Chestnut Hill House (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact spot where the house once stood. You can still see parts of the formal garden and building foundation hidden in the tangle of trees and shrubbery here on campus.


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Here follows an excerpt from local author and historian Mary B. Lipsey's "This Old House: Annandale, Springfield, Burke & Beyond" presentation:

Chestnut Hill was built by John Malone, a railroad contractor in 1850. He and his wife settled there. His wife was part of the Gooding family which owned the tavern. The house is across from a cemetery today on the Little River Turnpike, but it really sits on the hill of the NOVA community college property. In fact, they have preserved the foundation of it. In 1868, William deeded 476 acres of land to his son-in-law, John Malone. He operated a farm there. He has thought to have named the property Chestnut Hill. I have not seen a chestnut tree there, but I don't know if I would recognize one.

After John Malone's death in 1885, the property passed to his wife Ann and then to his children. The William Lynch family leased Chestnut Hill from the Malone family from 1897 to 1899. They would take vegetables and fruit into Washington markets. The trip took three hours one way, in total a six hour trip by carriage. They would sell 20 gallons of milk for 10 cents a gallon. They kept the milk fresh by storing it in cans in the spring ice. During the Spanish-American War, two of the family's sons, Vernon and Aubrey, hauled milk from the farm to sell to the soldiers stationed at Camp Alger. Over time, the land would be divided and sold to different owners. The last people that actually lived in the house, William and Jane Pruitt, purchased it in 1937.

White columns were added to the house. William Pruitt was a member of the National Press Club. His wife was an author and a genealogist. In 1966, they sold their property for $1 million to the Junior Department of Technical Education, which later became known as NVCC. So you can go up on the hill and you can actually see that the home looks rather large when you see the footprint.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Annandale Chamber of Commerce website:

Annandale Campus of the Northern Virginia Community College will hold a Heritage Celebration on the Historic Site on campus where the original farmhouse once stood of the Pruitt family that sold the property to the Commonwealth of Virginia for the campus. NOVA alumni and the public are invited to attend.

At the Heritage Celebration, President Scott Ralls will dedicate interpretive signage at the Historic Site, followed by a reception and a special presentation by the Annandale Campus Lyceum Committee in the Mark R. Warner Student Services Building.

The Dedication Ceremony will feature two special guests, the Honorable Sharon Bulova, Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and an alumna of NOVA, and Dr. Dana Hamel, the first Chancellor of the Virginia Community College system who spoke at both the groundbreaking and dedication ceremonies for the campus, who is 94 years old.

The Lyceum Legacy Lecture will feature Dr. David Conroy, a full-time mathematics professor who has taught at NOVA since 1968 and Floyd Schwartz, an adjunct faculty member, who has taught continuously at NOVA since 1967. Dr. Hamel will also participate.

The original 76.88 acre parcel was purchased for what was then called the Central Campus in 1966 for the then whopping sum of $1,000,000. A groundbreaking ceremony for the new campus was held in front of the farmhouse at 12:00 noon on October 31, 1966.

The campus opened its doors for classes in the first building – the CS Building – for the first time on October 2, 1967. A dedication ceremony for the new Central Campus was held at 1:00 p.m. on October 30, 1967, with Governor Mills Godwin and Chancellor Dana Hamel speaking

NOVA began as the Northern Virginia Technical College, one of nine technical colleges created in Virginia under the authority of legislation approved by the General Assembly in 1964, in a converted warehouse in Bailey’s Crossroads that opened its doors for classes on September 27, 1967, with 761 students.

On April 6, 1966, Governor Godwin signed legislation creating the Virginia Community College system that merged the technical colleges into the system, and the college became Northern Virginia Community College.

From those humble beginnings, NOVA has become the largest institution of higher education in Virginia with over 70,000 students taking courses annually in one of its six campuses and three centers or online, making NOVA the eleventh largest college in the United States, annually awarding more associate degrees than any other higher education institution in the nation.