Efforts to make the Halls Hill/High View Park community Arlington’s 24th neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places will continue with a community update on the efforts to date.
The event will be held on Thursday, March 14 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the offices of the Langston Boulevard Alliance, 4500 Langston Blvd.
Jennifer Morris, who is working to incorporate the neighborhood onto the federal register, will provide updates on the initiative, which is being funded through a $25,000 grant from the county government.
The Halls Hill and High View Park neighborhoods, which straddle Langston Boulevard and eventually merged into a single community, were from the post-Civil War era through Virginia’s segregation times one of just three neighborhoods, and the only in North Arlington, where African-American residents were not shunned. Inclusion on the National Register “would cement the neighborhood as an historic place worthy of preservation” and provide the John M. Langston Citizens Association “a greater ability to encourage the conservation of our neighborhood,” noted the association’s historic-preservation committee.
From March 8-15, the John M. Langston Citizens Association and a consultant will be conducting oral histories of residents past and present to be part of the submission package. (For more information, see the Website at www.highviewpark.org.)
The National Register of Historic Places was created in 1966, and is administered by the National Park Service. About 1.8 million “contributing resources” currently have won designation, federal officials say.
Inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places – and its state counterpart, the Virginia Landmarks Register – does not provide any official protection against redevelopment efforts, although it is a step on the process for a local area to become eligible for federal tax credits that encourage preservation.
In order to stave off redevelopment efforts, a community would need to be created as a local historic district by the County Board. To date, only one of the 23 neighborhoods that have achieved national recognition – Maywood – has garnered that statutory distinction, and the rapid pace of development urged for the Langston Boulevard corridor by the county government seems to make it unlikely the County Board would move forward on such a designation even if the community were to seek it.
To date, two church cemeteries in the Halls Hill/High View Park community have been designated local historic districts: Calloway United Methodist Church’s in 2012 and Mount Salvation Baptist Church’s cemetery in 2021. No buildings within the community appear to have local-historic designation.
