From School to Historical Society

Driving along Arlington Ridge Road you pass an old two-story brick building with a bell tower which was once the Hume School.

Named for civic leader and philanthropist Frank Hume, it is the oldest remaining school building in Arlington.

Built in 1891, the land was purchased for $250 from Frank Hume, a successful wholesale grocer in Washington D.C., who later donated land for an adjacent playground as long as the building was used as a school. When the school was built it was the County’s newest school and attacked as an extravagance as it had three rooms, considered far too large for any “foreseeable” school population. Most schools at that time were one room only.

In 1958, when the school closed, the Hume heirs deeded the property to the Arlington Historical Society, along with a $10,000 donation from one of Frank Hume’s children to help with fundraising for a proposed museum to help preserve Arlington’s heritage. The result was the Arlington Historical Society Museum, which is run primarily by volunteers and has been open at least one day a week since its inception.

What About You?

What do you remember about Hume School? How have you interacted with the Historical Society? Let us know what you remember!

 

Do you recognize this scene?

This photograph was taken by Eleanor Lee Templeman, author of “Northern Virginia Heritage” and “Arlington Heritage,” which tell the story of our area’s development through the 1950s.

This photo was not used in either book, but was part of her donation of photographs to the Community Archives. It may be the door to a springhouse or cold food storage area.

What About You?

Do you recognize this door, or this area? The Virginia Room could use your help. Let us know what you remember!

 

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

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

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

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

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

What About You?

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

 

The Virginia Room recently received a wonderful donation of two 1936 Sanborn atlases of Arlington.

Thanks to the generosity of Eric Dobson and two other anonymous donors, these maps are now available to visitors to the Virginia Room:

Sanborn maps are greatly prized by researchers.

As they were originally designed for fire insurance assessment, they are color-coded and relate the location and use of buildings, as well as the materials employed in their construction. In addition, they indicate which city/county utilities, such as water and fire service, were available, the width and names of streets, and house and block numbers. As such they are a wonderful source of information regarding the structure and use of buildings in American communities.

The Virginia Room is greatly indebted to these three generous benefactors!

To see these as well as numerous other maps: topographic, street, survey, neighborhood, etc. visit the Virginia Room at the Central Library.

What About You?

Do you or any of your family members own old maps of Arlington? Do you remember when your house got new utilities, or if you changed addresses without moving your home? If you do, let us know!