a “pre-history” of hollin hills
This is a slightly condensed version of a 1989 article written by Bob Marshall for Hollin Hills’ 40th anniversary. True pioneers, Bob and his wife, Pat, played an active and important role in Hollin Hills for many years.
a “pre-history” of hollin hills
by bob marshall
My Hollin Hills roots go way back to France and that terrible winter of 1944, the winter of The Bulge. When my infantry combat team wasn’t busy plugging holes in the Allied lines, there was an informal sort of bull-session-by-correspondence [among servicemen] concerning how affairs ought to be managed once we got home. Out of this breeze-shooting came the American Veterans Committee (AVC), a fairly idealistic, vaguely left-leaning alternative to established veterans groups. AVC would have an oblique role in creating Hollin Hills.
It happened this way. What we veterans came home to was a horrific war-caused housing shortage. By early 1948 the housing crisis was real enough to us. The first of our three babies had arrived, our one-bedroom apartment on a busy Maryland street got smaller daily, and Pat and I were dismayed by the scarcity and poor quality of houses available in our price range. So when the Washington chapter of AVC asked who was interested in starting an AVC-sponsored veterans housing project that might be built (non-segregated, yet!) in Virginia, we promptly raised a hand. So did about 20 others.
At AVC’s tiny headquarters on 17th St. we learned that a site was in sight; a willing developer on hand (this was Shy Rodman, one of the partners who either owned the land where Hollin Hills began or had an option on it — no word of Robert Davenport yet); and an architect available who had modern ideas about site planning and economical, contemporaneous houses.
Pat and I were overjoyed. Here it seemed was the perfect fit for our California-bred notions of what happy postwar suburban housing ought to be. We cheerfully pitched in to play a part in the planning. Soon matters reached the point where the truly serious had to kick in $100 each (in 1948 $100 was Real Money) to enable the architect (yes, Charles Goodman) to develop a basic house plan.
In due course he did so, delivering a crisply detailed, tightly organized three-bedroom, one-bath house — essentially the basic Hollin Hills house we know today. We venturers pondered his plan and approved it but for one detail: it lacked a fireplace. Back the plan went to Goodman to add a fireplace. And that, friends, is where the Hollin Hills house got its signature monolithic masonry slab, the fireplace wall.
Next, it was time to talk price. In those days conventional wisdom held that your average first-time house-buying vet, with the aid of a nothing-down, 4% GI loan, could buy a house costing oh, say $10,000. So every builder aimed at that target. When word came back from the builder (the still anonymous Davenport), there was good news and bad. The good news was he figured he could build this house for $10,000. The bad news was that he couldn’t promise any such thing.
So, sorry folks, we couldn’t have a fixed- price house. It had to be a cost-plus deal. For us would-be homebuyers, already gasping as we tried to comprehend a sum as enormous as 10 Gs, a plus-anything deal was unthinkable. All of us felt obliged to back out. And on that hard rock, the entire enterprise bottomed and sank — never, we thought, to be heard of again.
[However] about a year later, modest display ads began cropping up in the real estate sections of The Washington Post and Sunday Star picturing a rather impressively-scaled two-story house in the contemporary idiom. “For people who desire genuinely modern homes on beautiful wooded hillside sites,” the text announced, “a home in tomorrow’s vernacular . . .available for everyone’s taste . . . designed by famed architect Charles Goodman . . . to preserve forever the beauties of the country sites . . .the last word in functional modern living.”
You could write for a brochure to Hollin Hills, Rte. 1, Alexandria, or phone OVerlook 3419. We did neither. The words “Hollin Hills” were meaningless to us; nor had we ever laid eyes on the house design shown.
But in a few weeks I spotted a lead story in the Post’s real estate pages headlined “Bungalow Styles Regain Popularity with Home Buyers.” And illustrating that theme was an architectural rendering of the self-same one-story Goodman designed house that had had us salivating the year before! Somebody somewhere was going to build our house! Eagerly we read on.
“Two of the best bungalows unveiled so far . . . . Goodman, one of the country’s most promising home designers, has executed some superb side sites. “There are two models: $10,950 for three bedrooms and bath; a larger home at $16,500 has three levels, three bedrooms, and bath. The lower level has a 25-foot car shelter below the large living room. Behind the shelter and entrance hall is a utility room for laundry and storage.
“that’s where the Hollin Hills house got its signature monolithic slab, the fireplace wall.”
“Each home is situated on a large lot for best architectural effects. Goodman has made extensive use of floor-to-ceiling window areas to bring the outdoors inside . . .the last word locally in functional, modern design.”
The builders, Tauxemont Development Corp., operate on a unique system. Homes are built to order on selected sites. Instead of a speculative sales office, the firm charges a flat building fee of $1000 on the smaller home, $1500 on the larger.. . .less than 10 % and [it] also covers architectural fees. Prices quoted here are estimates by the company, and include lots . . . Over 50 orders to reproduce the sample homes have been taken.’”
We readily accepted the “modern design” label, but “bungalow”? No way! In the then-current vocabulary of real estate salesmanship, a one-story house of somewhat elongated format was a “rambler” or a “rancher.” “Bungalow,” on the other hand, rang more with late-1920s resonance than with the design-conscious panache of the dawning ‘50s. We rejected “bungalow” indignantly.
Nevertheless, this unexpected resurrection of our abandoned dreams sent us pell-mell down Fort Hunt Road, where, behind a stone wall, we found the rickety old Hollin Hills farmhouse office and another surprise awaiting within—an old acquaintance from Pat’s wartime years at Agriculture, Bob Davenport. Here he was, no longer a bureaucrat, but a daring entrepreneur, the wizard of odds who could make our house dreams come true.
The rest, as they say, is history. History and waiting. It took Davenport about nine months to build our house. It was a full-term gestation. Meanwhile, an aluminum-and-steel house had been thrown together out near Fairfax in an hour and five minutes! Davenport may have been slow but he was sure, and eventually we moved in, ankle-deep in muck on a rainy day in late April, 1950.
— Bob Marshall, Hollin Hills Bulletin, 1989