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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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!

The original Springfield neighborhoods were developed in the 1950s. My cousin used to ride his go kart on the mixing bowl while it was under construction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I remember that place! I think it closed around late 2000's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I remember that place! I think it closed around late 2000's.

It got replaced with residential complexes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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!

The original Springfield neighborhoods were developed in the 1950s. My cousin used to ride his go kart on the mixing bowl while it was under construction.

Was Mclean always developed? Didn’t the Kennedys live there in the 1960s?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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!

The original Springfield neighborhoods were developed in the 1950s. My cousin used to ride his go kart on the mixing bowl while it was under construction.

Was Mclean always developed? Didn’t the Kennedys live there in the 1960s?

Yes. In the ‘80s my dad used to point out which house was owned by the Kennedy family. And he showed me where Caspar Weinburger lived.

I swear, NoVa GenX kids knew way too much about politics.

[Anonymous]

Fairfax County digitized a bunch of old yearbooks from this era:
https://research.fairfaxcounty.gov/local-history/school-yearbooks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grew up here in the 70s and 80s. It was not southern. It was not as diverse as it is now but my schools had a lot of Asian kids and there were lots of military and state dept families that had lived overseas. It was not at all southern.

While there’s been a ton of development, I actually think it was more similar than different by the 80s. My kids are in a different FCPS school pyramid but there’s a lot that’s very familiar to me having grown up here.

Maybe in Fairfax, but my parents were farmers in Sterling and Ashburn during those times.

Agree. I grew up in Springfield in the 80s and it was not at all southern. All my neighbors were military families and northern transplants like my parents who had moved here for government jobs. Maybe further out it was different, or 10-20 years earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP and back to the Southern influence and even a local accent.
Again, many of my classmates were “original” Fxco families and yes, they had what we would have thought of as a “country” accent.

My family goes back 3 generations of being DC born. They had true Washingtonian accents that sound vaguely Baltimorean but not quite.

By the time I graduated from HS in the mid80s, very few of the “farm kids” were left. Nearly all had their homes razed for redevelopment. I don’t recall any of the families striking it rich from land development deals, either. Most moved out towards Fredericksburg or to Prince William County.

One of my earliest memories was visiting a farm stand on the corner of Keene Mill and Rolling. There was a wooden open air shack with an awning and presumably the fruits and vegetables were from the tiny farm houses directly behind the gravel/dirt lot that faced KM Road. This side was opposite the two shopping centers: one with a Giant/People’s and the other was Safeway/DrugFair.

The houses were tiny white cottages and dotted KM Road clear down into downtown Springfield.

Whoa, what year was this? My family moved to that area in 1986 when I was in first grade and it was already a suburban strip mall at that intersection, with a Basics grocery store, People's drug, pizza place and eventually Errol's video (remember those?). Definitely no farm stands by the mid to late 80s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP and back to the Southern influence and even a local accent.
Again, many of my classmates were “original” Fxco families and yes, they had what we would have thought of as a “country” accent.

My family goes back 3 generations of being DC born. They had true Washingtonian accents that sound vaguely Baltimorean but not quite.

By the time I graduated from HS in the mid80s, very few of the “farm kids” were left. Nearly all had their homes razed for redevelopment. I don’t recall any of the families striking it rich from land development deals, either. Most moved out towards Fredericksburg or to Prince William County.

One of my earliest memories was visiting a farm stand on the corner of Keene Mill and Rolling. There was a wooden open air shack with an awning and presumably the fruits and vegetables were from the tiny farm houses directly behind the gravel/dirt lot that faced KM Road. This side was opposite the two shopping centers: one with a Giant/People’s and the other was Safeway/DrugFair.

The houses were tiny white cottages and dotted KM Road clear down into downtown Springfield.

Whoa, what year was this? My family moved to that area in 1986 when I was in first grade and it was already a suburban strip mall at that intersection, with a Basics grocery store, People's drug, pizza place and eventually Errol's video (remember those?). Definitely no farm stands by the mid to late 80s.

Lol omg I forgot all about Erols. A classic.

And when CVS was called Peoples Drug and Ames was called Zayres.

[Anonymous]

And macgruders

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP and back to the Southern influence and even a local accent.
Again, many of my classmates were “original” Fxco families and yes, they had what we would have thought of as a “country” accent.

My family goes back 3 generations of being DC born. They had true Washingtonian accents that sound vaguely Baltimorean but not quite.

By the time I graduated from HS in the mid80s, very few of the “farm kids” were left. Nearly all had their homes razed for redevelopment. I don’t recall any of the families striking it rich from land development deals, either. Most moved out towards Fredericksburg or to Prince William County.

One of my earliest memories was visiting a farm stand on the corner of Keene Mill and Rolling. There was a wooden open air shack with an awning and presumably the fruits and vegetables were from the tiny farm houses directly behind the gravel/dirt lot that faced KM Road. This side was opposite the two shopping centers: one with a Giant/People’s and the other was Safeway/DrugFair.

The houses were tiny white cottages and dotted KM Road clear down into downtown Springfield.

Whoa, what year was this? My family moved to that area in 1986 when I was in first grade and it was already a suburban strip mall at that intersection, with a Basics grocery store, People's drug, pizza place and eventually Errol's video (remember those?). Definitely no farm stands by the mid to late 80s.

Mmm...Victor’s Pizza...RIP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP and back to the Southern influence and even a local accent.
Again, many of my classmates were “original” Fxco families and yes, they had what we would have thought of as a “country” accent.

My family goes back 3 generations of being DC born. They had true Washingtonian accents that sound vaguely Baltimorean but not quite.

By the time I graduated from HS in the mid80s, very few of the “farm kids” were left. Nearly all had their homes razed for redevelopment. I don’t recall any of the families striking it rich from land development deals, either. Most moved out towards Fredericksburg or to Prince William County.

One of my earliest memories was visiting a farm stand on the corner of Keene Mill and Rolling. There was a wooden open air shack with an awning and presumably the fruits and vegetables were from the tiny farm houses directly behind the gravel/dirt lot that faced KM Road. This side was opposite the two shopping centers: one with a Giant/People’s and the other was Safeway/DrugFair.

The houses were tiny white cottages and dotted KM Road clear down into downtown Springfield.

Whoa, what year was this? My family moved to that area in 1986 when I was in first grade and it was already a suburban strip mall at that intersection, with a Basics grocery store, People's drug, pizza place and eventually Errol's video (remember those?). Definitely no farm stands by the mid to late 80s.

That area mostly got developed in the 60's, the strip malls at the Keene Mill/Rolling intersection opened in 68 and 69.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And macgruders

+1!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the PPs here, but a few more observations I'll add.

- Until the 1970s, everything was very low-rise. Then the mid-rise office buildings in Tysons Corner and apartments kind of along 395 started going in.

- Arlington, I don't remember ever being a bad area, but it wasn't desirable. If you moved up in the world, you moved to McLean or Fairfax Station. Arlington has always been expensive though. My parents priced out a houses off Route 50 in the 90s (basic brick houses, nothing fancy) and they were in the mid-300K range even back then.

- However, when the Rotonda condos opened in Tysons Corner in the 70s, that was the "it" address to have if you were a Nova yuppie.

- Being a civil servant was a big thing, but the whole contractor industry didn't really start booming until the 90s, and then soared after 9/11. Before then, you could easily go your entire fed career and not encounter a contractor, particularly if you weren't in DoD.

- Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, it was always expensive to live here compared to most of the rest of the country. My grandparents bought their Great Falls split level in 1962 for around $40K, which was an insane stretch for them, and that's all they could afford at the time. They had wanted to buy in Arlington for a better commute to the District but couldn't afford it. A decade later their Great Falls house was already worth $150K and the neighbors started being diplomats, executives, etc. When my aunts and uncles started their families, all they could afford was way out in Gainesville or Sterling, and this was 30-40 years ago. Never in my lifetime has anyone thought that the DC area was cheap to live in.

- I don't remember anyone, family or friends, ever talking about the "lost cause" or revising history to justify the south. I certainly wasn't around it growing up. We all called it the "Civil War" and not the "War of Northern Aggression" and school taught that slavery was evil and that the south fought for the right to keep slaves. I remember some my cousins having confederate flag stuff like bumper stickers (mind you, I'm talking 30+ years ago), but it was never really in your face in public.

- Nova was very white, had some pockets of black (mostly in Alexandria), and that was basically it until the 1980s. There was a big Iranian influx after the Shah was deposed. But the thing I think has changed the most is not the demographics, it's the land use. This used to be a sleepy, rural region, and it's amazing to see it now be a bustling, diverse, cosmopolitain place. I think the changes have been positive, which leads me to my last point.

- Traffic has ALWAYS been the pits. Yes, it's gotten worse, but in my lifetime it's always been the bane of the Nova drivers' existence.

I'm going to edit you a little - please don't take offense.

The contractors started arriving in large numbers in the 80s with Reagan because the philosophy at the time was that the government should do less on its own and procure more from the private sector. The primary reason there is a TJHSST now is that the Republican Board of Supervisors thought it would help attract contractors to office parks in Fairfax, rather than Arlington or MoCo, if Fairfax could tout its special "science and technology" school. To be sure it just kept exploding in the 90s, especially along the Dulles Toll Road and Route 28.

Agree that NoVa mostly felt very White/Black until the 80s, but there were Black neighborhoods scattered throughout the county, including in Falls Church as well as Alexandria. By the mid to late 70s there were a significant number of Korean immigrants, along with the Vietnamese who arrived after the fall of Saigon and the Iranians who arrived in the years leading up to and after the overthrow of the Shah. Most of the Hispanics I went to school with in the 70s were the children of well educated Cuban refugees - it wasn't until the 80s that Central/South Americans from El Salvador and other countries began to arrive in large numbers.

No offense taken at all, I agree with what you wrote. You are very right about the scattered black pockets, which were probably established by freed people post slavery, and your other observations about the demographic changes are spot on.

Virginia had de facto redlining, racial covenants, and housing segregation long after DC and MD. Virginia essentially forced its black residents to move to Maryland, as their kids could be safer and get a better education. The racial composition of NoVA prior to the 1970s was very intentional.

I moved to Annandale in the 80s to an apt complex that had no diversity. I didn't meet the minimum requirement for salary but I still got in. The complex stayed that way thru the early 90s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the PPs here, but a few more observations I'll add.

- Until the 1970s, everything was very low-rise. Then the mid-rise office buildings in Tysons Corner and apartments kind of along 395 started going in.

- Arlington, I don't remember ever being a bad area, but it wasn't desirable. If you moved up in the world, you moved to McLean or Fairfax Station. Arlington has always been expensive though. My parents priced out a houses off Route 50 in the 90s (basic brick houses, nothing fancy) and they were in the mid-300K range even back then.

- However, when the Rotonda condos opened in Tysons Corner in the 70s, that was the "it" address to have if you were a Nova yuppie.

- Being a civil servant was a big thing, but the whole contractor industry didn't really start booming until the 90s, and then soared after 9/11. Before then, you could easily go your entire fed career and not encounter a contractor, particularly if you weren't in DoD.

- Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, it was always expensive to live here compared to most of the rest of the country. My grandparents bought their Great Falls split level in 1962 for around $40K, which was an insane stretch for them, and that's all they could afford at the time. They had wanted to buy in Arlington for a better commute to the District but couldn't afford it. A decade later their Great Falls house was already worth $150K and the neighbors started being diplomats, executives, etc. When my aunts and uncles started their families, all they could afford was way out in Gainesville or Sterling, and this was 30-40 years ago. Never in my lifetime has anyone thought that the DC area was cheap to live in.

- I don't remember anyone, family or friends, ever talking about the "lost cause" or revising history to justify the south. I certainly wasn't around it growing up. We all called it the "Civil War" and not the "War of Northern Aggression" and school taught that slavery was evil and that the south fought for the right to keep slaves. I remember some my cousins having confederate flag stuff like bumper stickers (mind you, I'm talking 30+ years ago), but it was never really in your face in public.

- Nova was very white, had some pockets of black (mostly in Alexandria), and that was basically it until the 1980s. There was a big Iranian influx after the Shah was deposed. But the thing I think has changed the most is not the demographics, it's the land use. This used to be a sleepy, rural region, and it's amazing to see it now be a bustling, diverse, cosmopolitain place. I think the changes have been positive, which leads me to my last point.

- Traffic has ALWAYS been the pits. Yes, it's gotten worse, but in my lifetime it's always been the bane of the Nova drivers' existence.

I'm going to edit you a little - please don't take offense.

The contractors started arriving in large numbers in the 80s with Reagan because the philosophy at the time was that the government should do less on its own and procure more from the private sector. The primary reason there is a TJHSST now is that the Republican Board of Supervisors thought it would help attract contractors to office parks in Fairfax, rather than Arlington or MoCo, if Fairfax could tout its special "science and technology" school. To be sure it just kept exploding in the 90s, especially along the Dulles Toll Road and Route 28.

Agree that NoVa mostly felt very White/Black until the 80s, but there were Black neighborhoods scattered throughout the county, including in Falls Church as well as Alexandria. By the mid to late 70s there were a significant number of Korean immigrants, along with the Vietnamese who arrived after the fall of Saigon and the Iranians who arrived in the years leading up to and after the overthrow of the Shah. Most of the Hispanics I went to school with in the 70s were the children of well educated Cuban refugees - it wasn't until the 80s that Central/South Americans from El Salvador and other countries began to arrive in large numbers.

No offense taken at all, I agree with what you wrote. You are very right about the scattered black pockets, which were probably established by freed people post slavery, and your other observations about the demographic changes are spot on.

Virginia had de facto redlining, racial covenants, and housing segregation long after DC and MD. Virginia essentially forced its black residents to move to Maryland, as their kids could be safer and get a better education. The racial composition of NoVA prior to the 1970s was very intentional.

I'm not sure this holds up as a historical matter. Racial covenants were declared unenforceable in 1948, but persisted in deeds well into the late 1960s before being declared illegal in the Fair Housing Act, which was federal legislation equally applicable to Maryland and Virginia. So not sure the big increase in Black residents in suburban Maryland was due to people moving from Virginia to Maryland so much as people moving from DC to Maryland and Black Americans generally feeling like Maryland, having not formally been part of the Confederacy, would be more hospitable.

Relatedly, will echo those who note the teaching about slavery and the Civil War in NoVa public schools was slanted and biased towards an uncritical "states rights" perspective and lack of reckoning with the conditions under which slaves lived for way too long. Having said that, never heard the Civil War referred to as the "War of Northern Aggression" until classmates came back from schools like UVA and Duke and reported this was how some classmates from further south referred to the war (this is from the early 80s).

I moved to Virginia in the 80s and apartments were hard to find. I put in applications all over Annandale, Alexandria and Fairfax. One complex near FFX hospital told a black couple in the office ahead of me that they had no available apartments and didn't take their application. The couple hadn't even left the office and the woman who worked there took my application and was describing the open apts. They didn't even try to hide it. Also back then you found apts by driving to the offices and submitting an application. It took so much time because everyone did it on the weekend and so many people were looking for apts. Also contractors were a big part of the area in the 80s. Everyone I knew was a contractor and almost no one I knew was a fed.