A marker celebrating a former cluster of Vietnamese businesses known as “Little Saigon” could be coming soon to Clarendon.
The concept design for a tabletop marker saluting the collection of Vietnamese restaurants and stores that once flourished in the neighborhood received approval from Arlington’s Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB) on Wednesday.
It most likely will be placed at the intersection of Wilson Blvd and N. Hudson Street, near where a CVS now stands.
Forty years ago, the neighborhood had a heavy concentration of Vietnamese merchants, many of them refugees from the fall of South Vietnam. Drawn by inexpensive rents owing to disruptive construction work for the Metro system’s Orange Line, merchants congregated on Wilson Blvd and Clarendon Blvd from N. Highland to N. Irving streets.
The marker will explore their stories, mostly in English but partly in Vietnamese.
Text was written by Kim O’Connell, an expert on the corridor’s history, in collaboration with county historic-preservation staff. It won praise for its thoroughness and linguistic clarity.
“She can write our signs anytime,” one HALRB member said.
There was not quite as much enthusiasm among HALRB members for the archival photographs, which with the exception of one woman shopping at a supermarket only showed buildings, not people.
“The idea of the vibrancy [of the community] is really important, but I’m not sensing it in these photographs,” commission member Robert Dudka said.
County staff said they would search anew for photos showing some of the cultural events held in the corridor during its heyday.
Even as more businesses were setting up shop there, the opening of the Clarendon Metro station in 1979 marked the beginning of a multi-decade migration of Vietnamese-owned businesses out of the Clarendon area. Rents that once were just a few dollars per square foot suddenly spiked to as much as $25.
Starting in the mid-1980s, many Vietnamese entrepreneurs departed for the Eden Center, located just over the Arlington border on Wilson Blvd in Falls Church.
The last remaining outpost among the early inhabitants of Little Saigon is the acclaimed Nam Viet restaurant, which holds court on N. Hudson Street.
Some of the buildings that housed the Vietnamese businesses have survived, but others were razed and replaced as Clarendon redeveloped around the Metro station.
The South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces almost 50 years ago, on April 30, 1975 — bringing an end to a civil war that had raged for two decades.
A year later, the city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the North Vietnamese leader who had died in 1969. But it remains “Saigon” to those from South Vietnam who emigrated to the U.S. in fear of persecution at the hands of the victors.
A few miles west of Clarendon, Falls Church and Fairfax County officials joined leaders of the Vietnamese community last month for a ceremony renaming the two blocks of Wilson Blvd in front of the Eden Center as “Saigon Blvd.”
That side of the roadway is located within the borders of Falls Church. At the ceremony, Fairfax County leaders suggested they were open to a similar renaming on their side.
The renaming was honorary in nature; it does not affect addresses along the stretch.
