Fostoria:
Fighting to Maintain
Its Rural Va. Roots

By Linda Wheeler
Washington Post Staff Writer
November 13, 1993

Anna Sullivan was not deterred by the lack of a "for sale" sign in front of the Queen Anne Victorian house. She jumped from her car, strode up the walk and knocked on the door.

"Is your house for sale?" she asked the somewhat surprised couple who answered the door.

The owners, as it turned out, had decided to divorce but had not yet contacted a broker. Yes, the house was available, they said. Sullivan ended up getting a vintage gingerbread house but in an unlikely place: Arlington.

That was 20 years ago. Since then Sullivan has written a book with a friend, Joyce Dale, about her experience of restoring the 87-year-old house in Fostoria, also known as Highland Park. The "Old House Source Book" sold 8,000 copies before going out of print, Sullivan said.

The handful of Victorian houses like the one belonging to Sullivan and her husband, John, stand out in the community of about 250 homes, most built since World War II. Sullivan, whose business is advising clients on appropriate exterior colors for their homes, has painted her own house a car-stopping bright blue with peach and white trim. She said her house is the only one in Arlington to be included in a recently published book, "America's Painted Ladies."

But the majority of houses in Fostoria are far more conservative, reflecting a period when many of Virginia's near-in communities grew rapidly. In Fostoria, it meant trading the rural character of stretches of woods for the orderly look of rows of brick bungalows, Cape Cods and ramblers.

When the first houses were built around 1890, the community was called Fostoria, a name that was lost when William A. Hoge took over the Fostoria Land and Development Co. early in the century and created a new name, Highland Park. But in recent years, Sullivan said she and other have reclaimed the historic name.

"We had a house tour in the '80s and the people who arranged the tour called it Fostoria," she said. "We got curious and did some research and decided we liked the old name."

Sullivan said she and others may ask the Arlington County government to allow them to officially rename their neighborhood Fostoria.

The original boundaries of Fostoria were set when a 93-acre parcel was purchased from a much larger tract dating from 1820, according to Ruth Rose, a George Mason University history student who documented the development of the area in 1987.

Today those borders are Washington Boulevard, McKinley Road, Interstate 66 and Ohio Street.

The development of residential property in the area of what is now western Arlington was spurred by the construction of a steam rail line in the 1850s along Four Mile Run. The Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire Railroad, as the line was called, was seized by the federal government on May 24, 1861, and was used as a military railroad until June 1865.

The lines were repaired and service restored after the Civil War. By the time Foster had laid out the generous-size lots for his new community in 1890, the line had changed owners, and names, several times.

In 1897, an electric rail was built parallel to the existing railroad. Each line had its own station, providing the residents of Fostoria with transportation to Washington, Alexandria and Fairfax.

A newspaper ad run by Hoge around 1907 to attract buyers to what had become Highland Park reads substantially like similar appeals offered by today's developers.

"Buy a house in beautiful Virginia sub-division; three and one-half miles from and 450 feet higher than Washington City; a great investment; easy monthly payments and cheap lots," proclaimed the ad copy. And it ended with, "Why pay rent when you can buy a nice new home for the same money?"

Buyers didn't take Hoge or later owners up on the proposal in great numbers. By 1938, there were only 63 houses in Fostoria.

The big wave of buyers came during and after World War II. Among them were Sophie and Arthur Vogel. Sophie Vogel became the librarian at the local Reed Elementary School and often is identified as the community's historian.

She likes to point to the small-town character of Fostoria that attracted them in 1953 and is still attracting home buyers today.

"It's a complete neighborhood and it has a wonderful history," Vogel said. "It means something to have a history, to have roots. The same feelings go back 50 years, 90 years."

There is the Westover shopping center with the post office, grocery store, bakery, hardware store and just about anything else that is needed, she said.

Her two boys, as well as all the other neighborhood children, walked to Reed Elementary School, which was located just on the other side of Washington Boulevard until the county closed it in 1984.

"We all loved that school," Vogel said. "The PTA sued to keep it open. Parents signed petitions and we had 9,000 signatures."

Ironically, she said, the county board is considering reopening the school, now a day-care center, due to overcrowding at nearby schools.

Vogel recalled how the neighborhood came together to buy property for a community pool in 1956 and again to successfully urge the county to open a branch library in 1963.

But then there was the battle to keep I-66 from being built along the southern boundary of Fostoria in 1982. That one the neighborhood lost.

"There was so much resistance to it," Vogel said. "Four Mile Run was down there where they wanted to build the road. My children remember playing there. The beavers and raccoons were displaced."

Sullivan also remembers the day the bulldozers came to build I-66.

"I was working in my garden and this mother duck and her babies came walking by," she said. "There were lots of raccoons and they all moved into people's attics."

Since the protests over the interstate construction, Sullivan said there has been only one reason for residents to band together.

"The last big issue for us was curbs and gutters in 1989 or 1990," she said.

"We had narrow country roads but here and there people widened the streets with blacktop and it was getting unsightly. So we all got together and said we want curbs and gutters but we want our narrow streets," Sullivan said.

She said they argued with the county government, which wanted to widen the streets to meet a county-set standard, but residents pointed out there was very little traffic in their area because they have only one through street.

"They came in here and used a device to measure traffic and it was something like 50 cars a day," Sullivan said. "We won that one."

In the larger neighborhood, residents are concerned about possible development around the nearest Metro station at East Falls Church, about half a mile from the neighborhood.

Rob Swennes, president of Leeway Civic Association, which includes an area much larger than Fostoria, said residents do not want the massive commercial building that has occurred around other Virginia Metro stations.

"People work at preserving the residential character," he said. "We have locked in on the zoning we need as an impedement to anyone who wants to extend the commercial area around the station. It is a subtle way to say to developers to keep out."

Highland Park-Overlee Knolls Civic Association also claims Fostoria in its territory, President Roger Morton said.

But he said the group only meets when it has a project that requires community participation, such as the Neighborhood Conservation Plan that was worked out with the county 10 years ago and more recently updated.

Few houses go on the market in Fostoria, said real estate agent Lynne Brock of Coldwell-Banker, Stevens, but there were three available last week for slightly less than $200,000 that she described as modest homes.

Brock said the range of sales in the past few years has been $165,000 to $265,000.

Vogel said she gets frequent calls from real estate agents asking her if she is ready to sell.

"I always say, 'No, we are entrenched,' " she said. "Then I tell them what they are always saying. Our house has the three best features: location, location, location."

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