While recently doing some research on Glyndon Park in northeast Vienna, I came across several deeds for adjoining parcels that were covered by racial covenants when the parcels were established in the 1940s (Fairfax County deeds A15:99, X14:409, Y14:196, 496:450, 514:84). The parcels are on Ayr Hill Avenue NE and Beulah Road. As it turns out, these parcels and their former/no-longer-operative racial restrictions had already been identified by the Documenting Exclusion & Resilience (DER) project, led by personnel from the University of Mary Washington and Marymount University (“Mapping Racial Covenants,” Documenting Exclusion & Resilience. February 11, 2025. https://documentingexclusion.org/mapping-nova/)
However, what I find striking about the deeds for these particular parcels is that the seller in each is the Town of Vienna.
I have no expertise on racial covenants. The DER project explains, though, that “developers, brokers, and individual homeowners inserted restrictive covenants into land deeds,” because they claimed the restrictions would protect property values. (“Racially Restrictive Covenants,” Documenting Exclusion & Resilience. February 11, 2025. https://documentingexclusion.org/racially-restrictive-covenants/)
Thus, given 1) that there were no developers party to the original deeds in question on Ayr Hill Avenue and Beulah Road; 2) that each transaction involved a different buyer; and 3) that in contrast, the Town of Vienna was the seller in each case, then the Town itself apparently had a driving role in inserting the racial covenants in these particular deeds.
About the Original Deeds
Each of the original deeds features a series of “covenants and restrictions” such as a minimum value for the dwelling to be erected on the property and a prohibition on an outhouse. The deeds begin this collection of covenants and restrictions with an introductory clause, after which the first of the itemized restrictions–with the prominence of place from being first–is a provision to ensure that only whites could buy or rent the property. For instance, from one of the deeds from 1941:
“The above-described land is sold subject to the following covenants and restrictions, which are to be taken and construed as covenants running with the title to said land: 1. That neither the said land nor any part thereof shall ever be sold, rented, leased or devised to or occupied by a person not of the Caucasian Race….” (A15:99)
Each of the deeds links the transaction to “a meeting of the Council of the Town of Vienna” at a particular date and time, notes that “the Mayor, Town Clerk and all members of the Council were present,” and that the Council unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing the Mayor to execute a deed to the particular buyer. The deed’s signature block is for the mayor, with the Town Clerk attesting and the Town’s corporate seal affixed.
Subsequent Deeds and the Fate of the Restrictions
Some of the parcels were resold or subdivided in the 1940s, and in some of these cases the new deeds explicitly repeat the racial restriction (e.g. 529:531). In others the deeds only refer generally to “restrictions of record” (e.g. 689:51). Among the five parcels or their subdivisions, the last explicit reference to a racial restriction is in a deed from 1952 (1012:514). In the meantime, a Supreme Court decision in 1948 had ended the ability to take violators of racial covenants to court but did not prohibit the covenants themselves, according to the DER project. It wasn’t until 20 years later that racial covenants were made illegal with the Fair Housing Act of 1968. At least one subsequent deed related to one of the five parcels has wording that might account for the now-illegal nature of an original restriction in the chain of title. This deed from 2009 notes that the property is “subject to the conditions, restrictions, and easements of record to the extent that they may lawfully apply….” (20363:853) [author’s emphasis]. In other words, with the racial restriction of the original title illegal for some forty years by 2009, the restriction no longer applied.
