Fairlington, Virginia
Fairlington is an unincorporated neighborhood in Arlington County, Virginia, located adjacent to Shirlington in the southernmost part of the county on the boundary with the City of Alexandria. The main thoroughfares are Interstate 395, which divides the neighborhood into North and South Fairlington, State Route 7 and State Route 402.
The neighborhood consists of primarily of a mix of townhouse and condominium apartments built in the 1940s as the largest housing project financed by the Defense Homes Corporation during World War II. Fairlington is listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register.
Name, boundaries, and geography
Fairlington was originally called Seminary Heights but it was changed due to confusion with other nearby geographical features named for Alexandria's Virginia Theological Seminary including Seminary Drive, Seminary Road, and Seminary View, among others. A new name, Fairlington, was chosen combining the two counties in which the neighborhood was then located: Fairfax and Arlington. The former Fairfax County section is now part of the City of Alexandria.The neighborhood is wooded and sits on heights overlooking the Four Mile Run valley. It is bisected by I-395 into North and South Fairlington connected by the Fairlington Bridge.
History
Early history
Upon the arrival of Europeans in the New World, the area that is now Fairlington was near a Necostin Indian village in the 17th century. In the early 18th century, a tract including Fairlington and extending to nearby Four Mile Run was granted under the headright system to William Struttfield, one of 48 original landowners in what is now Arlington County. By 1756, the land was owned by John Carlyle, a friend of future U.S. President George Washington, who was also the builder of Carlyle House in Alexandria. Carlyle and his heirs would possess the area of Fairlington for 150 years. Around 1770, Caryle began construction of a plantation and summer house near the current intersection of 30th Street South and South Columbus Street. The house was first called Torthorwald and later changed to Morven and stood until 1942. Carlyle used his plantation as a stud farm and operated a grist mill downstream from Fairlington above what is now Arlandria. Following John Carlyle's death in 1780, the house passed to his grandson, Carlyle Fairfax Whiting. George Washington himself owned a portion of the land in what would become Fairlington, near the Abingdon Elementary School and South 28th Street after he bought two of the 48 Arlington land grants.Following the American Revolution, new federal district governed by Congress was created in 1790 and the area that is now Fairlington was included within the original boundaries of the new District of Columbia, forming part of Alexandria County, D.C. Congressional control began in 1801 and the area was no longer under Virginian jurisdiction. However, in 1846, the entire county was retroceded to Virginia and became Alexandria County, Virginia.
From Union occupation to World War II
With the secession of Virginia from the United States on 17 April 1861, Northern Virginia was quickly occupied by the United States military. A line of redoubts and breastworks above Four Mile Run was constructed to defend the main base of the occupying Army of the Potomac in Alexandria and the Fairlington area was the site of two of these. Fort Reynolds, a redoubt, was constructed in September 1861 to command the approach to Alexandria by way of the Four Mile Run valley. It had a perimeter of and emplacements for 12 guns and was located just northeast of what is now 31st Street South at South Woodrow Street. Battery Garesche at what is now South Abingdon Street at South 30th Road and was constructed late in 1861 to control the higher ground dominating Fort Reynolds, to the southeast. It had a perimeter of and emplacements for 8 guns. The area was never taken by Confederate forces and remained under U.S. military control until 1870.Despite the military use of what is now Fairlington, the area retained a rural character—mostly wooded, with some small farms—into the 20th century. In 1879, the area of Fairlington was consolidated under Hawkins Smith who remodeled Morven and renamed it Hampton. His son, Hawkins Smith II, made Hampton a leading horse farm but sold it in 1926. It was subdivided with some of the land rented by sharecroppers. One cleared area in South Fairlington served as an airfield until the mid-1930s.
In 1920, Alexandria County was renamed Arlington County to distinguish it from the neighboring independent City of Alexandria and in 1929, Alexandria annexed all of Arlington County south of Four Mile Run to the current boundary along Quaker Lane.
The creation of Fairlington
At the time of the United States entry into World War II in December 1941, the Defense Homes Corporation had purchased most of the area. The corporation was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 through the allocation of emergency funding and, by February 1942, it had assembled for construction of housing for civilian and military defense personnel to be called Seminary Heights. The site was only from the Pentagon which had begun construction in August 1941. As with nearby Parkfairfax, Alexandria, and several other sites throughout metropolitan Washington, the Corporation endeavored to quickly satisfy increased wartime demand for housing and, by the end of 1943, by which time the project was renamed Fairlington, there were almost 2,415 housing units completed. By 1945, there were 3,439 units when the project was completed at a cost of $35 million.In 1947, the Defense Homes Corporation sold the property to Fairmac Realty Corporation, which operated Fairlington as rental apartments. The area surrounding Fairlington also began to urbanize with nearby Shirlington Shopping Center opening in 1945 and Bradlee Shopping Center in the 1950s.
In 1952, the independent City of Alexandria annexed the small Fairfax County portion of Fairlington, rendering the name an anachronism. In 1966, a mutual agreement between Arlington and Alexandria adjusted the city-county boundary through North Fairlington that had followed the original District of Columbia-Virginia line. The new boundary followed the north and east sides of State Route 7, 30th Street South, South Columbus Street, and 28th Street South. In 1954, the well-preserved Fort Reynolds was leveled to construct the Park Shirlington apartments.
In 1967, as part of the conversion of Shirley Highway to interstate standards, a bridge connecting South Abingdon Street in North Fairlington and 34th Street South in South Fairlington was opened, directly connecting the two sections for the first time.
Fairlington as condominiums
By the late 1960s, Fairlington's owners, now Hartford Insurance, considered razing the apartments and constructing high-rise apartment buildings. Instead, it decided to convert the existing structures to condominium apartments in 1972. Virginia had only permitted condominium development since 1962 and Fairlington was the largest scale project ever undertaken to that date. Fairlington was sold to Chicago Bridge and Iron and operated by CBI-Fairmac; a five-year project to physically modify the apartments for their new use commenced. Common basement areas were divided between apartments and boiler houses were removed and replaced with recreation facilities. Beginning in South Fairlington, CBI-Fairmac converted the area into seven legal entities under the Virginia Horizontal Property Act. Six of the condominiums were in South Fairlington and the entirety of North Fairlington formed one condominium. The initial offerings sold for $19,000–$45,500 in 1972 and prices were increased for later sales with the final units sold in 1978.In 1979, Fairlington Elementary School was closed and the building became the Fairlington Community Center.
In 1996, the value of Fairlington was assessed at $423,701,600. Fairlington as a whole was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in December 1998 and the National Register of Historic Places in March 1999.