Nauck—Looking Forward
I’ve known Nauck from way back. Rumor has it that the traditionally African American community is urging the County to change the name—from that of a Confederate soldier who once owned the land—to Green Valley. Times have changed, and what was once a corralled place for Blacks is today something like 30% African American. Though changing the name alone won’t change the facts on the ground.
Nauck lies just the other side of Four Mile Run from my former architectural office in Shirlington. Nauck had history, even if it didn’t look like much. Back when the Feds assembled the property that became the Pentagon, they’d bought out (condemned) a small community founded by former slaves after the Civil War. Nauck was just up the hill, and the freed slaves joined other African American already located there.
“Nauck is the oldest African American neighborhood in Arlington. The Levi and Sarah Jones family were among the first African Americans to buy land and build a house there in 1844. Then residents of the nearby Freedman’s Village, recently freed slaves, moved there. And in 1874, D.C. resident John D. Nauck purchased 46 acres, subdivided them and sold lots to other black families.
“The neighborhood was a stop on the migration route, which took shape at the end of the Civil War, from the south to Freedman’s Village, according to a draft book of the history of the Nauck community by Alfred O. Taylor Jr., 79, president of the civic association and longtime community activist, that will be published soon.”
from the Washington Post article Neighborhood profile: Nauck
In the days when Arlington was still the western third of the District of Columbia, the land north of Four Mile Run was a swamp. Being the largely undeveloped, across-the-river part of the District of Columbia, it became a convenient place to park former slaves fleeing the Confederates in the Civil War. Keep ‘em in their place. What the Washington Post article missed is how, once Arlington was returned, the good state of Virginia declared that Nauck as a black community could expand no further. Just up river lay Rosslyn, home of brothels, bars and gambling halls, which, evidently, Virginia didn’t see as such a problem.
You can see Four Mile Run on the map; it’s the squiggly line down near the District’s southwest border.
1835 map of the District of Columbia, prior to Alexandria County’s retrocession
image by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford, Library of Congress
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Some time around 2002, I worked with Charles Matta, AIA and Dan Bairley, AIA to lead a series of community charrettes (architect-speak for public forums) for examining the future of the Nauck community. The charrette was sponsored by Arlington County Economic Development. Dan and I are Irish descendants and Charles is originally from Lebanon, so all 'white' in the sense none were African Americans.
In the prep meetings leading up to the first charrette, the County staff advised us that we needed to treat the folks in Nauck with kid gloves; they were angry and hostile about being neglected, enough so that we'd been hired to act as intermediaries, or that was the impression.
When we began our work, Nauck didn’t have the look of North Arlington’s graciously affluent homes. Nauck was a blue collar neighborhood of small homes and a rundown spot of commercial fronting Shirlington Road, bounded by highways and geography. The homes looked like many in my own hometown in South Carolina, with clapboard siding abounding.
So the people who attended the charrette were working class, with a scattering of local ministers and members of the Nauck (now Green Valley) Civic Association. None of the County Board members attended. This wasn't an us-versus-them event—we made it clear we were working for the community, and what we heard we intended to take back to the County. As we saw it, we were there as translators between the community and the County Board—with decent illustration skills to tell a story.
My firm had a leg up on familiarity with Nauck; our office had been in Shirlington since 1989. We also had previously completed the Shirlington Library & Signature Theatre facility. As the blog went, "It only took two years and dozens of public meetings to convince the citizen planning group to agree" to the project. The Shirlington project took eight years from our programming and site studies to completion.
One fall Saturday mid-morning in Nauck, we set up our easels and maps, took notes and sketched while people talked politely, friendly—and very engaged.
I think the County planners were somewhat relieved, surprised even. But after previous years of public presentations and charrettes, we weren't. What we heard was 'we want a place to buy groceries, a better pharmacy, a place to get haircuts and go to restaurants, affordable houses so our youth to remain there,’ and pretty much the most mundane, normal things any community wants. What commercial buildings were in Nauck were run down, dreary and dying, and an adjacent industrial area was threatening to buy up the remaining bit along Shirlington Road.
One woman invited Charles and I to lunch at her house up the hill so she could explain the strong community connections. And while they indeed knew their history, they weren't looking back. No doubt there were some bitter people; there always are, but there were also leaders and ordinary homeowners who wanted better than that. They simply wanted to save their community's health. Go figure.
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A few years before, my partner had led a series of planning charrettes in Westover in north Arlington, which ironically was a way more angry, disunited community of mostly white professional types. If you visit Westover today, you can see the new library and school. Though our firm didn't get hired for the buildings, we did unblock that particular political logjam, one had been going on for years between the County and the County School Board over what to do with the old Walter Reed School.
Getting the school board to see reason might well have cost us the follow-on building contract.
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Zoning can be either a help or hindrance to community development. In the case of Nauck, its roads and properties were well-established. With the exception being Shirlington Road, most vehicle traffic was local. But the missing street fronts and inconsistent sidewalks were no encouragement to pedestrians. What needed enhancing was the street life; it existed only barely. If more people lived in proximity, they’d take care of the street life on their own.
Nauck consisted primarily of single family homes, whose owners kept asking where the apartments were for the elderly and starter condos for their children to afford staying put? They weren’t as much looking for office space, though several mentioned medical offices would be appreciated.
After doing our homework, we returned to the next charrette with recommending the best starting place was to address the visible decay along Shirlington Road. But replacement in kind wasn’t likely to draw more pedestrian traffic, and for sure wouldn’t make the area more appealing to the kinds of businesses the community was asking for.
They knew they were playing catch up and only needed the means.
A few miles north in the Glen Carlyn neighborhood, a very white elementary school teacher remarked that in her English-as a second-language classes, seeing white non-ethnic students always surprised her. The physical school was bursting at the seams, and that community wanted a gymnasium for afterhours sports when they got off work. Arlington schools are some of the best in the country, something their large immigrant population know well.
Increasing a community’s density attracts businesses and draws pedestrian activity to the commercial core. In other parts of the region, increasing density has been resisted as a negative; in Nauck it was well received, probably because it was so obvious.
So we began drawing long, hand-drawn illustrations of what that might look like—the fun part of being an architect. Commercial storefronts at street level with housing above, apartments and townhouses. What we were proposing was more foot traffic on the street, to stretch an urban streetscape all the way across Four Mile Run to Shirlington.
Shirlington Road Revitalization Plan—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
The County had already assembled a good number of the industrial sites along Four Mile Run leading to the southern end of Shirlington Road. These included the former repair shop, which had been Signature Theatre’s first home before we designed their new one to anchor Shirlington Village.
Shirlington Library & Signature Theatre—photo by Eric Taylor, ©2007
At the time, the County planners were discussing the Four Mile Run corridor being developed as one long public green anchored by recreation facilities. Even the Weenie Beanie had to go, though it had been there for quite a while. We responded by suggesting the existing industrial sites across the road wedged by I-395—the sites that depressed the livability at the southern end of Nauck—would be better valued as small office spaces and residential development.
Zoning can be either a help or hindrance to community development. In the case of Nauck, its roads and properties were well-established. With the exception being Shirlington Road, most vehicle traffic was local. But the missing street fronts and inconsistent sidewalks were no encouragement to pedestrians. What needed enhancing was the street life; it existed only barely. If more people lived in proximity, they’d take care of the street life on their own.
Nauck consisted primarily of single family homes, whose owners kept asking where were the apartments for the elderly and starter condos for their children to afford staying put? They weren’t as much looking for office space, though medical offices would be appreciated.
I wanted to see a traffic circle at the Glebe & Shirlington Road intersection for traffic calming and to create a northern 'gateway' into Nauck. And a vest pocket park with community center where Shirlington Road, Kenmore Street and 24th Street come together—to form the heart of a more vibrant village center. Where the street ROW was wide enough, we proposed making it a boulevard with tree islands.
The people of Nauck looked south toward Shirlington’s high rise apartments and condos and said ‘like that!’ So it seemed logical to start with higher densities at the south end, reducing them approaching the northern end, the whole of which was to be within ‘walk-up’ heights. Six to eight stories going to three story townhouses.
Proposed south end of Shirlington Rd—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
Proposed development at 24th St / Shirlington Rd intersection—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
Proposed development at 24th St / Shirlington Rd intersection—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
Proposed townhouses on east side—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
Existing apartment building and proposed townhouses on west side—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
Proposed village plaza and history museum—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
Proposed and existing apartment buildings—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
Proposed apartment buildings—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
Nauck Village plaza and history museum—The Lukmire Partnership, ©2002
The County took our recommendations and sketches and after multiple public hearings, packaged them into an adopted rezoning report. It’s a bit dry, but here’s the link: Nauck Village Center Action Plan, 2004.
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So, today, taking a drive down Shirlington Road reveals a change in character. The north end begins with townhouses moving toward apartments above small commercial spaces. The vest pocket park is still a work in progress, but it's now there and the County is mulling a community history center. The dense townhouse development sitting on the high ground overlooking Four Mile Run replaced the weary 50s apartment complex, putting more people in houses—with a good number of whites—along that stretch. And Shirlington Road through Nauck now has a better density to sustain an urban community, backed up by the same cottage neighborhood above it. Across Four Mile Run, Shirlington itself is becoming less a 'white only' enclave. The Nauck community is quietly embracing Shirlington as part of their neighborhood.
I'd love to see a cluster of restaurants with outdoor tables at the south end of Nauck, closest to Shirlington, overlooking Four Mile Run where the Weenie Beanie still sits. And the gas station, concrete plant and the catering company’s truck fleet are all tucked further back, with a small park facing Shirlington Road. It would be a great place for cyclists riding the W&OD trail to stop off for a break. And it's just a natural progression for Nauck.