Arlington Ridge:
District's Proximity
Is Paramount

By Linda Wheeler
Washington Post Staff Writer
July 22, 1995

Lou Perez likes to call his Virginia neighborhood of Arlington Ridge "D.C.-centric," because it is two stoplights away from where he works in the District.

"If your work life revolves around Washington, this is a great location," the D.C. police detective said. "It's easy in and easy out."

For Bruce Jones, a retired military officer, Arlington Ridge is a convenient location for day trips to the city's museums. Real estate agent Paul Hare likes to meet friends in the city for lunch and be able to return home within 90 minutes.

It is the highway system rather than Metro that has made this south Arlington neighborhood such a convenient location. Shirley Highway forms the western and northern borders of the neighborhood and an entrance ramp connects the main street of the community, South Arlington Ridge Road, with the highway. The eastern boundary is South Grant, South 26th and South Joyce Streets. The Alexandria city line is the southern border.

Despite its closeness to the District and several major commuter corridors, Arlington Ridge has maintained a gracious character with its older, large homes set in groves of tall oaks along winding residential streets. Since the 1920s the Arlington Ridge Civic Association has worked to maintain that character. Over the years, the association brought residents' concerns to the county government for projects that would affect them, such as the construction of Shirley Highway, also known as Interstate 395, the widening of nearby Jefferson Davis Highway and the proposal to build an incinerator to burn 600 tons of trash a day.

It was the trash plant proposal that spurred the involvement of Jones, a resident of the neighborhood since 1961.

"They wanted to put that waste energy plant right at the bottom of our hill," Jones said of the battle that took place about eight years ago when when he was association president. "We got very concerned. We really rallied around this thing."

The community won.

Arlington joined with Alexandria to build a plant several miles away. Now Jones and others are concerned about a similar issue: Arlington's plans to expand the capacity of a sludge incineration plant within the neighborhood.

The association's current treasurer, Rebecca Gray, said residents have done their own research on the harm caused by smoke from the plant and will confront county officials at a planned meeting this coming week. She said several 200-year-old oaks recently have died and they believe their death may have been caused by pollution from the plant.

"We have much to protect here," she said. "We have our own little forest ecosystem with stands of tall oaks and wild animals, including raccoons, possums and one red fox."

Social issues also have drawn the attention of the association. Immediate past president Hare, a resident since 1987, said during his two terms in office the group took on the problem of gangs that had formed in a modest rental complex known as Arna Valley located at the base of the ridge near Shirley Highway. Hare said the community sought a solution to the crime attributed to gang activity.

As association president, Hare said he called a town meeting that included police officials and county board members.

"Rather than have folks in the expensive homes think of the people in Arna Valley as the enemy, we began the process of working together," he said, referring to the disparity between apartments in Arna Valley that rent for about $400 a month and houses priced at $800,000 along the ridge.

"The vast majority of the people who live in Arna Valley are wonderful people who are good citizens and good community members," Hare said. "They were the ones suffering the most from the crime."

He said the association asked the police for community patrols and much of the gang-related activity has ceased. Hare said he thought the community effort worked well because residents discovered they had much in common regardless of where they lived within the neighborhood or their ability to speak English.

"People up here had earned their way up the ladder," he said. "Many had come from modest roots and are self-made people."

According to the 1990 census for the tract that most closely follows the Arlington Ridge neighborhood, about 11,000 people live there. Of the close to 3,000 residents who identified themselves as foreign-born, two-thirds reported they did not speak English well.

The neighborhood is a mix of single-family homes, rental apartments and condominium units that comprise the 5,868 housing units the government reported for the area. Although the neighborhood is known for its vintage mansions along South Arlington Ridge Road, most of the homes were built between 1950 and 1969, according to the government report.

Hare, who formed his own real estate firm called Heritage Realty Group three months ago, said in the past year, 64 houses have sold in the neighborhood for prices ranging from $110,000 for a very small bungalow to $880,000 for a new four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath colonial. During the same time period, 16 condominiums also sold, with the least expensive priced at $55,000 and the highest at $220,000. Hare said there are 32 condominiums and 50 houses on the market now.

Perez bought an efficiency condominium in the Cavendish, a 198-unit building, about nine years ago. Although Perez is enthusiastic about the short commute he has to his job in the District, he said he is equally pleased that he can walk to shopping at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City in the adjoining Aurora Highlands neighborhood and to his church, Calvary United Methodist.

What is now Perez's neighborhood was once the site of a series of forts built by Union soldiers during the Civil War who seized the ridge as a lookout for Confederate troops. The history of the fortifications are part of a current exhibit at the headquarters of the Arlington County Historical Society, a two-room schoolhouse built in 1891 on South Arlington Ridge Road.

Society treasurer Darlene Hannabass said the Queen Anne-styled brick building is the oldest standing schoolhouse in the county. It was given to the society in 1961, years after it had closed as a school. The society raised about $70,000 to restore the building that is open to the public Friday through Sunday each week.

Longtime Arlington Ridge resident and society member Doris "Tish" Bangs said she used to walk to the Hume School as a child in the 1920s. At that time, there were only two or three other houses along the unpaved road, she said.

"At the school, we had two teachers for the six grades," she said. "Each teacher taught three grades. When you reached fourth grade, you moved to the second room of the school and got the other teacher."

By the time she reached the sixth grade, Bangs said she was the only student in her class.

She recalled that favored students got to ring the school bell in the belfry to announce the beginning of the school day. The bell is still there and is still officially rung on special occasions, such as the U.S. Bicentennial celebration in 1976.

But it also is rung on weekends.

"We let the young kids who visit the museum ring the bell," Bangs said. "They really love it."

© The Washington Post Co.

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