04/18/2018
Find hidden treasures
Would you know Arlington had a Great Wall of Beer or an authentic colonial home unless we told you?
You’re the type who wants something off the beaten path. We gotcha, there’s nothing more exciting than locating the overlooked, best-kept secrets that no one else seems to know about.
Arlington has a few less-traveled neighborhoods within its compact 26 square miles that give you a powerful experience of American inspiration and local flavor. You can tour the oldest Arlington house, the Ball-Sellers House in Glencarlyn, and check out these neighborhoods that make Arlington truly one of a kind:
Arlington Ridge
Like its name implies, Arlington Ridge overlooks Washington, D.C. and atop its steep heights are majestic homes. Former Vice President Al Gore maintained a Tudor-style home there. The neighborhood had cinematic fame in the movie “No Way Out” depicting a fictional KGB safe house that stood on the southeast corner of South Arlington Ridge Road and 20th Street South in Arlington. Stop into the Arlington Historical Museum in the Arlington Ridge neighborhood on weekends, and see Civil War artifacts while hearing about the area’s complete history.
Nauck
The bedrock of Arlington's African-American legacy is in its several strong, historically black communities, such as Nauck. Settled by free blacks such as Levy and Sarah Ann Jones, they built their homes in this South Arlington community in 1844, nearly 20 years before the Civil War. They, in turn, began selling lots to other free black families such as Solomon Thompson, William Rowe and the Peyton family, thus sowing the seeds of a community primed to blossom even more fully in the wake of the Civil War.