A vision of middle class futurism has ossified into expensive nostalgia
December 18, 2024 11:30 AM Subscribe
Amid Northern Virginia’s carefully-manicured lawns and oversized garages, one residential neighborhood stands apart. Designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollin Hills was founded as a modernist enclave for artists, free spirits, and various other oddballs who didn’t quite fit in a typical postwar suburb. As the community celebrates its 75th anniversary, it has slowly transformed from bohemian hideaway to highly sought-after neighborhood in one of the most affluent metro areas in the country. from When Suburbia Was Weird [The American Conservative]
Zero photos. I feel like this is an article that should be showing me images how this place differs from most American suburb but it is not.
Wikipedia's article on the suburb has a pretty striking photo in its top infobox. Looks like a bitch to heat or cool though.
posted by egypturnash at 11:51 AM on December 18 [7 favorites]
Wikipedia's article on the suburb has a pretty striking photo in its top infobox. Looks like a bitch to heat or cool though.
posted by egypturnash at 11:51 AM on December 18 [7 favorites]
"The American Conservative", right there. I'm mildly entertained that they didn't criticize modernist architecture itself for being anti-populist; time and fashion have undercut that one.
I would like to see a census list of how many children grew up in these houses that (the article strongly implies) are too small to raise families in now.
posted by clew at 11:53 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]
I would like to see a census list of how many children grew up in these houses that (the article strongly implies) are too small to raise families in now.
posted by clew at 11:53 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]
I grew up in a time when, especially in summer, kids were on their bikes and their parents didn't know where they were. Hollin Hills was in the range of our daily wandering; I knew a couple of kids whose parents live there, too. The houses were open, well lit, and modest. The neighborhood was quiet, it was leafy, we knew where all the shortcuts were. It was a very nice way to spend a childhood.
When I was kid growing up in the area, there was a farm across the street from my house. I watched it get turned into suburban housing in the mid 1980s. We were kind of in the country, until we weren't. Then the McMansions starting to come.
My folks left the area more than 20 years ago, as it started to become wildly expensive. They retreated to central Virginia. The neighborhood was a success in the sense that it still retains its original vision, but who can afford it now? Why is it being written about in the American Conservative? What Does Ayn Rand have to do with it?
Hollin Hills and the changes that little spit of land above the Potomac has gone through are fascinating. The neighborhood is like a leafy suburban testament to a vanishing middle-class, but it seems like the article is just getting starting on this very interesting topic before it ends. . . though the story is not all that original in the history of the United States.
posted by os tuberoes at 12:02 PM on December 18 [9 favorites]
When I was kid growing up in the area, there was a farm across the street from my house. I watched it get turned into suburban housing in the mid 1980s. We were kind of in the country, until we weren't. Then the McMansions starting to come.
My folks left the area more than 20 years ago, as it started to become wildly expensive. They retreated to central Virginia. The neighborhood was a success in the sense that it still retains its original vision, but who can afford it now? Why is it being written about in the American Conservative? What Does Ayn Rand have to do with it?
Hollin Hills and the changes that little spit of land above the Potomac has gone through are fascinating. The neighborhood is like a leafy suburban testament to a vanishing middle-class, but it seems like the article is just getting starting on this very interesting topic before it ends. . . though the story is not all that original in the history of the United States.
posted by os tuberoes at 12:02 PM on December 18 [9 favorites]
The American Conservative has occasionally published things that I think are of some interest to mefites. They aren't RETVRN types or MAGA, although I think they define themselves against RETVRN and MAGA - that is, they're not just old school conservatives.
This article mainly should be a lot longer with more photos. It's really one sentence, the sentence that is in the header, and I think there's more there there.
Like, there was a kind of commercial optimism in the fifties and sixties. How much of this was marketing, how much of it was felt, how much of it was reasonable? I do think there's an alternate fifties to what we think we know - the fifties that they had to suppress with the red scare and the lavender scare, the fifties of the early civil rights movement and the proto-sixties.
I mean, you think about it - it's the fifties, you may need to worry about nuclear war, but the war-war is over. The polio vaccine arrives. The pacemaker is invented in 1959. Antibiotics are well ensconced but people can still remember the pre-antibiotic era. For every awful thing that happens in the fifties, there is something not so awful.
I think that when we look back, we easily recognize things that become blights - like when you watch Mad Men and see all the horrible commercials and marketing that you know is going to become a torment. But we forget the load that lifted off people when, for instance, you knew your kid wouldn't get polio and die - that's great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother memory now, being old enough to have little kids when the vaccine came out, but it was wonderful. And think about knowing that when you were kid, kids could die of infected wounds, but now your kid won't because of antibiotics. And the Depression is long gone, and the war is over.
(If you read memoirs about the first time doctors and veterinarians had real antibiotics, it's so amazing - they realize that all of the sudden, they can bring living beings back from death, easily and quickly. Honestly, what just kills me about the present is that we can do so much, and instead of doing good, we just make a hellscape. There are so many people (and animals and environments) that could go from suffering and death to happiness and vigor with nothing more than we have available to us today, but instead we just develop gambling apps and knife people on their insurance.)
posted by Frowner at 12:15 PM on December 18 [28 favorites]
This article mainly should be a lot longer with more photos. It's really one sentence, the sentence that is in the header, and I think there's more there there.
Like, there was a kind of commercial optimism in the fifties and sixties. How much of this was marketing, how much of it was felt, how much of it was reasonable? I do think there's an alternate fifties to what we think we know - the fifties that they had to suppress with the red scare and the lavender scare, the fifties of the early civil rights movement and the proto-sixties.
I mean, you think about it - it's the fifties, you may need to worry about nuclear war, but the war-war is over. The polio vaccine arrives. The pacemaker is invented in 1959. Antibiotics are well ensconced but people can still remember the pre-antibiotic era. For every awful thing that happens in the fifties, there is something not so awful.
I think that when we look back, we easily recognize things that become blights - like when you watch Mad Men and see all the horrible commercials and marketing that you know is going to become a torment. But we forget the load that lifted off people when, for instance, you knew your kid wouldn't get polio and die - that's great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother memory now, being old enough to have little kids when the vaccine came out, but it was wonderful. And think about knowing that when you were kid, kids could die of infected wounds, but now your kid won't because of antibiotics. And the Depression is long gone, and the war is over.
(If you read memoirs about the first time doctors and veterinarians had real antibiotics, it's so amazing - they realize that all of the sudden, they can bring living beings back from death, easily and quickly. Honestly, what just kills me about the present is that we can do so much, and instead of doing good, we just make a hellscape. There are so many people (and animals and environments) that could go from suffering and death to happiness and vigor with nothing more than we have available to us today, but instead we just develop gambling apps and knife people on their insurance.)
posted by Frowner at 12:15 PM on December 18 [28 favorites]
Non-rich people who were buying suburban homes in the late 40s and 50s expected their kids to share bedrooms. A 1,600 square foot three bedroom-two bath house was perfectly fine three or four kids and even five kids in a pinch. Having one car - to which the wife had access only after 7 pm and on weekends - also perfectly accepted.
posted by MattD at 12:23 PM on December 18 [6 favorites]
posted by MattD at 12:23 PM on December 18 [6 favorites]
This might be a knock on effect or just one of the overall symptoms. Gum Springs is the neighborhood right next door to Hollin HIlls, its the oldest black community in the area. Various factors are contributing to change in Gum Springs, too, driven by housing prices. The astronomical real-estate prices all over Fairfax county have had the happy effect of leveling the socio-economic playing field: only the very rich can live there now.
posted by os tuberoes at 12:23 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]
posted by os tuberoes at 12:23 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]
(also common: one car that the wife had all day, between dropoff and pickup at the "kiss and ride". Station wagons!)
posted by clew at 12:25 PM on December 18 [4 favorites]
posted by clew at 12:25 PM on December 18 [4 favorites]
Every single contemporary suburban enclave will, if NIMBYs have their way, ossify into expensive nostalgia. I first saw it when I was a kid and would go to the neighboring town of Cold Spring Harbor, which felt like a place that had been shellacked in like 1960. Now my hometown is getting shellacked. And when neighborhoods in cities are given a historical designation - don't be fooled! That, too, is shellacking. Designed to inflate property values and prevent change from dirty outsiders.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:58 PM on December 18 [5 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:58 PM on December 18 [5 favorites]
When I worked at a company that published book series sold by mail-order, a number of my top editors lived in this neighborhood.
https://www.claasshaus.com/blog/10-things-hollin-hills-va
posted by Ideefixe at 1:23 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]
https://www.claasshaus.com/blog/10-things-hollin-hills-va
posted by Ideefixe at 1:23 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]
What Does Ayn Rand have to do with it?
Her novels are basically a protracted middle schooler's slam book, with barely disguised references to real people, events, and places. (Frank Lloyd Wright as Howard Roark, Lewis Mumford as Ellsworth Toohey, et cetera.)
So, okay, this subdivision was the Monadnock Valley. Makes sense.
posted by ocschwar at 1:53 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]
Her novels are basically a protracted middle schooler's slam book, with barely disguised references to real people, events, and places. (Frank Lloyd Wright as Howard Roark, Lewis Mumford as Ellsworth Toohey, et cetera.)
So, okay, this subdivision was the Monadnock Valley. Makes sense.
posted by ocschwar at 1:53 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]
So what streets should one look at to see these odd homes while driving around Google maps? The random ones I chose just look like normal suburban homes. I agree this article is way short on pictures.
Also suburbia can still be kind of weird: Random modern green-roofed mass subdvision in Frisco TX, current reigning king of suburbia. You can see the standard mcmansions in the background.
Wonder if 40 years from now, someone will write an article about this place? or will they all have been destroyed and replaced? Who knows....
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:45 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]
Also suburbia can still be kind of weird: Random modern green-roofed mass subdvision in Frisco TX, current reigning king of suburbia. You can see the standard mcmansions in the background.
Wonder if 40 years from now, someone will write an article about this place? or will they all have been destroyed and replaced? Who knows....
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:45 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]
don't be fooled! That, too, is shellacking
We're all in for a thorough shellacking at this point.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:45 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]
We're all in for a thorough shellacking at this point.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:45 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]
The Hollin Hills Journal has more information.
Charles M. Goodman also designed homes in Hammond Wood in Silver Spring, Md.; Rock Creek Woods outside of Kensington, Md. (I have friend who actually lives in one there); Highland Hills in Bon Air, Va.; and Hickory Cluster in Reston, Va. (and a lot of other stuff, like you know, Terminal A of National Airport).
Look, some people made sourdough bread during the pandemic. I learned about the all the midcentury architecture near me.
It seems to me that Goodman was interested in making houses affordable as well as designing actual communities and I appreciate that about his work.
posted by edencosmic at 3:05 PM on December 18 [12 favorites]
Charles M. Goodman also designed homes in Hammond Wood in Silver Spring, Md.; Rock Creek Woods outside of Kensington, Md. (I have friend who actually lives in one there); Highland Hills in Bon Air, Va.; and Hickory Cluster in Reston, Va. (and a lot of other stuff, like you know, Terminal A of National Airport).
Look, some people made sourdough bread during the pandemic. I learned about the all the midcentury architecture near me.
It seems to me that Goodman was interested in making houses affordable as well as designing actual communities and I appreciate that about his work.
posted by edencosmic at 3:05 PM on December 18 [12 favorites]
So what streets should one look at to see these odd homes while driving around Google maps?
Elba road is the main road in this neighborhood. From Davenport to Range Rd, and most, if not all, the dead-end side streets.
posted by os tuberoes at 3:05 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]
Elba road is the main road in this neighborhood. From Davenport to Range Rd, and most, if not all, the dead-end side streets.
posted by os tuberoes at 3:05 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]
Able was I, ere I saw Elba
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:42 PM on December 18 [6 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:42 PM on December 18 [6 favorites]
When suburbia was weird, and Ayn Rand was counterculture. Huh
posted by rubatan at 11:17 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]
posted by rubatan at 11:17 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]
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posted by GoblinHoney at 11:49 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]