What did Northern Virginia look like back in the day (60s, 70s, 80s)

[Anonymous]

Clarendon and Ballston were sketchy AF, low rent districts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was no beltway, no 66, no dulles toll road, no metro, no malls. Prostitutes walked on 14th st, lots of boarded up store front, kids could drink at 18, Georgetown clubs were packed on weekends, you could get in line and go into the Whitehouse at Christmas time, you could go walk around inside the capitol blg.. low security compared to now.

+1

Grandfathered in at 18!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was no beltway, no 66, no dulles toll road, no metro, no malls. Prostitutes walked on 14th st, lots of boarded up store front, kids could drink at 18, Georgetown clubs were packed on weekends, you could get in line and go into the Whitehouse at Christmas time, you could go walk around inside the capitol blg.. low security compared to now.

Changed drastically after 9/11

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was no beltway, no 66, no dulles toll road, no metro, no malls. Prostitutes walked on 14th st, lots of boarded up store front, kids could drink at 18, Georgetown clubs were packed on weekends, you could get in line and go into the Whitehouse at Christmas time, you could go walk around inside the capitol blg.. low security compared to now.

Demographically it was nearly 90% white

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Clarendon and Ballston were sketchy AF, low rent districts.

Full of random foreign auto shops. Everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County was mostly farms at one time. Crazy.

I mean, so was DC proper itself too.

[Anonymous]

My cousins moved to Greenbriar in Fairfax when it opened in the late 60s. We would drive from Alexandria to visit. We took the Beltway to Route 50 because there was no I-66. There was NOTHING on Route 50 outside the Beltway - a couple of churches, a rural vet, and some farms maybe.. Felt as if we were driving to the middle of nowhere when we went to visit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County was mostly farms at one time. Crazy.

I mean, so was DC proper itself too.

Not in living memory though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My cousins moved to Greenbriar in Fairfax when it opened in the late 60s. We would drive from Alexandria to visit. We took the Beltway to Route 50 because there was no I-66. There was NOTHING on Route 50 outside the Beltway - a couple of churches, a rural vet, and some farms maybe.. Felt as if we were driving to the middle of nowhere when we went to visit.

+1

[Anonymous]

Grew up in eastern Fairfax and driving out to the Appalachian Outfitters in Oakton just off 123 used to feel like the ends of the earth. Not sure when it closed down or what's there now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No bypass around Leesburg. Nothing on Route 7 between Leesburg and Sterling. When you got to the double decker McDonalds you knew you were about halfway to Tysons. There used to be big bird cages with live birds in the Tysons Corner mall.

I remember the bird cages. That was when Tysons first opened. They also had tropical plants around the cages (if I remember correctly).

In the 90s there was a restaurant that had parrots, I think in the vicinity where RH is today. You'd go in and they had thunder and lightning inside the restaurant. Special and horrifying both.

Rainforest cafe!!!! I freaking LOVED that place

[Anonymous]

I grew up in Mantua (Woodson pyramid) and remember someone owned a horse. Within Mantua. Honestly that horse was still alive in the mid 90s, must have been grandfathered in to the zoning .

[Anonymous]

I used to go horseback riding at a farm on Braddock rd right when it turned to Loudon county- it became a dirt road at the county line. Drove past it about 10 years ago and the entire thing is now South Riding. I couldn’t even figure out where the farm used to be honestly…. It was near a road called Gum Spring that used to have a few trailer homes on it and nothing else besides fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I lived near Woodson HS in the 70s and 80s and there was a house 2 blocks away where they had a horse in a small pasture. This was right off of Little River Turnpike. We used to feed it apples.

Tyson’s mall was surrounded by fields and a few strip malls.

It was very white until I’d say the early 80s when Vietnamese started moving in and then Koreans. I remember when I66 was new and it had no traffic.

Restaurants were few and far between. Like Bobs

I made my response before reading this. So glad someone else remembers the random horse!!! I graduated from Woodson in the 90s and it was still there, I’d jog past it when I went for runs in Eakin park.

[Anonymous]

It took until the 1960 census for geographically comparatively huge Fairfax County to have a higher population than Arlington. Even then the oldest neighborhoods in Fairfax are mostly those south of the beltway in Alexandria, the Belle Haven area. So the southern and western parts of the county were undeveloped until the 70s and 80s. Seems crazy to think about now!