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On an October day in 1970, Rock Spring Neighborhood House came alive with history.
The Arlington Historical Society has launched a new initiative designed to capture present-day voices for future study and understanding.
In preparation for pilot projects — including discussions with those involved in development in the Shirlington area as well as the Crystal City Underground — co-chairs Sean Denniston and Marty Suydam recently completed a five-week training session on oral histories courtesy of the Office of Historic Alexandria.
Sitting on the reference stacks at the Charlie Clark Center for Local History at Arlington Central Library are five thick, blue, nearly 50-year-old bound editions.
They are the archives of the Arlington County Bicentennial Commission, which, from 1974 through the end of 1976, was tasked with overseeing local efforts to celebrate the nation’s 200th birthday.
Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of the permanent preservation of Arlington’s oldest existing residential structure.
The Ball-Sellers House, which began life in the mid-1700s as a two-room log cabin, was donated in February 1975 by its last private owner to the Arlington Historical Society. The society then refurbished the Glencarlyn home and opened portions of it to the public as its contribution to the nation’s bicentennial celebration of 1976.
The demise of the GazetteLeader news organization in late September left Arlington with just a single weekly print news publication.
Should the survivor, the Arlington Connection, someday follow the trend of print publications moving online or disappearing entirely, that could be the end of the community’s legacy of physical newspapers — one that spans more than two centuries.
Arlington County historians are collecting artifacts to document the history of the Latino community in the county.
So far, some notable contributions include personal effects from former Arlington School Board member Emma Violand-Sanchez, who has been active in the Latino community for many years, Arlington Center for Local History Manager Judith Knudsen tells ARLnow.
Thousands of historic Arlington newspaper issues from 1935 to 1978 are now available online.
Arlington Public Library’s Center for Local History worked with the Library of Virginia to transfer more than 40 years of published material to the Virginia Chronicle, where they are searchable by keyword, date, location and publication.
A time capsule in Ballston that has been largely forgotten to time is set to be opened at some point next year, and no one seems to know what’s inside.
An inconspicuous plaque on the side of the Fairgate office building (1005 N. Glebe Road) announces the time capsule.
Today, Chain Bridge is a sleepy three-lane crossing between Virginia and D.C., but the bridge and its predecessors have played a prominent — if curious — role in the nation’s history.
“Most modern-day Arlington commuters who use Chain Bridge in their daily trek to and from the District would be astonished to learn how prominent the area at Pimmit Run at the Virginia end of the bridge was in the early days of our fledgling country,” Jim Fearson wrote in his “Chain Bridge: A History of the Bridge and Its Surrounding Territory from 1608-1991.”
Arlington Public Library unveiled a trove of photographs and documents this week that spotlights the women in Arlington who’ve shaped the county’s history.
The digital exhibition is called Women’s Work: Stories of Persistence and Influence and it contains photographs, letters, bumper stickers, and voting guides taken from the Center for Local History’s (CLH) Community Archives. The exhibition organizes the records under several categories from politics to education.
(Updated 2:35 p.m.) The Arlington Public Library’s Center for Local History has unveiled a new digital profile collection of women who influenced Arlington’s development through their “quiet but not silent” persistence.
The collection seeks to bring up the names of those women who “were frequently hidden in the background” but “were nonetheless ground breakers and trailblazers” who fought for better education, libraries, conservation, and health care in a modernizing county.
