An Island of Independence

By Marianne Kyriakos
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, May 27, 2006

Let's get it straight: Allview Estates is not a part of Columbia, even though it has a Columbia mailing address.

"This is the community for those of us who do not want to live in Columbia," Arthur Williams said.

"Columbia asked us to join them and we have turned them down repeatedly," Linda Dunn said.

"If I want an orange door, I can have an orange door," Don Calp said, referring to Columbia's system of restrictive covenants.

In 1963, the Rouse Co. was secretly acquiring one-tenth of Howard County's total land area, about 14,000 acres, with visions of a new kind of city. Allview Estates was already being developed, a green island of independence as Columbia drew international publicity and exploded all around it.

To residents, Allview's best selling points are what it does not have: streetlights, curbs, sidewalks and the special assessment that Columbia property owners pay.

There has been talk about installing streetlights and sidewalks, but the issues polarized residents. "People wanted to preserve the country environment," Williams said. "It was becoming more and more suburban."

The first houses on Allview Drive were built in the late 1950s, with prices from $22,000 to $28,000. An article in Popular Mechanics magazine at the time called it "the best value in homes in the country."

In this eastern Howard County community, people give of themselves -- sometimes in the extreme, like Linda Dunn's husband, Bob. "He's the guy who lost a finger shoveling everybody's snow," said neighbor Wanda Knott.

The accident several winters ago has not stopped the retired electrical contractor from firing up the snow blower every time a storm blasts through. "That's what neighbors are supposed to do," he said. "And I can order 4 1/2 beers with one hand."

Wanda Knott's husband, Earle, cut down his boundary of prized peach trees for the people next door, he said, "because their sons were teenagers and they were athletic."

The boys were playing ball, running into the street, "and I thought, 'These kids are going to get run over.' "

So Knott chopped down his long stand of trees, creating safe playing space in the combined yards.

The boys grew up and moved away, and the Knotts forgot about the trees until their 50th anniversary party, when the next-door neighbors proposed a toast to the man who would do such a thing for other people's kids.

The Knotts purchased their split foyer with garage for $21,370 in 1964. Earle Knott remembers all the hype during construction of Route 32, which he knew would ease his daily drive to the National Security Agency. "From 1964 to 1983, I waited for that road. It was completed the year after I retired," he said.

"Easily one-third of the [original] homeowners worked at NSA," Knott said. The enclave is still favored by agency employees, while other residents commute 35 minutes to Washington or 22 miles to Baltimore.

Some communities have book clubs. Allview Estates has the Vikings. "I don't know if I should talk about this," Bob Dunn said. He does anyway. Twenty years ago, more than a dozen couples in Allview started gathering for evening volleyball games. The workouts ended with snacks and drinks at someone's house. Dunn said, "We would negate any good we had done for ourselves through the exercise."

Eventually people were assigned Viking names ("because it's the one ethnic group that never gets picked on") to use in "ceremonies." There are Gustav, Gerda, Ed (and Edzwif), Thor and Baldar ("a big, balding guy"), to name a few.

The Viking Cookbook was published. Then came "Viking formals," where the men arrived shirtless in tails and horned top hats; the women in gowns, combat boots and fake tattoos. Once, 14 families in Allview booked a cruise together. On a Norwegian line, of course.

When several big storms swelled the Little Patuxent River and Beaver Run Creek, both of which flow through Allview, residents bought flood insurance and had a party.

And, when one of their neighbors died at a young age, the Vikings and other residents of Allview raised $50,000 for the American Cancer Society.

Williams and his wife Mary live in a rambler on a diamond-shaped, 40,000-square-foot lot. "In 1964, when we moved in, I did not know that we were the first African American family here," the retired AT&T quality control analyst said. "I did not know that we were pioneering. And they were golden to us."

Those neighbors now include other minorities -- Asians, Middle Easterners, African Americans and Africans.

Every summer, Williams and the University of Maryland agriculture professor whose garden was catty-corner raced to produce the first red tomato. "I thought he was spray-painting them in the middle of the night. I used to accuse him of using his wife's red fingernail polish."

Most of the community's 590 houses sit on 1/2 -to- 3/4 -acre land parcels. Tax assessments show that the land is more valuable than the houses on the land, residents said.

Most of the homes are brick-and-siding ranchers, with some split foyers and split levels. Allview's northeast border is a wooded "open-space area," a privately owned floodplain designated for general public use during daylight hours.

When the Dunns moved into their four-bedroom house in 1976, the community was made up of three smaller subdivisions: Donleigh, Allview and Arrowhead. "Donleigh and Allview didn't like each other much, and Arrowhead was kind of the DMZ," Bob Dunn said. People eventually decided that a single civic association would be more productive.

Allview residents join forces in other ways. "One of the Viking sons is going to marry the daughter of another Viking family," Bob Dunn said. "So we're going to have a pure-blood, like Harry Potter."

The bride-to-be is a Howard County judge; the groom is a Sherwin-Williams executive. The happy couple are "scared to death," some neighbors said, because they have no idea what to expect from the close and quirky place where they grew up.

There is reason to fear. Special occasions are not taken lightly in Allview. When one resident turned 50, neighbors knocked on the birthday boy's door, wrapped him in a lifejacket and captain's hat, and drove him all around Columbia in a spotlighted, towed sailboat leading a parade of honking cars.

Bob Dunn said, "The past 20 years out here have been like living in an amusement park."