Westover:
Setting Store
By a Small-Town Past

By Louie Estrada
Washington Post Staff Writer
November 4, 1995

The storefront of the J.W. Ayers Variety and Hardware store, stocked with shiny, lacquered wooden sleds and bright red Radio Flyer wagons, is reminiscent of times gone by. And in many ways so is the surrounding community it serves.

The store is one of several small shops lined along Washington Boulevard in Westover, a community of about 2,000 people in north Arlington. The stores include trendy restaurants, a supermarket, a barbershop, a hair salon, a bakery, a post office and a bank.

The small business district is cut from the cloth of small-town USA, said Jim Rhodes, who moved to Westover after World War II. A few years later, he began working at the store, which was named after the man who was called the community's unofficial mayor. When J.W. Ayers died in 1976, Ronald Kaplan bought the store and has continued a longstanding policy of trying to stock almost anything a couple of customers request, Rhodes said.

"It's gained a reputation of having a variety of merchandise that you don't find in other area stores, and provides services like cutting glass to order," said Rhodes, 75. Customers come in with long pieces of lumber to ask Rhodes to make some cuts with a saw he keeps in the store.

"It's little things like this that make a small store personal," he said.

The variety store has a steady business fed by surrounding homes and apartments built in the 1940s and in need of regular maintenance and improvements.

Westover is about six long blocks down Washington Boulevard and about three blocks wide on either side. There is row upon row of brick- and wood-framed houses, and garden apartments with foundations of concrete poured over iron and supported by steel beams. During World War II, developers built homes designed to withstand bombing.

Home prices in Westover have remained steady in recent years, ranging from $180,000 to $300,000, said Thelma Ermlick, a real estate agent with Century 21 in Westover.

Beyond the shopping district, there are wide tree-lined streets with brick colonial, Victorian and semidetached duplexes. To entice buyers to Westover in a sluggish real estate market, homeowners have found they typically need to renovate kitchens and bathrooms in the moderate-size homes that sit on small lots. Renovations and additions can easily cost $15,000 and more, Ermlick said.

Construction on some homes shows dramatic dormers, wraparound porches and Victorian-style bay windows.

Pete Dowd had sticker shock when he found out how much homes sold for in the Washington area. He moved to Westover in 1988 from New Hampshire to be closer to relatives and to escape the harsh winters up north.

One of the attractions to Westover has been the concentration of shops, Dowd said. "In a lot of ways it's a small community, where the merchants know you by name," he said.

The community spirit is on display during the Christmas season in particular. Later this month, Rhodes and a group of volunteers will piece together the larger-than-life Santa Claus, sled and reindeer atop the shops.

Rhodes has been assembling the display nearly every Christmas, with the exception of two years, since the mid-1950s. When Santa's lower half and some of the reindeer crumbled from wear and tear, Rhodes used fiberglass to repair the figures. It's a tradition that draws children and their parents to the shops.

"You see a few new faces in the neighborhood but it's pretty much remained the same over the years," said Heidi Schmidt, who was raised in Westover and works at the Pastry and Bake Shop on Washington Boulevard. Commuters stop in the bakery for a quick bite before heading off to work or stop by at the end of the day for some goodies, Schmidt said of her customers. Westover is conveniently located next to Interstate 66, she said.

The community's population was predominantly white when the area was developed, and continued to be so until the last 15 years. But since then, garden apartments in the community have attracted a growing number of Hispanic and Asian residents. About three-fourths of Westover's residents live in one- and two-bedroom apartments.

"It's comforting to know that if my car died I could walk to all my shopping in a friendly community," said Sandra Jones, who's lived in the area for about a year. "It feels like a village, which is unique in the area."

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