Westlawn Elementary School
GPS Coordinates: 38.8627238, -77.1832031
Closest Address: 3200 Westley Road, Falls Church, VA 22042

Here follows a history of the school as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:
Westlawn Elementary School opened on September 2, 1952. The original address was 1220 W. Grenstead Street and later was changed to 6920 Oak Ridge Road. At the time of opening, the back wing of six classrooms was not completed. 605 children and 17 teachers moved in using completed rooms and the activity room for classes. Partitions were placed in the primary classrooms to accommodate two teachers and their classes. Unfinished rooms were completed later that year with the dedication service being held Sunday, November 16, 1952. The building then consisted of 16 classrooms, a multi-purpose room (used as a classroom), library, teachers' room, offices, clinic, kitchen, cafeteria, and toilet facilities.
In 1956, there were 1,020 pupils enrolled at Westlawn. This made it necessary to shuttle about 100 pupils and three teachers to Willston Elementary School at Seven Corners. They moved to the newly completed Walnut Hill School in January of 1956, along with all other children from the Broyhill Park area.
Plans were put into effect to add six more rooms, which now comprise the front wing. They were occupied in September 1957. This made 22 classrooms (including a trailer), but still the first grades were on 1/2-day shifts. With an enrollment of 689 in September 1964, it became necessary to shuttle a second grade class to an empty classroom at Walnut Hill School for the 1964-65 session in order to meet the county's pupil-teacher ratio of 30.5 to 1.
Groundbreaking for the new addition was May 15, 1970. By April 26, 1971, the remodeling and additions were completed. This addition included the office suite, lobby, kitchen, cafeteria, music rooms, science room, gymnasium, halls, and POD area that included a large open area and five classrooms. The library was designed using the former cafeteria. All new rooms and library were air conditioned. Because of the location of the main entrance after the addition, the address was changed to 3200 Westley Road.
The School Age Child Care addition was built in December 1991 and occupied in September 1992. In 1998, the construction of a new improved playground was completed with the supervision of a committee comprised of members from the school staff and the PTA. Also, the need for more classroom space resulted in the addition of a quad trailer.
Westlawn Elementary was designated as an EXCEL school in 1999. As a result, the kindergarten classes went to full days, the "early release" day was omitted, and the pupil-teacher ratio was lowered. This all has added to a successful learning environment that has been proven in the school's recent test scores. In 2001, Westlawn received Fairfax County's Gold Medal Award for Excellence in academic improvement.
Today, children of many nationalities make up the student body.
By Westlawn School Staff
Why is our school named Westlawn?
Westlawn Elementary School opened in September 1952. The school was named for the West-Lawn residential subdivision. The land where Westlawn Elementary stands was formerly part of a farm owned by William Ball during the 19th century. In 1922, Walter Thomas Westcott, an English immigrant and his son Milton Westcott, purchased the 146 acre Ball family farm to expand Westcott Nursery, their family's landscape gardening company based in Falls Church. The Westcott Nursery was widely known in the Washington D.C. area for the quality of its flowers, trees, and landscaping services. Following World War II, rapid growth of the federal government brought an influx of workers and returning veterans to Northern Virginia. Area real estate developers seeking to profit on the ever-increasing demand for affordable housing purchased large tracts of land in Fairfax County and turned farmland and forests into new housing subdivisions. One such developer was Merwin Ardeen Mace. His firm, Mace Properties built more than 4,000 homes and 1,000 apartment units in the Washington, D.C. area from the mid 1930s through the early 1960s. In 1949, Mace broke ground on a neighborhood he named West-Lawn located on part of the former Westcott Nursery property. Early sales ads indicate that the name of the neighborhood was originally hyphenated. At first glance one might think Westcott nursery inspired the name West-Lawn. This is further evidenced by many of the neighborhood streets having the word West in their names including one specifically named Westcott Road. However, that supposition may only be partially correct. This list is just a small sample of the properties that Mace developed in our area. When naming his neighborhoods, Merwin Mace tended to favor words such as hills, lawn, park, and west. Developments located west of Washington, D.C. often had west in their name, so it is difficult to say with certainty the true inspiration for the name West-Lawn. In 1949 and 1950, the West-Lawn neighborhood proved exceedingly popular and homes sold at a brisk pace due in large part to their affordability, as the price for a 3-bedroom home was only $9,900. Children in the community originally attended school in the town of Falls Church, and as more and more families moved into West-Lawn and other nearby developments, overcrowding became a major concern in December 1950. Milton Westcott and his wife Dorothy donated 8.7 acres of land from the Westcott Nursery to the Fairfax County School Board for a school site. Westlawn Elementary School opened 21 months later.