A Brief History of Douglas Park
The community today known as Douglas Park is the compilation of two separate housing developments: New Arlington and Douglas Park. The neighborhood development of Douglas Park, also sometimes misspelled as Douglass Park, first began to appear on historic maps of Arlington County in 1927. This area was historically associated with Sewell B. Corbett, who owned vast acres of property throughout Arlington County in 1907.
The newly developed community was bounded to the south by Fort Barnard, Four Mile Run and the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad; Fort Berry and Washington Avenue (now South Kent Street) to the north and northwest, and the Washington-Virginia Electric Railway line and the community of Nauck to the east.
About half of the original Douglas Park subdivision, the area southeast of what is now Walter Reed Drive, is now contained within the Nauck neighborhood. The name Douglas Park may derive from the Douglas family, prominent residents of the county in the early twentieth century. William W Douglas served as Supervisor for Arlington County between 1904 and 1907.
Similarly, New Arlington had been laid out by 1927. Larger in size, although less densely subdivided in the early years of development, the community was located to the north of Douglas Park, south of Columbia Pike. The land had previously been associated with Edward Denterman, William H Palmer and Sewell B Corbett. By 1938, as indicated by historic maps, the two communities began to overlap, linking up their streets, utilities and neighborhood activities.
Later tracts encompassed in the area now known as the Douglas Park community included John Travers’ Addition, the Joel Whitehead estate, C B Munson’s Second and Third Additions, the A E Dye Plan and the R R Dye Plan Subdivision.
Many of Douglas Park’s older buildings, predominately located along South Monroe Street, date from the latter part of the 19th century to the early 20th century. Constructed prior to the establishment of the community in 1927, these Queen Anne-style buildings are larger in scale and plan than the more modest Bungalow and Colonial Revival-style dwellings dating from the 1920s through to the 1940s.
The construction of these grander dwellings in the Late Victorian period within the rural farm land was prompted by the establishment of the Washington, Arlington, and Falls Church Electric Railway lines, extending as early as 1900 from the District to Rosslyn then on to Nauck. This streetcar line not only greatly impacted the development of Douglas Park, but spurred residential construction in Central Arlington, Nauck, and Columbia Heights.
As is documented on the Sanborn maps, the community of New Arlington-Douglas Park developed sporadically during the 1920s-1930s period of planned growth on narrow rectangular lots improved by single-family freestanding dwellings. The streets and alleys were laid in a grid-like pattern between the previously established crossroads and major transportation routes such as South Glebe Road, Columbia Pike, and the Arlington County and Fairfax Railway that originally marked the county. The great influx of military and federal personnel during the years of World War II prompted the construction of housing and commercial amenities, thereby establishing New Arlington-Douglas Park as a densely populated residential neighborhood.
Spurred by the vast development by the middle part of the 20th century, apartment buildings and commercial structures developed along the historic routes, depleting the area of many of its mid- to late-19th-century resources. The development of the 1930-1940s, however, remained largely intact to provide a contained residential community, circumscribed by this later growth. The 125 properties recorded tended to exhibit the modest bungalow form with small concentrations of late Victorian Queen Anne-style dwellings. Infill dating from the 1950s, generally in the form of Cape Cod homes are interspersed throughout the community.
