Cherrydale:
At 100, It Blends Old and New

By Linda Wheeler
Washington Post Staff Writer
July 31, 1993

Cherrydale is easy to miss.

Bisected by Lee Highway, there is little indication to motorists passing through this century-old Arlington County community of what lies beyond the busy commuter route.

The highway is lined with a patchwork of used-car lots, garages and small commercial buildings. A large, new Safeway supermarket and its extensive parking lot dominates the north side.

But here and there are hints of an older community. There's the Cherrydale Volunteer Fire Department, built in 1919, and the Cherrydale Hardware store, opened in 1936, both still in operation.

Just off Lee Highway on either side are more examples of vintage architecture: turn-of-the-century farmhouses, cottages and homes built from Sears catalogue kits. It is this quiet, early suburban neighborhood with single-family homes on spacious lots that residents say is the real Cherrydale.

The community, named for the cherry orchards that once covered the rolling landscape, is between Interstate 66, Lee Highway, Lorcum Lane and Utah Street. Homes dating back to the community's early days are one of the draws for Cherrydale, real estate agents said.

"My house was built in 1908," said Howard Seamens, acting president of the Cherrydale Citizens Association. "I am from Pennsylvania and this looks like a farmhouse to me. It's frame and two-story and at one time had a wraparound porch."

Seamens said he and his wife, Charlene, moved from Capitol Hill six years ago after he saw a body of a man who had died on the street. He said he realized he didn't want his children seeing such scenes.

He said they looked at the Cherrydale house and then at 39 more and then came back to the old house on Nelson Street. It was the price of less than $200,000, large lot and comfortable feeling of an older house that helped them choose Cherrydale, he said.

Since buying the house, the Seamenses have built an extension for a master bedroom suite and created larger bedrooms for their two children.

The housing lots in Cherrydale are often so large that an owner can tear down the existing house, build a much larger home and still abide by local zoning regulations.

Down the street from the Seamenses, a developer did just that, building two center hall, four-bedroom Colonial houses on two lots. Real estate agent Lynn Brock of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate said the houses sold quickly several years ago, one for $372,000 and the other for $395,000.

Brock said those houses represented the upper end of the price scale in Cherrydale. She said most houses sell for about $250,000, with some small cottages selling for less.

She said most of her customers are interested in buying and renovating older homes and like the idea of a community with a sense of history.

"When I hear someone wants an older house in an older neighborhood, I take them to Cherrydale," she said. "If they are looking for something very new, I go elsewhere."

But there are new houses scattered around Cherrydale, including a cluster of six built on what had been two lots, according to one of the owners, Chris Jennings. Known as Quincy Elms, six three-bedroom houses with two-car garages face onto a courtyard reached by a private driveway. Off to one side is a playground maintained by the families who share it.

Unlike Seamens, who treasures his older house, Jennings said he wanted a new house but within a short commute of the White House, where he works as the congressional liaison for Hillary Clinton and her health care program. Jennings and his wife, Jan, and 2-year-old son, Nathaniel, moved from Burke in Fairfax County six months ago. He said the commute from there often took an hour.

And within the larger community of Cherrydale, Quincy Elms has become a smaller one, Jennings said. "This is a mini sense of community here," he said. "We all look out for each other."

Jennings watched Nathaniel pretend to sweep the common driveway that joins the houses and loops around a small grassy island at the center of the courtyard. He said there were other small children living in the area and that gave Nathaniel friends to play with, but within the protection of the courtyard.

He said they paid $320,000 for their house, a price that he thought was "relatively affordable."

The short commute to Washington that Jennings finds so attractive often is cited as one of the most attractive features of Cherrydale. Key Bridge and the Roosevelt Memorial Bridge are about two miles away and a Metro station is within a mile.

Cherrydale, since its founding, has always had ties with Washington. Initially farmers took their produce to Georgetown for sale. Later, a stronger tie was made when the Great Falls and Old Dominion Railroad Co., organized in 1900, built a double-track railway beginning in Georgetown, passing through Cherrydale and finishing in Great Falls.

According to Cherrydale's historian, Karthryn Holt Springston, the first railway car reached Cherrydale in 1906, ushering in "the golden age" of residential development.

In her book, "Cherrydale: Cherries, Characters and Characteristics," she said the railroad, in operation for 30 years, enabled people to live in the countryside of Cherrydale but commute daily to the city.

It could also mean a way to get away for a good time.

According to Springston, a 4 1/2-cent, round-trip ticket would take a resident from Cherrydale to Great Falls, where a popular resort offered ice cream, a carousel and dancing.

But the Depression and the increasing use of automobiles brought the railroad to an end. By then, 1935, Cherrydale was a bustling community with its own fire department, school, library, medical clinic, and water and sewer lines.

And Cherrydale had its own citizens association, formed in 1910 to petition the county government to slow the trains that brought not only prosperity to the town but also noise and a fear for the safety of residents crossing the tracks.

Since then, the association has taken on other battles with the county, ranging from its unsuccessful struggle to stop the building of I-66 through the community to a more recent victory of preventing the county from opening a homeless shelter on Lee Highway.

This year, the association rededicated a World War I Memorial. Seamens said the bronze plaque set into a large stone originally was placed in front of the Cherrydale School on Lee Highway in 1925 by the Daughters of the American Revolution. It honored "the boys of Cherrydale who gave their lives in the World War."

When the school was torn down about 20 years ago, Seamens said the memorial was moved to the nearby community of Lyon Park for safekeeping. Last year the association asked for it back and, on Armed Forces Day, association members and descendants of some of the five military men listed on the plaque dedicated it anew.

Next on the association agenda, Seamens said, is an effort to discourage the county from announced plans to widen Lee Highway.

"They want to speed traffic through Cherrydale for one hour during rush hour," he said. "We don't feel the overall damage to the community is worth moving traffic in the morning."

Seamens said the association has been meeting on the issue.

"We will muster our opposition," he said. "We think we will prevail."

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