The Cherrydale neighborhood is not likely to end up as Maywood – covered entirely in a local-historic overlay district with development restrictions rigidly enforced.
But it wouldn’t hurt if more Cherrydale homes became stand-alone historic districts.
That was the view of members of the Arlington government’s Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB), who on April 19 started the ball rolling on historic status for a century-year-old home at 2002 North Stafford St.
The bungalow – a familiar residential style in the community – is located near where Cherrydale melds into Waverly Hills and offers “a lot of architectural integrity,” said Arlington historic-preservation planner Serena Bolliger. At the meeting, Bolliger was tasked by HALRB members to begin preliminary studies of the property for possible incorporation into a stand-on-its-own historic district.
The property since 1984 has been owned by Thomas and Joan McIntyre, who have requested historic designation.
“We appreciate the historic nature” of the home, Joan McIntyre told HALRB members, and said she hoped some of her neighbors would be inspired to also embark on the process of attaining historic status.
The home at 2002 North Stafford, assessed at just over $1 million, does not rival Versailles in terms of grandeur, but it represents an era “in which Arlington began to develop,” said Bolliger, who has done some preliminary investigation into its provenance but still is on the “beginning of my journey.”
In 1900, the parcel on which the home now sits was part of a 16-acre tract of land owned by Erasmus Preston. In 1915, according to property records, Irish immigrant Frank Brennan purchased three newly subdivided lots and, within a few years, built the home.
The Brennan family sold it to Dewey and Mary Smith for $16,000 in 1961; those owners put up a one-story addition in 1972 before selling it to the McIntyres in 1984 for $117,700, according to county-government records.
Not every piece of historic provenance has survived a century of occupancy; the tin roof, for instance, has been replaced with something more modern.
It was something “we hated to do,” Joan McIntyre said of replacing it, but the original roof proved too leak-prone.
Were it ultimately to win historic status, the home would become the third protected property in Cherrydale, joining the volunteer fire house and another neighborhood home.
Unlike inclusion in the Virginia Landmarks Register and National Register of Historic Places, which are largely honorary in nature, inclusion in a local historic district in Arlington places restrictions on exterior changes to a property and makes HALRB members and historic-preservation staff the arbiters of the appropriateness of those changes.
The process to attain historic status can be lengthy, culminating with a hearing before the County Board. But so long as the property owner is supportive of the designation, historic designations are unlikely to be refused.
The only entire Arlington neighborhood that is incorporated into a local historic district is Maywood, which was placed in one in 1990. Because of existing restrictions, that neighborhood – whose homes generally date from the early 1900s to 1920s with some later infill – generally has been immune from the raze-and-replace whirlwind that has been taking place in many other Arlington neighborhoods.
When it was incorporated into the National Register of Historic Places two decades ago, the Cherrydale Historic District had 887 properties within its boundary, including 829 single-family dwellings, 27 multiple-unit dwellings, four churches, a school, 22 commercial buildings, two service stations, a fire station and a meeting hall, according to county officials.
