Introduction In 2023, the Town of Vienna began a campaign to consider building a municipal swimming pool, revisiting an issue that first cropped up in 1948, 75 years before. This post, the first of a two-part series, looks at that original effort in the late ’40s and early ’50s. Part… Continue reading
If you’re driving on Beulah Road in Vienna, it’s worth taking a look at the old green house at the intersection with Cynthia Lane, because the building appears to be advancing on the path towards demolition. The house, which I’ll shorthand as “the Ramsey House,” after the family with the… Continue reading
On Sunday 17 October 1948, the Vienna Recreational Association (VRA) dedicated what we now know as Glyndon Park, a municipal recreational facility in the northeast quadrant of the Town of Vienna. This post provides a history of the park roughly through its first 15 years. A Park 50 Years in… Continue reading
The earliest photos of Vienna that I’m aware of are from the Civil War, and among those photos are four that stand out because they give us a view of a particular landscape, Ayr Hill Farm (Figures 1, 6, 7, and 8). The photo in Figure 1, from February 1864,… Continue reading
Introduction I recently read a local media report that the lot on East Maple Avenue between Anita’s restaurant and Berry Street is up for redevelopment. While doing unrelated research, I then stumbled on a 1961 press item with an artist’s pre-construction rendering of the now-vacant bank building that sits on… Continue reading
Introduction: An Incident in Vienna, Virginia, January 1867 On 24 January 1867, Orrin E. Hine, a Vienna-based official of the U.S. government’s Freedmen’s Bureau, informed his superior of an attack on a formerly enslaved black woman, who Hine identified as “Harriet Follin”: “Captain, I have to report the following outrage… Continue reading
Introduction To prepare for the construction of a four-dwelling subdivision, “The Gateway at Spring Lake,” re-developers in February 2025 tore down the structures on a parcel where Old Courthouse and Beulah roads converge. The parcel is distinctive because from the 1950s to the 1990s, a greenhouse sat on the property…. Continue reading
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… Continue reading
311 Beulah Road 400 Block of Creek Crossing Road (at intersection with Beulah) 527 Beulah Road 600 Block of Beulah Road 1900 Block of Beulah Road 1800 Block of Beulah Road 1700 Block of Beulah Road 1600 Block of Beulah Road 1600 Block of Trap Road
September 2024 This post provides a short history of the house at 128 Nutley Street NW, long the site of a popular annual Christmas display in the Town of Vienna. According to a FFXnow report from August, the owners of the house approached a developer about rezoning and redeveloping the property, and the developer… Continue reading