A local delegation flew across the Atlantic this past weekend to celebrate the coronation in the English village of Arlington.
A group of about ten Arlingtonians, including an Arlington Heights Civic Association representative, made a quick trip to the village in Gloucestershire, England last week — at the invite of some villagers — for the crowning of King Charles.
They were greeted with the proverbial red carpet, including a banquet, music, and a gift of a painting showcasing the village’s famed “Arlington Row,” which is featured on United Kingdom passports and in the movie Bridget Jones’s Diary.
“It was awesome. When you share a name, you are cousins,” said Mark Murawski, who was part of the delegation as the civic association representative. “It’s important… to have this relationship, foster communication, meet new friends, and share new experiences. It’s a generational event. I wanted to be a part of that and I think it was great that they wanted to share it with us.”
Some believe that Arlington County is actually named after this 1,000-year-old village, as opposed to the more common understanding that it’s named after Harry Bennett, the 1st Earl of Arlington.
The county’s name actually comes from an estate owned by the Custis family near Williamsburg, Virginia, a number of locals say, with that name dating back to the Custis’ own ancestral hometown of Arlington, England.
Murawski is among those who believe this history. During the pandemic, he dove deep into local history and emerged convinced that Arlington, Virginia was in fact named after the small English village of under 1,000 residents in the parish of Bibury.
He said he approached the County Board about perhaps recognizing it as a “sister city” — like Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk — but he was told the village was too small. So, Murawski turned to his neighborhood civic association to see if something could be formalized.
The Arlington Heights Civic Association and Bibury Parish both approved an official relationship earlier this year with Murawski being named the civic association’s Friendship Community delegate.
Then, the invite came for them to join the English community with the same name in celebrating the coronation of King Charles.
“It was an honor to celebrate this generational event with them,” Murawski said.
He hopes he can get the “Arlington Row” painting, commissioned by the village and done by a local English artist, to be approved to be hung on the wall at the Columbia Pike library. The local delegation brought gifts with them as well, including several books from the Arlington Historical Society detailing the history of the county.
It was a short trip, with the delegation arriving Friday morning, watching the coronation in the village center on Saturday, and flying back home to the United States on Monday.
This won’t be the end of the relationship though, Murawski said. Several members of the Bibury Parish Board — “essentially, their County Board” — have been invited to the Arlington County Fair in August.
“I think they are going to come,” he said.
Beyond occasionally traveling across continents for celebrations and county fairs, Murawski hopes that this continued relationship gets the county to add this history to its website and perhaps even designate the village as a sister city despite its small size.
“If an exception could be made, this should be it,” he said. “Because that is our namesake. It’s not that we would be twinning with a town that’s similar. We would be twinning with a town that we are named after.”
Heidelberg Pastry Shoppe offers a German and European gourmet experience like no other.
Aiming to bring a piece of home to Arlington, owner Wolfgang Büchler continues to present his customers with the best baked goods after 48 years in business. Together with his Arlington-native wife, they fulfill that goal.
Located along Langston Boulevard, Heidelberg once occupied a location just down the street.
“The bakery itself opened in February of 1975, and we were down the street in the Lee Heights Shopping Center,” said Carla.
“My husband, Wolfgang, was the one who opened it originally, and then I came in September of 1975 and applied for a part-time job. So this is my first job and only job,” she said with a smile.
About 12 years after opening, they moved to their current storefront.
“In 1988, we moved to this location, and this is where we’ve been since then,” said Carla.
Starting by selling just breads, donuts, and cakes, the move down the street allowed them to expand their offerings. With more space and ambition, the pastry shop added a deli section, offering cold cuts, cheeses, and German wursts. The goal, as always, is to give customers a taste of Wolfgang’s hometown.
“He was raised in a suburb of Heidelberg, Germany,” Carla said of her husband. “Wolfgang completed two apprenticeships, one as a baker and one as a pastry chef, because they are two very distinct arts.”
Wolfgang came to America in 1969 and “worked for a German guy who had a pastry shop in Tysons,” Carla said.
Having grown up in Arlington nearly her entire life, Carla shares how she has seen Heidelberg Pastry impact the lives of those in the community.
“They come through the doors and are very overwhelmed and surprised because it is more than just a bakery, it’s bigger,” she said.
“Here we have donuts, breakfast pastries, breads, rolls, other pastries and deli items like sandwiches, and we even have different German grocery items in our store,” Carla added.
For those growing up on the northern side of Arlington, you may have fond memories of this place providing your family with specialized cakes for celebrations or baked goods for the holidays.
“I think it’s satisfying to have the customers feel as though they are family, and so many of our customers have been customers for more than 40 years,” said Carla. “You’re a part of people’s lives and see people get married, have babies, and when they graduate because we make cakes for them.”
Heidelberg has also been a destination for some homesick Germans in the D.C. area.
“Germans tend to always miss their bread first, so this is a perfect spot for them to come to… and during Christmas time, there are so many traditional German treats we have that your mom or grandma would make in Germany,” said Carla.
Despite its enduring popularity, the shop faced challenges during the pandemic.
“We sold items we don’t normally sell, such as eggs, milk, and butter. A lot of people bought yeast and flour because they couldn’t get it in the grocery store,” said Carla. “People were very supportive and would buy from us in particular because we were a small business.”
When living civil rights legend Joan Trumpauer Mulholland participated in sit-ins, she carried a Bible with her.
She kept her birth certificate inside “so that they could identify the body,” her son, Loki, said during an event on Saturday at the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington honoring his mother’s activism.
Joan piped up: “I didn’t have a driver’s license or anything like that. So I needed some way for them to know who I am.”
For protesting segregation with lunch counter sit-ins and bus trips known as Freedom Rides, Mulholland was briefly incarcerated in a maximum security prison and hunted by the Ku Klux Klan. In the intervening 60 years, her activism inspired books and documentaries and the creation of the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation, which provides anti-racist education.
During the event — just shy of the 60th anniversary of a historic sit-in in Jackson, Mississippi, in which Mulholland participated — people gathered at the Columbia Pike museum to hear from her and check out an expanded exhibit with objects from her days as a Freedom Rider.
Just under her Bible, visitors can see memorabilia from the historically Black sorority she joined, Delta Sigma Theta, to advance racial integration.
Nearby is a blue dress she wore during a sit-in at the Woolworth’s in Jackson, Mississippi on May 28, 1963, in which white people attacked her and other Tougaloo College student and faculty demonstrators.
“We want to honor her… because when I talk around and ask people to name some white, anti-racist civil rights leaders, they can’t name anybody but Abe Lincoln, but there’s a lot of them,” museum president Scott Taylor says. “If you don’t know what to do with white privilege, you can look at this right here and she’ll show you.”
Author M. J. O’Brien told attendees that seeing a photo of two demonstrators flanking her — “in all her glory, getting sugar dumped on her, as if she wasn’t sweet enough” — moved him to write a book about the impact of the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in, “We Shall Not Be Moved.”
Reminiscing, Mulholland said that photo, taken by local newspaper photographer Fred Blackwell, “went worldwide.”
“Back in the days before color photography in the press, it was colorized on the front page above the centerfold of the Paris Match, the most widely read newspaper in Europe,” she recounted.
Mulholland called it “the most integrated picture” of a sit-in, as fellow demonstrators included Anne Moody, a Black woman, and John Hunter Gray, who was of Native American descent.
“We didn’t have any Asian-American students at that time in the school, but we had it pretty well-covered,” she said.
Although redevelopment plans for the mid-century Inn of Rosslyn pay homage to the motel, the county says the developer could do more.
Last fall, D.C. real estate company Monument Realty filed plans to replace the 38-unit hotel, built in 1957, with an 8-story, 141-unit apartment building with 88 parking spaces. It took over the property after JBG Smith purchased it in December 2020.
This February, the county kicked off a review process that will culminate with a vote by the Arlington County Board. Planning staff already have some suggestions for the developer to comply with recommendations for the site made in the neighborhood’s Fort Myer Heights North Plan.
They say Monument should study adding floors to shrink the overall footprint of the property — located at 1601 Fairfax Drive, fronting Route 50 — match it to heights of other nearby apartment towers.
The designs, meanwhile, should imitate nearby Art Deco and Colonial Revival garden apartments and the developer could incorporate more historic preservation of the property, county planners say.
“The building footprint should be reduced to provide the recommended landscaped green space which is not currently provided,” said planners in a county report. “The proposed building does not incorporate elements of Colonial Revival or Art Deco, as recommended.”
New renderings from Monument Realty depict a building with alternating stripes of lighter and darker brick, offset by wood-like paneling. Mid-century motifs on the balconies and a “50” sign out front pay homage to the architecture of the existing hotel.
The developer’s land use attorney, Nick Cumings of Walsh Colucci Lubeley & Walsh, argued in a January 2023 letter to the county that the project does “compliment and draw from the architecture of the existing building and the characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood.”
That includes the retro “50” sign and some of the materials to be used in construction.
“This selection of building materials is appropriate for the neighborhood, which predominantly features masonry, while also introducing a biophilic design with the wood-like paneling,” writes Cumings.
The county also wants the developer to work on “historic preservation elements” for the existing motel, while an attorney for Monument Realty argues that is not necessary.
Within the Arlington County Historic Resources Inventory, Cumings says, the property is designated as “Important” — but less distinctive and/or in worse condition than “Essential.” He added that the neighborhood plan does not call for its historic preservation.
Meanwhile, residents involved in the pro-housing group YIMBYs of Northern Virginia said on social media that their priority will be getting the developer to include more affordable housing in exchange for greater density.
Like staff, they envision the building reaching 12 stories — the tallest the Fort Myer Heights plan allows — so that more people can live in the Metro-accessible area.
Monument Realty already plans to earn some 59,000 square feet of extra density by participating in the Green Building Density Incentive Program, aiming to earn LEED Gold, and by providing some affordable housing. It’s unclear whether the provided affordable housing will be on-site or elsewhere.
Next up in the development approval process, the Site Plan Review Committee of the county’s Planning Commission will review the project twice before it heads to other citizen commissions and the Arlington County Board. No dates have been set for these meetings.
(Updated at 4:50 p.m.) After a pandemic-era hiatus, Habitat for Humanity has revived plans to turn a county-owned historic farmhouse into a group home.
Habitat DC-NOVA and HomeAid National Capital Region are propose to restore the exterior of the Reeves Farmhouse in the Bluemont neighborhood, modernize and renovate the interior, construct two new, historically compatible additions and update the landscaping.
The public would still be able to use two acres of parkland around it, including a milk shed, sledding hill and the Reevesland Learning Center gardens.
The nonprofits will be meeting with the Historic Affairs and Landmark Review Board tonight (Wednesday) to discuss plans for the home, which is more than 100 years old. Given the home’s local historic district designation, this board has the authority to review and approve major alterations, per a county report.
The farmhouse sits on the Reevesland property, notable for being the last operating dairy farm in Arlington County before closing in 1955. The local historic designation of the farmhouse and milk shed , from 2004, recognizes the property’s “architectural history and association with the rural and agricultural history of Arlington,” the report said.
“The Reevesland farmhouse is a two-story building with a stone foundation,” the report says. “The wood framing remains as underlying physical evidence of a number of additions and remodeling undertaken over more than 100 years, with the major changes occurring from 1878 to 1911.”
Arlington County purchased Reevesland in 2001 and began searching for appropriate uses for the “endangered” historic place in 2010, putting forth requests for proposals that never led anywhere. During these doldrums, some community groups suggested the county turn the property into a museum or learning center.
High renovation costs convinced the Board to move toward selling it in March 2017, despite some community opposition. Two months later, Habitat came to Arlington County with an unsolicited proposal to reuse the farmhouse for a group home for people with developmental disabilities.
It took three years, but the county and Habitat reached a non-binding letter of intent. One month after that was signed, the nation shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic and the project stalled.
Talks among the nonprofits and L’Arche Greater Washington — which will use the facilities for their core member program — and county staff about the project resumed in September 2022. DPR met with the Boulevard Manor Civic Association in January to provide an update on the project, a neighbor and a spokeswoman for Habitat told ARLnow after publication.
Plans include a two-story addition at the back of the house and a one-story addition at on the southwest side. These will increase the number of bedrooms to seven and provide access and gathering spaces suitable for people with mobility impairments.
A paved area west of the farmhouse will be expanded to provide parking and clearance for Metro Access vans that will provide transportation for future residents. It will also build a stormwater management bio-facility, which could be something like a rain garden.
A tree near the proposed two-story addition will be removed as the addition will conflict with some roots that are critical to its health. Habitat will discuss ways to mitigate this loss with the county’s Urban Forester.
In the county report, Historic Preservation Program staff say they support the project because the addition will be distinct from the historic structure and the landscaping changes will not harm the property’s setting.
“The proposed one- and two-story additions will not detract from the scale or massing of the historic farmhouse, as their designs are compatible with the existing vernacular architecture and can be distinguished from what is historic and new construction,” per a county report.
A unique reunion will take place at Arlington National Cemetery later this month.
Descendants of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee will gather with descendants of enslaved persons at the place where they once lived: Lee’s former plantation home, Arlington House.
The reunion, supported by the National Park Service, will feature families whose name has been etched in Arlington history over the years: Syphax, Custis, Gray, and so on.
A planned program on Saturday, April 22 will be open to the public and is set to include “music, remarks from descendant family members, and a ceremonial signing of a commitment letter to affirm the shared interests of the National Park Service and descendant families in shaping and sharing how descendant family histories and legacies are presented to the public.”
More, below, from a press release.
After more than 160 years, the descendants of the families, both enslaved and free, who lived on the historical plantation home of George Washington Parke Custis and Robert E. Lee will come together in-person for a milestone celebration of togetherness, reconciliation and storytelling. The three-day event, the first of its kind, will be held the weekend of April 21-23, 2023.
The Saturday April 22nd program beginning at 10AM on the grounds of Arlington House, will be open to the public and include music, remarks from descendant family members, and a ceremonial signing of a commitment letter to affirm the shared interests of the National Park Service and descendant families in shaping and sharing how descendant family histories and legacies are presented to the public.
Stephen Hammond, one of the organizers of the event and a Syphax family descendant, said, “We are pleased to announce our first face-to-face reunion of the descendant families connected to Arlington House. For the last two years, we have been meeting virtually, as a family circle, thanks to reconciliation dialogues sponsored by the National Park Service. Our facilitated conversations grew from members’ initial work to get to know one another and listen to one another. Through these deliberate and thoughtful conversations, the group has become a meaningful circle for its participants, who are now inviting the larger Arlington House descendant community to join us.”
Sarah Fleming, a Lee family descendant, said, “My fourth great grandfather, Richard Bland Lee, was Robert E. Lee’s uncle. I grew up knowing slavery was abhorrent and hearing of the pride my family took in being related to the Lees. We never talked about the space in between – about how the Lees themselves were enslavers. As a descendant of the Lees of Virginia, I am honored to have been invited to join the Arlington House Descendants’ Family Circle and to work towards healing the racial harms caused by slavery and by my ancestors.”
The Arlington House Family Circle was formed in 2021 with support from the National Park Service by descendants of enslaved persons, including the Branham, Custis, Gray, Henry, Norris, Parks and Syphax families, as well as descendants of enslaver families including the Custis and Lee families. The Family Circle participated in an innovative trust-building and truth-telling process, called The Welcome Table, which fostered difficult but necessary conversations about history that created a pathway to address the past while also charting a way forward together.
Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial, reopened in June 2021 after a 3-year renovation. The renovated plantation house, along with gardens and other buildings with exhibits will be open. Descendants will be on hand as docents, to answer questions.
Demolition began this weekend on the 70-year-old Broyhill mansion in the Donaldson Run neighborhood.
The lengths to which some have gone to oppose it, including allegedly impersonating a photographer and stealing tile today (Monday), has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the owners.
The 10-bedroom home at 2561 N. Vermont, near the Washington Golf and Country Club, went on the market last November for $3.6 million after the previous owner died and the beneficiary, the Catholic Prelature of Opus Dei, decided to sell it to a residential buyer, the Falls Church News-Press reported.
As of Janury, the only interested buyers were husband-and-wife duo Mustaq Hamza and Amanda Maldonado. They purchased the home — described on Redfin as a “jewel [that] unfolds like a diamond necklace” — f0r more than $1 million under asking price, with the intention of knocking it down and building something more suitable for family life.
“The house was built for entertaining, not for raising a family,” Maldonado told ARLnow this morning.
Some however, are upset to see it go. On Saturday, Hamza said people shouted profanities and walked onto the property and demanded materials be set aside.
“That’s not what we expected when we were trying to plan,” he said, adding that now, he and his wife are doing some “soul-searching.”
“Our intention coming here to build the house for our family seems predicated on the fact that this was a nice neighborhood to raise our children in and stay forever,” he said. “It seems not to be the case, and disappointed as we are, we’re open to having been wrong.”
Unwanted visitors — flouting signs saying “private property” and “danger” — continued on Monday afternoon, when ARLnow photographer Jay Westcott was taking photos of the demolition.
When Westcott arrived, he met a man impersonating a photographer, who announced he was “here to take the pictures.” In addition to a camera, he wore a fluorescent vest, a hard hat and a K95 mask, and left in his red Prius with, Hamza says, historically unremarkable tiles and air filters. He says he is considering filing a police report.
The couple insists that the home is not the historical marvel it has been made out to be. They have preserved items inside and given them away if people requested them, the couple said.
“There’s nothing architecturally stunning about the house — it’s a 1950s replica,” Maldonado said. “There’s nothing in the house that can’t be purchased today. We looked to see if there was anything worth preserving and anything that there was, we saved.”
Northern Virginia home builder Marvin T. Broyhill Sr. built the mansion in 1950 after making his fortune building the classic 3-bedroom brick homes that could be bought for $20,000 during the post-World War II housing boom, according to the neighborhood conservation plan for Donaldson Run.
Five Guys appears set to return to its original location near the corner of Columbia Pike and S. Glebe Road.
Since its 1986 founding in Arlington’s Westmont Shopping Center, Five Guys has grown into a huge international burger-and-fries chain. But it has maintained its local roots, including a Northern Virginia corporate headquarters that will soon be moving to Alexandria.
Now, it is expected to open a new location on the ground floor of the Westmont apartment building that’s replacing the former strip mall. A leasing brochure seen by ARLnow suggests it will be taking a 2,400 square foot space along Columbia Pike, the second retail business listed on the leasing plan in addition to a new Allcare urgent care clinic along Glebe.
The brochure says construction on the building is expected to wrap up within the next three months or so. It is unclear how long after that Five Guys might open.
So far, Five Guys has not responded to ARLnow’s request, sent Tuesday, for confirmation of the new location.
The company has two existing Arlington locations, in Courthouse and at Reagan National Airport. The status of a previously-announced Clarendon location, in part of the former Whitlow’s space, is unclear.
(Updated at 11 a.m.) The namesake of Maury Park in Virginia Square is Matthew Fontaine Maury, a pioneer of oceanography and a Confederate commander during the Civil War.
The park’s name could change, however, if renaming is included in a planning and renovation process slated to begin at the end of 2023.
“It is likely that the renaming of Maury Park may be considered during its upcoming master planning process, similar to other park renaming efforts,” Jerry Solomon, a spokeswoman for the Arlington Dept. of Parks and Recreation, tells ARLnow.
References to Maury have been removed over the last few years, prompted by the racial reckoning catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd by police officers. Last week, the U.S. Navy announced it will rename the oceanographic survey ship USNS Maury.
In July 2020, a statue of Maury in Richmond was removed after the mayor ordered the removal of all Confederate statues on city property.
Maury Park (3550 Wilson Blvd), a small green space behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, formerly the Arlington Arts Center, may be next. The old school building that has housed the arts center since 1977 was renamed in 1944 to honor Maury.
Arlington does not currently have a process for surveying all county structures for potential renamings, but DPR considers name changes as parks and facilities come up in the renovation cycle, Solomon said.
Through the renovation process, the county renamed Henry Clay Park to Zitkala-Ša Park — at the suggestion of the Lyon Park Citizens Association — “in order to honor the prominent author and activist from the indigenous community as opposed to a known owner of slaves,” Solomon said.
Maury Park is one of three urban parks in the Virginia Square Planning Area and in the Ashton Heights Civic Association, including Herselle Milliken Park and Gum Ball Park, set for upgrades in the near future.
“The project will master plan all three parks simultaneously to identify community needs and priorities while taking into consideration that the parks are located in close proximity and should have complementary rather than duplicative features,” per the Capital Improvement Plan.
Citing the county’s renaming policy, Solomon said, “renaming will be considered if a valid justification for the renaming is provided, the name change will not cause undue confusion with the community, and an appropriate level of community support exists.”
There are no plans to officially rename the building, according to Cynthia Liccese-Torres, the coordinator for Arlington County’s historic preservation program. The school is known interchangeably as the Clarendon School and the Maury School, though it has long been identified by the Arlington Arts Center, now the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington.
Signage referring to Maury was replaced with signage for the Arlington Arts Center before 2008 during building renovations, she said.
Born in 1806 in Fredericksburg, Maury joined the U.S. Navy in 1821 and was promoted to lieutenant in 1836, according to a county webpage for the Arlington Arts Center building, which it calls the Clarendon (Maury) School. He served as superintendent of the Navy Department’s Depot of Charts and Instruments from 1842 to 1855 and from 1858 to 1861.
In the 1850s, he worked on a project to “resettle slaves from the U.S. to the Brazilian Amazon as a way to gradually phase-out slavery in the U.S.,” an effort that “ultimately went nowhere,” according to a blog post by the Library of Congress.
“Maury was neither a slave-owner nor a proponent of slavery,” the post said. “Nevertheless, in declining to fight against his native Virginia, Maury resigned his post and joined the Confederate Navy, initially to direct coastal and river defenses and develop naval mine technologies to use against the Union.”
He ended up spending most of the war abroad, “hoping to persuade Europeans to support the Confederate cause and bring the war to a quick end,” the Library of Congress post said.
According to Arlington County, Maury served as commander in the Confederate Navy and later as its secretary.
Following the end of the war, Maury remained abroad for several years before taking a professorship in meteorology at the Virginia Military Institute, in Lexington, where he would teach until his death in 1873.
Today is the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a historic event during which Arlington played a significant role.
It was in an Arlington hotel that some of the convicted insurrectionists had stayed and stored weapons. Arlington law enforcement and firefighters have been honored for their role in helping to protect the Capitol and treat the injured. And it was here that dozens of Virginia State Police troopers rallied before heading into the District to join the fray against the mob.
It is still surreal recalling the events of that day playing out on TV and then, closer to home, on Arlington police radio channels and traffic cameras.
Above we’ve included a gallery of photos that we published that day and below is a chronological recounting of our Twitter account on Jan. 6, from the first breaking article being published on.
BREAKING: Convoy of a dozen Arlington police and fire vehicles seen heading through Clarendon, apparently going to D.C. https://t.co/bTgmQJHRPA
— Arlington Now (@ARLnowDOTcom) January 6, 2021
UPDATE: Photo from our @jwestcottphoto shows Virginia State Police convoy heading down Columbia Pike, towards D.C. https://t.co/bTgmQJZtea pic.twitter.com/MOiB0BgGMo
— Arlington Now (@ARLnowDOTcom) January 6, 2021
UPDATE: Metrobus and ART bus service is ending early, at 9 p.m. Metrorail service is ending at 8 p.m. Some businesses are also closing early. https://t.co/bTgmQJZtea
— Arlington Now (@ARLnowDOTcom) January 6, 2021
UPDATE: Statement from county expected soon. ”Stay home, stay safe, take care of yourselves and take care of each other,” says County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti, adjourning closed meeting. https://t.co/WtQVZadEbz
— Arlington Now (@ARLnowDOTcom) January 6, 2021
It is now 6 p.m. and the governor’s curfew is in effect. For the next 12 hours, it is "illegal for any person to be present in any street, park, or other public place, unless an exception applies.” https://t.co/WtQVZadEbz
— Arlington Now (@ARLnowDOTcom) January 6, 2021
More Arlington medic units are being dispatched into the District, per scanner. Sounds like they’re going to a fire station to help fill in for their D.C. counterparts.
— Arlington Now (@ARLnowDOTcom) January 6, 2021
NEW: Another large group of Virginia State Police just left the VSP office on Columbia Pike, en route to D.C. (video by @jwestcottphoto) pic.twitter.com/AQfnlnfrUW
— Arlington Now (@ARLnowDOTcom) January 7, 2021
Christmas and Hanukkah are nearly here, which is undoubtedly provoking panic among last-minute shoppers.
Luckily, ARLnow has an Arlington-centric holiday gift guide for all those who looking for the perfect present for the the gondola fans and local literature enthusiasts in you life.
Below are eight great, last-minute Arlington-related gifts.
After 26 years, the Silver Diner in Clarendon is now closed with the new Ballston location opening this past week. Now, a number of items from that restaurant are up for auction.
Money helps supports the local non-profit Real Food for Kids. The auction ends next week, on Dec. 22.
This summer, local elected officials again introduced joint legislation to remove Robert E. Lee’s name from the historic home at Arlington National Cemetery. While the bills stalled, it was actually George Washington Parke Custis who had the house built to honor George Washington.
This definitive biography by local author Charlie Clark provides the first-of-a-kind look into the life of George Washington Parke Custis and the history of Arlington’s first family.
With word coming that a new indoor dog park and bar may be replacing Green Valley’s New District Brewing, now is the time to stuff those stockings with beer.
Four packs of beer, including the National Landing IPA and Potomac Paddleboarder Blonde Ale, are available in the taproom whenever the brewery is open. All the beer is now packaged at their facility with its crowd-funded canning line.
Help that little Arlingtonian in your life to learn local history with this book written by community leader Wilma Jones.
It tells the story of a third grader in 1955 who visits the Halls Hill fire station. For decades, Fire Station 8 was the only one in Arlington that was staffed by African-Americans.
The original station was demolished in June with a new station now in the midst of construction. It’s expected to be completed sometime late next year.
Pickleball has taken Arlington by storm, even as the pickleball pop has driven some locals mad.
The county is providing a chance to get in on the craze by offering pickleball classes for all ages. The classes begin in February and continue through April, but can be purchased now.
But be careful about where you play so the county doesn’t get sued.
Demolition day may be looming for the building that once housed legendary Inner Ear Studios, but the recording studio still lives in Don Zientara’s Arlington basement. Some have called it “the Abbey Road of Arlington.”
A t-shirt with the original Inner Ear logo is available from ARLnow on Amazon.
Ballston resident Isa Seyran serves up dishy stories in his new book detailing working in the local restaurant scene.
The subject of a recent ARLnow Press Club feature, Seyran shares a number of anecdotes in the book about working for some of the most famous chefs in the D.C. area.
Sure, it’s actually Arlington, Texas that’s getting an XFL team, and not Arlington, Virginia, but that didn’t dissuade us from asking readers on social media what they would have named the football team.
One answer stood out:
The Arlington Gondoliers
ARLnow designed a logo and put it on a bunch of swag so everyone can support the local team that never was.
- Bonus: Items from a local holiday market
If you are still in need of more last-minute gifts, the Forever Grateful Market in Crystal City is happening this weekend.
