Despite some noble intentions, fundraising to save the Lakeside Pharmacy icons is not going well.
The Reston Historic Trust and Museum’s GoFundMe — which started in August — has only raised $1,663 of its $15,000 goal.
The goal of the fundraiser is to clean and reinstall the icons, currently being held in storage, in a new exhibit about the 1960’s pop art aesthetic that was a core part of early Reston history.
Alexandra Campbell, a media contact for the Reston Museum, said despite public interest — Campbell said stories related to the icons are some of their most popular social media posts — the donations to the fundraiser have been slow to trickle in.
While Campbell said there have been a few donations to the fundraiser outside of the GoFundMe, Carolyn Flitcroft, elected chair of the board for the organization, said in an earlier interview that it can be difficult to rally support for a fundraiser that’s for something that seems less dire than homelessness or hunger.
Campbell said the Reston Historic Trust is hoping for a boost with a fundraiser next week. A triathlon hosted by New Trail Cycling Studio and Lake Anne Brew House on March 27 will give a portion of the proceeds to the Reston Historic Trust.
Despite the fundraising setbacks, the organization is moving forward with the permitting process to get the icons on display. According to Campbell, the deadline to get the permits scheduled for review in April is next week, so it’s all hands on deck as the group works to get the application finalized.
Photo via Reston Historic Trust
Back by popular demand, Reston Then and Now takes a look at Hunters Woods Village Center — the people’s choice with 38.8 percent of the vote in last week’s poll.
Like with some of the other village centers, Fairfax County’s Historic Imagery Viewer shows wild spurts of growth from the 1970s through the 2000s before tapering off.
The center was first approved in 1965 as the second village center, following the success of the Lake Anne Village Center. According to a comprehensive history of the site by Northern Virginia Digital History Archive, the development was designed to be a mix of residential, retail and professional uses that would as one of several village centers that would be just as accessible by foot or bike as it would be by car.
Construction began in 1971, and by 1972, the first stores started opening. The grand opening was celebrated with an Elizabethan-themed fair.
But problems began to emerge for the center within the decade. By 1978, the surrounding area saw robbery rates 25 percent higher than the rest of Fairfax County and a series of sexual assaults in the area diminished the utopian allure. Despite the crime wave, rents continue to go up, and local leaders began to recognize that the development was not as ideal for business as initially imagined.
While the aerial photography showed the site continuing to grow, behind the scenes there were several changes in ownership and — as was the case with other village centers — competition from newer shopping centers across Reston and Herndon that were starting to draw customers away.
By the late 1990s, it was widely recognized that the Hunters Woods Village Center was not the vibrant community hub it had once been hoped to be. In 1997, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved a $14 million redevelopment plan.
Between 1990 and 2002, most of the original buildings were demolished and replaced with more modern retail, including Safeway as an anchor tenant. The Safeway is still there, though it recently lost its SunTrust bank. The site has remained largely stagnant since then and changed hands in 2010.
Its addition to a rundown of potential spots for new residential development in a 2017 list put together by the Fairfax County Department of Planning and Zoning means that changes for the site could be on the horizon.
Two exhibits highlighting Reston’s changes and values since its founding in 1964Â recently opened at the Reston Regional Library.
Alex Campbell, the executive director of the Reston Historic Trust and Museum, told Reston Now that the museum reached out to the library late last year to inquire about hosting some temporary exhibits in an effort to bring Retson’s history out of the museum and into the community.
The “Reston Then & Now” exhibit shows early pictures of Reston and aerial photography, including images of Lake Anne Plaza being built and how the same area looks today and the large barn that used to be at Hunters Woods Village. The “50/100” exhibit, which was created for Reston’s 50th and Founder Robert E. Simon Jr.’s 100th birthday, highlights Reston’s founding and how its principles are still implemented.
“Both exhibits tell the story of Reston — of the community’s growth and transformation but also, in many ways, of its continuity,” Ha Hoang, the assistant branch manager for the Reston Regional Library, told Reston Now.
The library started to receive positive feedback during the exhibits’ first week, Hoang said. “Those who have just moved to the area and out-of-town visitors have been especially delighted to see the exhibits in the library and to learn more about Reston,” Hoang added. Â
Both Campbell and Hoan said that collaboration makes perfect sense.
“In many ways, our missions are very similar — we’re both community anchors and learning hot spots whose goals are to help our constituents stay informed, connected and engaged,” Hoang said.
The exhibits opened on Feb. 26 and will be on display until the end of April at 11925 Bowman Towne Drive.
The exhibits will then get replaced by others from the Reston Museum, Hoang said.Â
Image via Reston Museum/TwitterÂ
Reston is built on planned village centers. Sometimes they work. Tall Oaks didn’t.
This week on Reston Then and Now we return to the Lake Anne area where Fairfax County’s Historic Imagery Viewer shows us the rise and fall of Tall Oaks Village Center and the plans that indicate how the area hopes to recover.
Like much of Reston, the site was open fields in aerial photography up to 1976. The development opened in 1974 as the smallest of Reston’s five village centers. According to the Washington Business Journal, the location enjoyed a brief golden age with 240,000 square feet of retail by 1990.
But gradually, Tall Oaks faces more modern competition. Between the 1990s and the early 2000s, Reston Town Center, North Point, Spectrum and a range of other retail options expanded throughout North Reston.
The first big blow was losing Giant in 2007, and two replacement stores failed within a year of opening in 2009 and 2011, leaving the location without an anchor tenant since 2011. Curves, Domino’s and 7 Eleven all vacated their locations as well.
But work is underway on a new project to for Tall Oaks. The redevelopment will convert the area into a largely residential neighborhood with 156 homes with more limited retail. The Reston Association recently voted in favor of vacating an easement it held in the Tall Oaks village to facilitate the redevelopment.
For more Reston Then and Now stories, check out our most recent coverage of:
Ever wonder how residents chose Reston for their home?
The Reston Historic Trust and Museum and the Reston Community Center are hosting a free panel discussion on just that, following Bob Simon’s goal of having the individual be the focal point of planning.
“The journeys our panelists have made to Reston confirm that the lived experience of that vision is alive in Reston today,” the Reston Historic Trust and Museum said in a press release.
The Reston Historic Trust and Museum shared backgrounds about three of the four panelists who will share their stories about their journeys to Reston.
Lindsay Trout
After her parents’ divorce, Lindsay Trout moved with her mother to Reston at age nine because of the diverse housing stock available. She has stayed in Reston ever since. Trout attended Terraset Elementary, Langston Hughes Middle School and South Lakes High School. She has spent her teaching career in Fairfax County Public Schools and is currently the Principal of Terraset Elementary.
Medelyn A. Ortiz Lopez
Medelyn A. Ortiz Lopez came to the United States at age nine. She attended Dogwood Elementary, Langston Hughes Middle School and South Lakes High School. She formed part of Southgate Community Center for the past 11 years as a participant, then as a volunteer and currently as staff. She is pursuing a career in nursing.
Sara
Six years ago, Sara and her parents immigrated from Ethiopia after receiving U.S. visas in the diversity lottery. Sara was 15 years old and preparing to begin 9th grade. Her father is blind and partially paralyzed. The family has no outside support; Sara and her mother are his primary caregivers. Trying to juggle work, school, and caring for her father’s needs, the family has struggled with homelessness.
Sara attended six different high schools in four years. Being the only English speaker in the family, Sara had to take on many adult roles in her family early on, helping her parents as much as she could. Today, she and her family are preparing to move from a shelter into their own home. She is working on becoming a U.S. citizen. She hopes to earn her GED so she can attend college and become an engineer. She is brave, resilient and determined to succeed.
The fourth panelist is Rizwan Jaka from the All Dulles Area Muslim Society.
In conjunction with the event, the Reston Historic Trust and Museum is also encouraging Restonians to share their own short stories and photographs about how they came to Reston via an online forum.
The panel starts at 7 p.m. at RCC Lake Anne Jo Ann Rose Gallery (1609-A Washington Plaza) on Wednesday, Feb. 20.
Photo via Reston Historic Trust
Normally, Reston Then and Now covers places that only exist as forests and fields in the earliest aerial photography in Fairfax County’s Historic Imagery Viewer. But this week, the intersection of Hunter Mill and Hunter Station roads has a history that predates that aerial photography.
During the Civil War, the intersection was a major crossroads for Union and Confederate troops moving through the area. According to a historical marker at the site, Confederate Brig. Gen. Wade Hampton’s cavalry brigade passed through the site in 1862 en route to Antietam in Maryland. Several Union and Confederate generals are recorded to have passed the site throughout the war.
The intersection was a critical junction of the railroad, a north-south road, water resources from Difficult Run and farmlands to provide food for troops. Several skirmishes took place in the nearby area, including the killing of Rev. John Read from Falls Church. Read was an abolitionist and supplied information on Confederate activities to the Union. He was kidnapped in a raid and executed in the forest just southeast of the crossroads by Confederate guerillas lead by Col. John S. Mosby.
The area around Hunter Mill road was its own town at one time, called Hunter’s Village, which sprung up around the route of the Washington and Old Dominion rail line. The locality contained a post office, a general store, a train station and a military hospital. The station itself was a bare-bones facility — a flag stop where passengers could step out to flag down a train.
The farmhouse at the site may have been built in 1935, and by 1937 it shows up in the first aerial photography of Fairfax.
Until recently, a little house at the intersection of Hunter Mill and Hunter Station roads stood mostly isolated — all that was left of the old Hunter’s Village — with some other properties dotting the surrounding area. Passenger service on the line ended in 1951. Freight service ended in 1968 and the railroad was abandoned.
By then, new subdivisions and a new power station started to encroach onto the site. The farmhouse was squeezed between growth spreading out from Reston to the west and Tysons to the East.
The farmhouse on the site was demolished late last year to make way for a new residential development. The site remains a popular stop on the bike and pedestrian Washington and Old Dominion Trail.
For more Reston Then and Now stories, check out our recent coverage of:
Photo via Google Maps
The Reston Hospital Center (RHC) is halfway through its $72 million expansion, but while the expansion is large, it’s hardly the first for the hospital.
Fairfax County’s Historic Imagery Viewer has shots of the hospital since its creation and helps put together a view of how the hospital has changed over the years.
The RHC, located near the Reston Town Center, first opened its doors on Nov. 10, 1986. Some parking lots and building extensions were added over time.
The first major expansion began in 2001 when the west wing of the facility, a five-story facility with 60 additional beds and other treatment facilities. The Parkway Medical Tower, which ouses the ambulatory/outpatient surgery center and a parking garage, was also added.
Between 2012 and 2015, the RHC also invested $40 million expansions and new services, which included substantial interior renovations. In 2012 work began on the $25 million Pavilion II Medical Office Building which provided more administrative space.
The new upgrades include a 403-space parking garage scheduled to be completed this summer, as well as:
- New 18-bed Inpatient Rehabilitation Center
- Expanded 24-bed Intensive Care Unit
- Addition of a second lab to the cardiac services unit
- Renovations to visitor areas including a new cafeteria, a glass concourse, and main entrance and lobby
- New parking garage for patients and visitors on the West Wing entrance
- Addition of eight rooms to accommodate high-risk obstetric patients
If you enjoyed this piece, check out our Then and Now coverage of:
If there are any places in Reston you would like to see covered as a Then and Now feature, let us know in the comments.
Several books focus on the history of the Reston and Herndon areas, and the Reston Historic Trust and Museum has some favorites to get you started.
The Reston Historic Trust, which operates the Reston Museum and Shop, was founded in 1997 as a community-based non-profit to keep Reston’s history alive. The museum debuted at Lake Anne Plaza in the late 1990s and offers exhibits and archives, walking tours, workshops and public events.
Reston Now asked the museum staff to share some favorite books about Reston or written by local authors. Here’s what the staff recommended, along with their reasons for why they are worth reading.
“In His Own Words” by Kristina Alcorn
Written by a Reston author and the vice-chair of our board, it is a wonderfully intimate look into the life of Reston’s founder Robert E. Simon, Jr. based on interviews the author conducted with him. It is truly a one-of-a-kind book and one of the best ways to learn about Reston’s founder.
The book costs $14.99 at the gift shop.
“Reston, Virginia” by the Reston Historic Trust & Museum
This book features archival artifacts from the Reston Historic Trust & Museum’s own museum collection to tell the story of Reston’s beginning. Seeing the pictures of the past are the perfect way to see and learn about Reston’s founding and evolution.
The book costs $18.99 at the gift shop.
“Reston’s African American Legacy” by Rev. LaVerne Gill
Gill, a Reston author, profiles 25 African-American Restonians who have made major contributions to the quality-of-life of Reston. It expertly highlights each person, making the reader feel as if they know the person themselves (and some readers might know them personally as many are active in the Reston community today). The book also allows the reader to understand the impact of their involvement in the Reston community.
The book costs $35 at the gift shop.
Photos via Reston Historic Trust and Museum and Amazon
Woodland Park Crossing in Herndon may be facing some current turnover, but change is certainly nothing new for the area.
Fairfax County’s Historic Imagery Viewer shows aerial photography of the county dating back to 1937, and photography over the Woodland Park area shows the very familiar story of the area’s residential, then commercial, expansion over the last thirty years.
Even through the 1980s, there was very little new development in the Woodland Park area. Most of the area, aside from one residential development to the west, remained open fields. But by the 1990s, new residential development near the Stratton Woods Park began to grow further west.
By the early 2000s, residential developments had begun to completely fill the area south of Sunrise Valley Drive, accelerated by the growth of the McNair Farms community to the southwest. Throughout the 2000s, the new residential development spurred the creation of new retail and industrial spaces north of Sunrise Valley Drive.
And more changes are still ahead for the Woodland Park area, with the Herndon Silver Line Metro station under construction just to the northeast of the site, spurring new planned mixed-use development for an area that thirty years ago was mostly open fields.
For more Reston Then and Now stories, check out our coverage of:
This week on Then and Now, we’re going back to our roots as seeing how Reston’s iconic lakes have changed over the years. With help from Fairfax County’s Historic Imagery Viewer, which offers aerial views of the county dating back to 1937, Reston Now has put together a review of how the area around Lake Thoreau and Lake Audubon has evolved since the lake’s creation.
Like Lake Anne, there was no “South Lakes” in photography from 1960. Reston as a planned community was founded in 1964. Before that, much of what is the South Lakes were forests with a few cut-through roads. Interestingly, where Lake Audubon would be built later there was a large pond.
Lake Thoreau and Lake Audubon were built as reservoirs collecting the runoff created by the rapid urbanization nearby. Lake Thoreau was built in 1970 and Lake Audubon was built in 1971, though from the aerial photography there wasn’t much of a “lake” about Audubon until the late 1980s.
One of the earliest large scale developments in the area was the South Lakes High School, which opened in 1978 on 600 acres of land with an “open classroom” design.
The school was not broken into individual classrooms, a plan teachers and students discovered early on was ineffective and distracting. They wound up building temporary barriers until more permanent ones built in 2006 killed the open classroom idea for good.
Langston Hughes Middle School was originally an intermediate school for South Lakes High School, but in 1980 it was officially renamed the Langston Hughes Intermediate School, then Langston Hughes Middle School in the early 1990s.
By 1980, new residential developments had sprung up along the northern and southern edges of Lake Thoreau.
In 1984, the South Lakes Shopping Center opened, marking the last major shift in the area, though the design of that area could be undergoing some visible changes.
Between 1990 and 2017, most of the changes to the area involved the filling in of residential developments in the vicinity of the lake. In 2006, South Lakes High School also expanded and the aforementioned open-space classroom model was eliminated.
If you enjoyed this piece, check out our Then and Now coverage of:
If there are any places in Reston you would like to see covered as a Then and Now feature, let us know in the comments.
This week on Reston Then and Now we take our first foray into Herndon, moving a little west of the Reston Town Center. Fairfax County’s aerial photography shows how the shopping venues on Elden Street west of the Fairfax County Parkway have evolved over the years.
Herndon is a historic town, but the shopping centers along Elden Street are a relatively recent addition that followed the rise of Reston to the east.
The first of the shopping centers to spring up along Elden Street was Herndon Pines Shopping Center, which was established in 1959 but recently has faced continuing vacancies.
Further east, the the Herndon Centre was anchored by a Kmart built in 1976. The building was demolished in 2017 and is expected to be replaced by a Sprouts Farmers Market.
New development continued to spring up along the southern side of Elden Street from the 1990s onward, including the addition of the Safeway, SunTrust, and various shops in Herndon Marketplace.
This week on Reston Then and Now we move a little east of the Reston Town Center and use Fairfax County’s aerial photography to look at how the area around the the Wiehle-Reston East Station has changed over the years.
Like much of the Reston area, photography from 1960 shows the area as fields and farmland. While the Metro station wasn’t built until 2014, the area had some development as early as 1976. By 1990 the area was starting to show increasing levels of development along the Dulles Access Road.
Between the 1990 and 2009, new construction tailed off except for the BAE systems building along Sunset Hill Road. But following the Metro station’s construction, including the 180,000-square-foot Reston Station office building scheduled to open in 2020.
Now, the Reston Station area is on track to continue its expansion over the next few years. A new fire station is planned near the Isaac Newton Square redevelopment at the northern edge of Reston Station.
If there’s an area that represents the opposite of the sleepy, village-style Lake Anne, it’s the Reston Town Center. Like we did with Lake Anne, Reston Now has used the Fairfax County’s Historic Imagery Viewer to put together aerial views of Reston Town Center as it has developed over the years.
Like much of Reston, aerial photography of the site up to 1960 shows open forest or farmland. However, while the rest of Reston started being developed and growing throughout the 1960s, the Reston Town Center would remain forest until the Mobil Land Development group began construction in 1988.
Photography from 1990 shows the very beginnings of the town center — a handful of central buildings at the main square surrounded mostly by parking lots to the west.
Throughout the 1990s, more buildings are constructed at the northern end of the site, but it isn’t until around 2002 that the Town Center fully expands to the Fairfax County Parkway in the west and the Dulles Access Road in the south.
A big park of this expansion is the creation of the West Market neighborhood at the western edge of the development. In 1993 the open pavilion, currently an ice-skating rink, was built and in 2000 the 18-story One Freedom Square and 16-story Two Freedom Square west of the main plaza were constructed.
From 2002 to 2017, most of the new development is filling out the spaces between the larger developments. Throughout the 2000s a parking garage and additional office and high-rise residential buildings were also constructed.
Much of the newer development is concentrated at the southern part of the Town Center along Sunset Hill Road, near where the Reston Town Center Metro station is scheduled to open in 2020.
With help from Fairfax County’s Historic Imagery Viewer, which offers aerial views of the county dating back to 1937, Reston Now has put together a review of how the Lake Anne area has evolved since the lake’s creation.
Like many of Reston’s lakes, Lake Anne is not natural. Photography from 1960 shows the open fields and forests just two years prior to the first development on the site.
According to the Walker Nature Education Center, the lake was first built in 1962 to compensate for the increased water runoff caused by new developments. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Lake Thoreau, Lake Audubon, and Lake Newport were also built across Reston.
While some of the water in the lake comes from underground springs, most comes from rainfall and surface runoff. The lakes store water as it flows through streams to the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay.
By 1976, ten years after it was founded, Lake Anne Village Center took the form is essentially remains in to this day. The center was designed by architect James Rossant to emulate the Italian coastal town of Portofino but with then-popular brutalist themes. The center was designed to be located within a half-mile of most homes in Reston at the time.
Over the next twenty years, the aerial photography shows development on the periphery around the central plaza, like new subdivisions built near Lake Newport to the north across Baron Cameron Ave. New residential developments also emerged on the south side of Lake Anne.
To the southwest, the Lake Anne Elementary School went through substantial upgrades in the 1990s, adding air conditioning throughout the building. In 2003, construction began on a $2.1 million addition and renovation of the school. Forest Edge Elementary School to the east also saw substantial growth between 1997 and 2017.
The historic designation debate — In this opinion piece, the writer explores two historic designation issues in Herndon and Reston. [Greater Greater Washington]
Trout fishing season is here — You heard that right. The Fairfax County Park Authority invites you to fish for trout at Lake Fairfax Park. Season passes are available. [Fairfax County Park Authority]
Tishman Speyer sheds some land — The Pinkard Group paid $3.15M to acquire the 3.3-acre parcel at the corner of the Dulles Toll Road and Monroe Street in Herndon, part of the Woodland Park East development, from Tishman Speyer. [Bisnow]
Climate change in schools — Well, not in schools. The Fairfax County School Board passed a resolution last night calling on state and federal action on climate change. [Fairfax County Public Schools]
In the time machine — Flavors of Fall brought beer, wine, food and fun to Reston Town Center last weekend. Mercia Hobson offers a recap here. [The Connection]
Photo by Lindi Mallison
