Last Sunday I finally got to visit Hollin Hills, a mid-century modern suburb south of Alexandria, VA. Those who know me can testify I can’t breathe outside of a hundred-dwelling-units-per-acre type of environment. Despite this, Hollin Hills got me dreaming about patriarchal Sundays spend with my fictional dog and fictional kids on the patio of a glass house in the forest, bird-watching, chopping wood for the fire place, bird-watching again, maybe hiking a little bit… What do people do in a suburb anyways? An honest question, feel free to enlighten me.
While potentially boring, Hollin Hills is truly a beautiful place. A layout of about 450 parcels no smaller than one- third of an acre is carved into a lush forest, originally owned by Bill of Rights founding father George Mason. Most trees were retained, contrary to the usual practice of the day, and some more were planted to veil sight lines. This intensifies the magic forest feel that you get throughout the neighborhood. On these generous, wooded plots, mid-century modern houses are fanned at an angle and raised on gentle slopes to elude the otherwise sweeping views allowed by their glass walls and open plans. In sharp contrast with the natural and mostly wild-looking surroundings, glimpses of the interiors reveal sophisticated urban taste translated in iconic modern design pieces and art collections.
Yes, it is a Neutra and Schindler fantasy made affordable after World War II by architect Charles M. Goodman, constructor Robert Davenport, and landscape architect Lou Bernard Voight. Although the houses were not prefabricated, they shared some modular components, and they were modestly priced. The popularity of the homes is said to have established Goodman as a nationally acclaimed guru of modern architecture.
Even more than the architecture, the design of the land distinguished itself radically from any typical suburban American development of the time. Conceived around community parks, pedestrian paths, and school sites, the overall masterplan was a shared landscape of borrowed views and common amenities, a subtle critique of the American focus on property and individualism. The roads were modeled along natural contours, originally unpaved, and without sidewalks or curbs until today. Few plots had driveways even. This, together with keeping the existing trees (an avant-garde practice for the time) secured minimal disturbance of the site. Later on, Dan Kiley joined the developer’s team and designed gardens for about one hundred of the residences in Hollin Hills, most of which were not installed by the owners.
But Hollin Hills was special in other ways too. People who live there feel that design has brought together one of the greatest communities ever. I loved Daniel Donovan’s summary of the Hollin Hills mojo: “Having grown up in Fairfax County in the early 1960’s, I recall Hollin Hills as an exotic place where children called their parents by their first names. These people lived in glass houses, drank wine, and read The New Yorker. They drove foreign cars. In segregated Virginia, Hollin Hills was an enclave of social and political liberals, and remains one today “(in “Daniel Urban Kiley: the Early Gardens”).
