$25K Grant Used To Get Historic Designation For Arlington's Halls Hill

ARLINGTON, VA — In a major boost to its effort to get the Halls Hill-High View Park neighborhood added to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, the John M. Langston Citizens Association was awarded a $25,000 grant from the Arlington County Historic Preservation Fund.

The fund was created to invest in the preservation of Arlington by administering funds in support of community and individual projects “related to the county’s history, built environment, and cultural heritage.”

“The HHHVP neighborhood has made significant contributions to Arlington’s history and its built environment and is one of the three remaining ‘historically Black’ communities in Arlington,” Arlington County said in its Oct. 11 announcement that the citizens association was one of 12 applicants selected as the first grant recipients of the Arlington County Historic Preservation Fund.

Getting the Halls Hill-High View Park neighborhood added to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places would "build stronger connections between our community members, greater-Arlington, and the Washington Metropolitan area by educating people about the significance of HHHVP’s history from the post-Civil War era to the present," the John M. Langston Citizens Association said.

Receiving the designation also would "encourage longevity and preservation of HHHVP as one of the remaining historically black neighborhoods in Arlington as neighborhood 'revitalization' and 'upscaling' efforts continue across Arlington County."

The boundaries of Halls Hill-High View Park are Langston Boulevard to the north, North George Mason Drive to the west, Slater Park to the east. The southern boundary is a wall built in the 1930s to separate it from the white neighborhood of Woodlawn Park, now known as Waycroft-Woodlawn.

Also in Halls Hill, Arlington County officials are inviting community members to donate historical artifacts and items to be placed inside a display case in the lobby of the new fire station to honor the history and legacy of the Halls Hill-High View Park Volunteer Fire Department and Fire Station No. 8.

READ ALSO: Arlington Seeks Historical Artifacts As Fire Station 8 Nears Opening

In 1918, a group of volunteer African American firefighters formed in the Halls Hill area, a neighborhood that began as home to many freed slaves but was kept separate by white leaders from neighboring communities. In 1926, the Halls Hill Volunteer Fire Department bought its first motor-driven fire engine with funds raised through door-to-door canvassing and pledged donations.

The fire station was founded because the nearby Cherrydale Volunteer Fire Department refused to serve the segregated Black neighborhood.

The John M. Langston Citizens Association is currently conducting research before it submits a nomination to the Virginia State Historic Preservation Office to request formal recognition of the Halls Hill-High View Park community’s historical significance.

Securing a certified nomination from the Virginia National Register Review Board will allow the neighborhood to gain submission to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places for final review and listing by the keeper of the National Register of Historic Places.

Wilma Jones, president of the John M. Langston Citizens Association and a fourth-generation resident of the Halls Hill community, said the historic designation is important because no matter how things change in Arlington, "forever and always it will be documented that the neighborhood was started by formerly enslaved African Americans."

In an ARLnow podcast on Oct. 17, Jones said the John M. Langston Citizens Association currently has a request for proposals open for an historic researcher to work with the association on the historic nomination.

"We have loads of history, but in order to do these nominations, they have to be in certain formats and you have to validate certain things, so we got a bunch of money to get someone to help us do all of that," Jones said.

The association is hoping to award the bid for the historic researcher after Thanksgiving, according to Jones. The grant from Arlington will help to fund the historic researcher position.