Barcroft:
Older Virtues Still Prevail

By Linda Wheeler
Washington Post Staff Writer
July 23, 1994

Children ride miniature bicycles along a tree-lined block in the Barcroft neighborhood of Arlington as a couple holding hands and pushing a baby carriage walk nearby. Around the corner, parents watch from their front porch as three children take turns jumping down the steps.

The resemblance to a photo album snapshot of an idyllic neighborhood from earlier times seems to play out on a daily basis in this community of mostly single-family detached homes, where one well-tended lawn melds into the next. There is even a white-clapboard community center and a red-brick neighborhood school.

That sense of community and security is what Margaret Davis, 70, found attractive about Barcroft in 1951 when she and her husband built their house. Today, she said, the neighborhood is still the same, and when her grandchildren visit they too play outdoors.

"Barcroft is still a good place to raise children," she said. "My four grandchildren are attending day camp at Barcroft and they walk the three blocks to and from the school."

On the Fourth of July, children of the community rode bicycles in the annual parade, and then at night families gathered to watch the fireworks at nearby Barcroft Park. At the Davis home, that meant the family gathered on the front porch.

"We all watched from the front steps," she said.

For Davis and others, little has changed in this community bounded by Arlington Boulevard, South George Mason Drive, Columbia Pike and Glencarlyn Park since many of the houses were built about 1950. The neighborhood, with a population of 3,128 people, is an eclectic collection of Victorian, colonial, Cape Cod and other styles built in frame and brick. Along with the single-family homes, there are several apartment buildings, town house complexes and stores along the busy corridors that create its boundaries.

Although many of the homes were built within memory of their owners, the neighborhood itself dates back to the time of George Washington, who surveyed the land and may have built a grist mill there, according to a history of the neighborhood. George Washington Parke Custis did build a mill on Four Mill Run near Columbia Pike. Known as the Arlington Mill, it was destroyed during the Civil War.

The community takes its name from another mill owner who built his business on the site of the Arlington Mill. John Wolverton Barcroft, a physician and inventor, operated what was said to be the largest mill wheel on the East Coast. The community of Lake Barcroft takes its name from a second mill he operated farther west on Columbia Pike.

The first homes were built in 1892 in what was called Corbett, but the name was changed to Barcroft in 1903. Builder Walter O'Hara and his son Robert built several hundred of the homes between 1918 and the 1950s. In more recent years, the town houses and apartment buildings were built along the edges of the community.

The detached houses sell fairly quickly when they come on the market, said Carole Ann Rosen, a real estate agent for Town & Country Properties who also lives in Barcroft. She said there were 25 sales in the last year and there are now six listings ranging from $179,000 to $329,000.

Rosen said the range of prices for the houses on the market reflects the variety of houses available in Barcroft, mostly older detached homes. She said some newer town houses sell for close to $400,000.

"We have mostly young couples and singles buying," she said. "We seem to draw from Fairlington {condominiums} because we have some of the same feel, that is, lots of trees and grass."

Rosen, 51, said she and her husband moved to Barcroft 21 years ago and their house backs onto the creek.

"There were lots of years when we would have five or six pairs of wet tennis shoes lined up on the porch," she said.

Convenience to Washington has always been important. The first rail line opened in 1850 with a stop on Columbia Pike for passengers and freight. By the time it ended in 1968, bus, private car and bicycle had become the way to commute to work.

The Barcroft Citizens Association was formed in 1908, but its name was changed to the Barcroft School and Civic League when the elementary school opened the same year. The community association is housed in a historic church built in 1908. It meets regularly for neighborhood celebrations, such as the Fourth of July parade, and for more serious issues, such as a candidates night.

Scott Allard, 36, the current president of the association, said the group several years ago filed with the county a neighborhood preservation plan that outlined the community's concerns about traffic, open space, historic preservation and commercial development.

In that document, adopted by the county board in 1990, one of Barcroft's biggest concerns was over Arlington Hall, an 87-acre site within and near the neighborhood that is owned by the federal government. Most of it has become the National Foreign Affairs Training Center of the State Department. But it was only recently that the remaining eight acres in Barcroft were designated as a park, Allard said.

As pleased as Allard and other association members are about gaining the park land, they continue to worry about the division of large housing lots into smaller parcels, with several houses being built where formerly only one stood.

"Seven houses have been built on a 6,000-square-foot lot," he said. "Seven houses on that lot is insane. Three or four face the street and then three or four more are wedged into what was the back yard."

Allard believes that such dense development could change the character of the neighborhood, although such density is legal under zoning laws. He said he expects the same problem to arise when the 18,000-square-foot lot owned by the late farmer Marvon McKinney is sold.

"We felt real shock and sadness at his death" earlier this year, Allard said. "We wrote to his heirs to ask if we could establish a memorial garden on the property, but we haven't heard back from them. We can see a developer going in there and building lots of houses, and we can't stop it."

Davis shares his concern, remembering the pleasure of buying fresh vegetables at a roadside stand run by McKinney and the way he grew flowers to give to customers.

Davis said she had watched another large estate broken into small housing lots when the Payne plantation was demolished in 1985. She modified the plans for her own house when it was being built so that she had two views of the estate's gardens that included large displays of roses, irises and peonies.

The gardens were bulldozed along with the house and many stately oak trees, Davis said.

"It broke my heart to see that happen," she said. "I didn't take a photograph of the gardens because I thought they would last forever."

But the association has succeeded in other efforts, such as sponsoring a cleanup this past spring of Four Mile Run and the bike path that go through Glencarlyn Park on the southwest border of the neighborhood. Allard said 600 people responded to the appeal from within and outside Barcroft.

And each July and December, the association sponsors a free lunch for the service-oriented people who pass through Barcroft. Allard said it is a way to show gratitude to postal workers, police officers, firefighters, trash removers and others who usually are never thanked for their work.

"We get about 100 people who come out for lunch," he said. "We do it on a weekday at noon and serve food from local restaurants."

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