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
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
Introduction. In late 2021, I had the privilege of interviewing David Edward Hummer about his experiences growing up in the Vienna area (see Figures 1 & 1b). When Mr. Hummer was born–in Washington, DC at the Columbia Hospital for Women (see Figure 2)– Herbert Hoover was president. Until 1940, Mr. Hummer lived on… Continue reading
Introduction If you live in northeast Vienna or just beyond, you may be aware of the Clarks Crossing Road that extends from Beulah Road down to the Washington & Old Dominion bike trail and the Clarks Crossing soccer field. What you might not know is that in the past, the… Continue reading
Some 200 years ago, a sawmill sat in what is now Northside Park in Vienna. I haven’t seen this sawmill referred to in various accounts of mills in Fairfax County and the Vienna area, and I don’t know when exactly the mill operated. But the existing evidence–even though there are… Continue reading
If you happen to use the Washington and Old Dominion bike trail between Vienna and Hunter Mill Road, take a few steps off the trail at Clarks Crossing Road to appreciate the charming, century-old house on the south side of the road. (From the sidewalk or road, of course, given… Continue reading
Decades before there was a Wolftrap Elementary School, Clarke’s School House serviced the same general area outside Vienna, Virginia that Wolftrap now serves. Clarke’s School House, aka the Clarke School, was a Fairfax County public school that sat on the south side of Clarks Crossing Road less than a mile… Continue reading