Do you remember Chain Bridge during the 1972 flooding?

 

"Arlington Heritage"

Much of what we know about the history of Arlington County is due to the work of Eleanor Lee Templeman, photographer, local historian, and author of several books on the history of the area.

Templeman, although born in 1907 in Washington DC, grew up in California. She moved back east to attend the Critcher School of Painting and Applied Arts, where she graduated in 1929. She subsequently worked as an artist and illustrator for the American Automobile Association and the US Geological Survey.

However, Templeman’s real passion lay in local history. She was a descendent of Richard Bland Lee, uncle to Robert E. Lee, and served as Secretary, Genealogist and Historian of the Society of Lees in Virginia at various points between 1947 and her death in 1990. She was heavily involved with the fights to preserve Fort Marcy, Fort Ethan Allen and Sulley Plantation, and at the time of her death was working with groups to preserve Abingdon Plantation, which is located on Reagan National Airport grounds.

It is Eleanor Lee Templeman’s bibliography, however, that has had such an effect on local historical research. Templeman was constantly writing articles on Arlington and Northern Virginia history for a variety of historical publications, co-authored Northern Virginia Heritage and was the sole author of Arlington Heritage: Vignettes of a Virginia County (seen above). Templeman did the majority of the photography for both books; these photographs are an invaluable resource, documenting important structures, roads, cemeteries and even large trees as they stood in the 1950s and 1960s, when Arlington was undergoing major development. Meant as a “then and now” type of book, her “now” has turned into our “then”.

Templeman was rewarded for her efforts with awards from Marymount University in 1975 and the American Association for State and Local History in 1983. She was the Organized Women Voters of Arlington’s Women of the Year in 1966. Here in the library, the Virginia Room holds multiple copies of Northern Virginia Heritage and Arlington Heritage, and the Arlington Community Archives has PG 900, her photographs from both books, and RG 23, her research and clipping files.

Check Out the Glencarlyn Scrapbooks

How is your Glencarlyn History?

Did you know that the history of the Glencarlyn neighborhood goes all the way back to when George Washington was originally surveying the land of Virginia? Or that the Glencarlyn Branch Library began as the Burdett Library in 1922, and was the first library in Arlington?

If you’re visiting the neighborhood for Glencarlyn Day on June 4, come into the Library and check out the 3 volume Glencarlyn Scrapbook. While you’re here, don’t miss the section of the huge oak tree on which George Washington left his surveyor’s marks, the original 1959 deed that gave the Glencarlyn Library to Arlington County, and a piece of original Smokey the Bear artwork which Rudy Wendelin created for the people of the Glencarlyn neighborhood.

You can also read more in Glencarlyn Remembered: the First 100 Years, which is a collection of photos from the Glencarlyn Scrapbooks:

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=104087

Where is my Civil War Ancestor’s Camp?

 

Union soldiers in Arlington wrote from geographic locations such as Arlington Heights and Hall’s Hill. While the forts in the defenses of Washington are well-documented and photographed, it can be difficult to find information on temporary camps and hospitals. State and local historical organizations help piece together the “puzzle” of a Civil War ancestor’s life after consulting on-line photographs and other sources available through the Library of Congress and National Archives and Records Administration.

For example, on December 31, 1861, Iselin Roberts of the 4th NY Cavalry wrote a letter to “My Dear Wife Nelly” from Camp Hunters Chapel. Information from the Arlington Historical Society website http://www.arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org  and Arlington United Methodist Church historian Sara Collins locates this camp at Glebe Road and Columbia Pike, at the site of the Hunter’s Chapel Methodist Church. The Union Army established a camp and appropriated church building materials. Hunters Chapel’s successor, Arlington United Methodist Church, is two blocks away.

The New York State Museum and Veteran’s Research Center website has a regimental history of the 4th NY Cavalry’s service, including their journey to Fairfax Court House and onward to the First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas, and the writings of Gustavus Asche-Berg, “This Sorrowful War: A Veterinary Surgeon in the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign.”

Another New York regiment stationed at Hunter’s Chapel, the 8th NY Infantry, also known as the German Rifles or Blenker’s Division, was made up of German immigrants. The aristocratic military veterans of European wars in Blenker’s Division impressed General-in-Chief George McClellan with their drilling practices and neat campsites. A book owned by Arlington Central Library, The Soldier’s Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War by Robert E. Bonner contains soldiers’ writings and drawings from the Gilder Lehrman Collection of New York City. A unique drawing of Camp Hunter’s Chapel and drawings of other Northern Virginia locations by Private Henry Berckhoff of the 8th NY German Rifles can be found in this book and in a virtual exhibit on the Digital History website of the University of Houston.

What about you?

Do you have a Civil War ancestor who came to Arlington? Do you know of documents or images of the Civil War in the Northern Virginia area? The Virginia Room wants to know.

Transcribed text of letter from Iselin Roberts to wife Nelly

December 31, 1861
Headquarters New York Mounted Rifles
4th Calvary N.Y. Volunteers
Camp Hunter’s Chapel, Virginia

My Dear Wife Nelly,

I wrote to you two days ago and I cannot help writing to you again. You will excuse the writing as my head aches so I can hardly see I have such a bad cold still I must have a few words with my Nelly. I received an nother Box yesterday from my Sisters and Brothers for Christmas and we had a jolly time over it I assure you for there was lots of good things in it. My Dear Nelly, I wrote to you on Sunday last the day that I received your letter and I am in hopes that I will hear from you soon again. I wish that you could write to me often as your letters do me so much good, and I like to hear from you so very much.

Dear Nelly, I did not say much in my last as I was in such a hurry but you can give my Best Respects and wish all of them a Happy New Years for me. I mean Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Jenner, Mrs Simmons, Mrs. Richmond, Mrs. Clark, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Arnold and all inquiring friends, also Mr. Phillips, Mr. Jenner, Mr. Rodman, Dr. Crane, Dr. Baker and all of your friends. I hope there will be no trouble about the Furlough, they say that we will get paid the fifth of January. I hope we will as I want to try and bring the money home to you. I haven’t much to say at present, only I hope that my dear Nelly will have a good New Years.

Bibliography

  • Arlington Historical Society website http://www.arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org
  • Bonner, Robert E., The Soldier’s Pen, Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War, New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.
  • Cooling, Benjamin Franklin III, Owen, Walton H. II, Mr. Lincoln’s Forts: A Guide to the Civil War Defenses of Washington, Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010.
  • Digital History, University of Houston website: http://www.digitalhistory/uh.edu/ Virtual Exhibitions: Watercolor Sketchbook by Henry Berckhoff 8th NY German Rifles, Gilder Lehrman Collection GL1606 p.6 Morning Scene at Camp Hunter’s Chapel, October 1861.
  • Gernand, Bradley E., A Virginia Village goes to War: Falls Church during the Civil War, Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Co. Publishers, 2002.
  • Gilder Lehrman Collection website: http://www.gilderlehrman.org
  • New York State Museum and Research Center http://www.dnma.state.ny.us
  • Virginia Room Newsclipping Files – Civil War – Various categories Includes notes by Arlington United Methodist Church Historian Sara Collins, U.S. Sanitary Commission list of camps, lists of many Union regiments in Arlington.

Walker Chapel

 

Home to one of the earliest church congregations in Arlington County, the unique history of Walker Chapel is that of both change and tradition.

Located at the present address of 4102 North Glebe Road, the original Walker Chapel was built in 1871, six years after the end of the Civil War, and only a year after the end of Arlington County’s occupation by the Union Army. Initially a junior church of the Mount Olivet Circuit, the chapel was situated on land donated by Robert and James Walker, whose father David Walker was buried in the adjacent Walker (Family) Grave Yard. The original building was a single room frame structure with a small belfry and basement, seated near the upper part of the graveyard. A new church was built at the opposite end of the cemetery in 1903, with further additions taking place in 1952 and 1954, including the construction of an education and administrative building. The original chapel continued to be used for Sunday School classes prior to its demolition in 1930. The photograph above was taken in August, 1996, before the extensive renovations of 1999; the result is the stately white brick church that stands today.

What about you? Have you been to Walker Chapel? We’d love to hear from you.

All Work and No Play

In 1949, Arlington established a formal Department of Recreation for the rapidly growing and developing county. However, the classes, clubs, and activities sponsored by the department mirrored the school system and were segregated. In 1950, a formal "Negro Recreation Section" was created "with a special emphasis on sports." Its director was Ernest E. Johnson, who was a central figure for African-Americans in Arlington who wished to participate in the Department's programs.

Johnson expanded the Negro Recreation Section to include classes for children in not only a variety of sports, but dance, theater, and music (including accordion classes), and community events like teen beauty pageants and parades. He was forward-thinking, documenting many of these activities in the early to mid-1950s with professional photographs; a collection of 78 of these images are held in the Community Archives. Johnson oversaw the development of Jennie Dean field and a new recreation center at Hoffman-Boston on S. Queen St. This center later became known as the Carver Center. Johnson's activities stretched beyond the Department of Recreation. He was the leader of Arlington's first African-American Cub Scout Pack (#589), chartered in April of 1952.

For the 1962-1963 fiscal year, the Negro Recreation Section was quietly changed to the Carver Section, with Johnson still as its supervisor. In 1964, the Negro Recreation Section disappeared in a department reorganization; Johnson became Supervisor of the Centers Section, overseeing "teen clubs, free classes, and meetings of non-Department sponsored clubs in the centers." With no fanfare at all, the county's Department of Recreation had become desegregated and Johnson was integrated into the department's existing administration.

Ernest Johnson continued to serve Arlington County, and on May 8, 1982, Arlington celebrated Ernest E. Johnson Day with a parade that ran from the Walter Reed Recreation Center to the Carver Recreation Center, a softball game that afternoon, a senior tea and a testimonial dinner that evening. A photograph from the event, showing Johnson (center) and his wife Mignon (left) is shown above. Johnson died in December 1992, after a life to service to the people of Arlington; his work let Arlington play.

What About You?

What are your memories of Arlington's Department of Recreation: classes, clubs, parks, and fields? We want to hear from you!

The Lyon’s Den

Lyonhurst, or Missionhurst as it is now known, is a Spanish Mission-style stucco house originally built in 1907 as a residence for Frank Lyon, an early developer in the County.

Lyon had traveled a great deal and was influenced by the Spanish missions he had seen in the American West. The house was built with large porches to catch the breeze in the hot summer weather, and he built a water tower on the property in the same Spanish style. The Lyon family was also one of the first to have electricity in the County. The house currently serves as the headquarters for the Immaculate Heart Mission Fathers.

Frank Lyon was a lawyer and social reformer who was the editor and later publisher of the Alexandria County Monitor. It was through this newspaper that he waged a campaign against the lawlessness that was rampant in the Rosslyn and Jackson City areas of the County in the early part of the 20th century. Lyon was also a prominent developer intent upon establishing the area as a residential community and who promoted increasing the powers of local government to thus broaden and strengthen the ability of the County to protect its citizens.  He developed additions to Clarendon and later developed both Lyon Park and Lyon Village.

What About You?

Do you have memories of the development of Lyon Park or Lyon Village?

 

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