City View Mansion (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact spot where the home once stood. No visible remains exist.


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Here follows information about the City View house as provided by the "Jaybird's Jotting's" blog written by Jay Roberts in 2014:

City View I and II
Location: Beacon Center, 6600 Richmond Highway
Currently There: Beacon Center

Precise Location: Historic Aerials indicate City View’s modern day equivalent was in front of the Panera and steps south of Famous Dave’s Restaurant.

We start at the top of Beacon Hill in Groveton, the tallest point around these parts at about 250 feet, and about halfway between Alexandria and Mount Vernon. Some Alexandrians who made their money in the seaport retreated to the quiet and solitude of the hills south of the city. One such man was Benjamin Barton (1820-1897), who built his county home on land we now know as the Beacon Center in Groveton.

From his shop on King Street, just a few blocks from the waterfront, Barton earned a sterling reputation as a master clock and watchmaker. He learned the trade from his father, as did his brother Thomas. Barton, Eliza and their three children lived at 31 South Royal Street. He maintained the City Clock at City Hall and became President of the Hydraulicon Steam Fire Company, a position he held for 42 years.

After he retired, Barton purchased a 74-acre farm. In his book, “Dixie Clockmakers,” author James W. Gibbs notes the location was three miles south of Alexandria on the Mount Vernon Road. A cottage was located there during the Civil War. In 1868, Barton built a country house and named it “City View.” He died there in 1887. The Alexandria Gazette wrote that an overflow crowd of mourners poured into 2nd Presbyterian Church. Barton was laid to rest at Ivy Hill Cemetery on upper King Street, a high spot itself overlooking the city where Barton was revered.

After City View burned down in 1918, W.F.P Reid Sr. (married to Sallie K. Pickett) built City View II on the same high ground. The history of this beautiful home is covered like a blanket at Friends of Beacon Field Airport. Harry and Anna Marie Lehman tell us the four-story Greek dwelling with 25 rooms and four front columns was, “visually massive and a prominent landmark on Route 1.” In 1954, the Alexandria Gazette called it “one of the area’s finest homes.”

(Note: Photo of City View courtesy Harry Lehman, Anna Marie Hicks. Be sure and check out their wonderful website).

In the early 1930s, the City View tract became home to Beacon Field Airport, named after the country’s navigational beacon program. During different periods of time, entertainment events were held there, including horse shows, carnivals and air shows. After World War II, commercial airline pilots received their aviation training at Beacon Field.

Beacon Field had two runways. The south-north footprint survives on the straight line of landscape running behind the Beacon Center from the Giant to the Target store. The east-west runway ended at about where Chipotle now stands and at the intersection of Southgate and King’s Highway.

An observation room on top of City View provided a “magnificent panoramic view” of Alexandria, Washington, Fort Washington in Maryland and the Potomac River. Reid no doubt showed off this view to guests such as Ulysses S. Grant II and Arthur Godfrey.

City View II, once surrounded by dairy farms, gained many neighbors in the middle of the 20th-century as the population in Fairfax County grew from 40,000 in 1940 to 275,000 in 1960. Down the hill towards Alexandria, Penn-Daw had become a motor inn mecca for travelers along Route 1. Some of the visitors and many of the locals ate at the Dixie Pig Restaurant, a culinary landmark that stood for many years across the street from City View II.

City View’s long run ended in 1959 when it was torn down. The Giant grocery store rose up on the historic footprint (Lehman recalled the front door was located on the south side facing Memorial Street and the Groveton High School). Other stores at the Beacon Mall followed, which rebranded its name to the “Beacon Center” several years ago.

Thanks to the efforts of the Lehman’s, a Fairfax County historical marker for Beacon Field was erected in 2010 and stands near the corner of Route 1 and Memorial Avenue. A new restaurant at 6900 Richmond Highway (about 1/3 mile to the south), on tap to open in 2015, will pay homage to this lost landmark with its name – City View Restaurant.


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Here follows an excerpt from Chris Barbuschak's presentation, "The History of Motels on Route 1 in Fairfax County" on behalf of the Mount Vernon Regional Historical Society:

When the MVRHS first asked me to talk about motels, I thought there's probably 20 tops on Route 1. Boy was I wrong, there are 62! So, a little context about hotels and motels on Richmond Highway. Route 1 is over 2,400 miles long. It's known as America's first main street and it stretches from Maine to Florida and its chock full of mom and pop shacks and businesses, diners, fortune tellers, truck stops and motels. U.S. Route 1 between Washington and Fredericksburg more or less followed the Potomac Path, which was a Native American route along the Potomac River. And when the Europeans came and settled it, they chose the shortest route along the bank of the Potomac as well.

In 1918, the state designated State Route One, which is part of the old Jefferson Davis Highway, and it was called SR1 in 1923. It became State Route 30 in 1926. In less than a year by 1927, the entire stretch of roadway was paved and motels practically popped up overnight. From the 1920s and 1930s, there were tourist ports which were individual cabins that you could stay in. They were arranged in a horseshoe fashion, usually around an office or a picnic area or a restaurant. Then in the 1940s and 1950s, you get into the low slung ranch style motels. And then in the 1960s and 1970s we get a couple of chain motels that come in.

So, Route 1 was the main north and south artery for many years, almost 50 years until Interstate Highway 95 opened up. That connected to Fredericksburg in 1964 and almost overnight all the businesses in the Richmond Highway corridor went downhill and continued to do so. Route 1 kind of had this "no tell" motel vibe to it. Ever since the 1960s, the county tried to get those motels to close and one by one they did. As of today, only nine of those original motels still exist. A couple of them are already on the chopping block.

So buckle up, and lets look at them all:

CITY VIEW TOURIST HOME -- 6636 RICHMOND HIGHWAY
The City View Tourist Home was a Greek Revival style mansion built in 1918 at the top of Beacon Hill. It had 25 rooms and it had a tower up at the top for a viewing area. It was the home of Fairfax County Supervisor W.F.P. Reed for many years and he is listed as the proprietor of the motel on their advertising postcards. Beacon Hill Airport was later built right next to the house and it was demolished in 1959. Today, the exact site of the house is a brand new Wendy's Restaurant that just opened a couple years ago.


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Here follows an excerpt from the book, “Snake Hill to Spring Bank” which was an oral history project conducted by students at Groveton High School in the mid-1970s. The interviews were transcribed under the direction of their teachers and local historian Edith Moore Sprouse.

From the interview with Kent Crowther:
"The airport was owned by Reid. There was a big white house on it sort of like a mansion. It had a big sun porch, and from that sun porch you could see the river because you were so high. It was built about where the filling station portion of Memco is though it was closer to the road. The Reids had lived there at least two generations and Reid remembered clearly before World War I. They built a road from Alexandria to Fort Humphrey, which is now Fort Belvoir. It was a dirt road about the equivalent of three lanes wide but just mud, and went past Mr. Reid's place where #1 highway is now. Just before World War II, his son became interested in aviation.

He was interested in aviation and so he built him an airport. It was a hill top and it was cleared. During World War II the Navy rented out the airport for pilot trainings, and also the area down in Hybla Valley.

Reid's son came back from the war and started a flying school there. He had hangars and fueling facilities, gasoline, and a small tower that had a beacon light. That's why it's called Beacon Hill. The beacon was on the nautical charts for the ships going up and down the Potomac River. The beacon was timed. They had it timed how long it was white and how long it would show red, so it could be distinguished from others along the river.

Reid leased the airport for a commercial airport after the war. It was approved as a school for the veterans. He had instructed flying for a long time. He flew an awful lot himself.

After Reid died his son closed this airfield and opened up an airfield on the other side of the river. Each morning he would take off and fly to the airport on the other side, and each night he would come back. No landing lights or anything, so he would use Marshall street as a guide.

During the time they were using the airport for pilot training they had a lot of accidents because the people who were learning to fly were not familiar with the airport. When they crossed #1 highway the cement and temperature would create air currents. Very often the planes would misjudge, hit the high power electric lines next to the airport, and flip over. We had one fellow that had just gotten himself a new plane -- he ran out of gas just before he reached the airport and he tried to coast on in. He crashed into the bank and drove the nose back into the cockpit. I don't think the occupants were killed, but it certainly tore the plane to pieces. We had quite a few accidents like that.

They had two runways. One running parallel with #1 highway, the other perpendicular to #1, back where the cemetery is. There was a small plane coming in for a landing parallel to #1 highway. Using this runway they would have to fly right over the school (Groveton Elementary) or right next to the school. The house on the west side was hit by a plane which flew into the second floor and ended up inside the building. Nothing caught fire and luckily no one was up in the bedrooms. There was a lot of commotion about what might've happened because school was in session. But generally speaking, Beacon Hill was a safe airport.

The airport was never torn down. They just stopped using it and started building on to it. First thing was built was the Giant. While the Giant was there Reid was still landing on the strip directly behind the Giant.
Giant was built somewhere around the early 60's."