Wide-Awake Farmhouse
GPS Coordinates: 38.8547464, -77.1692818
Closest Address: 6206 Homespun Lane, Falls Church, VA 22044

Here follows a history of the school as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:
Wide-Awake
In 1931, Dr. Elmer Kohlmeier and his wife Marjorie bought a 92-acre plot of land from Nelle Boyd. This property included what is now the school site, the farmhouse next door, and land to Malbrook Road. The Kohlmeiers named their farm “Wide-Awake Farm.” Dr. Kohlmeier’s daughters, Anne Morris and Joan Meiers, remember their father driving his car through the area now known as Seven Corners to get to work at his dentist office in Washington, D.C. During the winter, a hired man would hitch up horses and use them to guide a wooden wedge snowplow to clear Sleepy Hollow Road. On rainy days, Dr. Kohlmeier would sometime leave his car along Wilson Boulevard. The next morning, he would ride a horse down to the end of the lane, slap the horse on the rump and send him home. Then, Dr. Kohlmeier would walk to his car and go on to work.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the area along Sleepy Hollow Road was a rural and safe place for children to take walks and ride their horses. The Alexandria Water Company owned a small lake nearby. In 1949, this was sold to developers who began the Lake Barcroft community. A few houses went up around the lake, but much of the area remained forest until the mid-1950s. As the land in the area began to be developed into residential properties, interest in a school site began. In 1954, ten acres were sold to the Fairfax County School Board for a school site.
What’s in a Name?
Have you ever wondered about the origin of the name Sleepy Hollow? Find out in this video produced for the Fairfax County Public Schools cable television channel Red Apple 21.
Sleepy Hollow Elementary School opened in 1954. The name “Sleepy Hollow” has been in use in this part of Fairfax County since at least 1849. In 1847, Richard McCarty Throckmorton, a resident of Loudoun County, Virginia, purchased 102 acres of land between Holmes Run and present-day Columbia Pike from Thomas Smith. Articles in the Alexandria Gazette newspaper, in 1849 and 1851, show that Throckmorton called his property “Sleepy Hollow Farm.” Records indicate that the land was already under cultivation when Throckmorton purchased it, so it is unclear if he or a prior owner gave the farm its name. It is theorized that Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” may have served as the inspiration for the name because the story of Ichabod Crane and his encounter with the Headless Horseman was very popular at the time. Records from the 1860s, 1890s, and 1920s show that subsequent owners of the farm retained the name Sleepy Hollow. Aerial photographs show that Sleepy Hollow Farm ceased operating between 1937 and 1953, and that by 1960 the land was in the process of being developed into the Barcroft Woods neighborhood. The first residential neighborhood bearing the name Sleepy Hollow was constructed in the late 1930s by Eakin Properties. Located near Seven Corners, the neighborhood was named for Sleepy Hollow Road, which took its name from Sleepy Hollow Farm. In 1853, the Fairfax County Court authorized the construction of a new road along land owned by Richard McCarty Throckmorton, from Holmes Run to “the Gallows Road”. Today, this section of the old Gallows Road is called Columbia Pike. The plat pictured here was drawn in 1838, before the creation of Sleepy Hollow Farm, when Throckmorton’s land was still part of a larger piece of property. Superimposed in purple are the approximate boundaries of Sleepy Hollow Farm; and, depicted in red, is the new road that was constructed along the western edge of the farm.
Holmes Run, known historically as Middle Run, is visible at the top of the plat. At Holmes Run the new road merged into an existing road called “the Church Road.” From Holmes Run, the Church Road continued northeast to Taylor’s Hill on the Leesburg and Alexandria Turnpike – a place known today as Seven Corners.
By 1921 the portion of the Church Road south of Holmes Run had fallen into disuse and was abandoned, and the remaining roadway had become known as Sleepy Hollow Road. Sleepy Hollow Elementary School was not built on land that was once part of Sleepy Hollow Farm. Rather, it was built on part of “Wide Awake Farm,” which was once owned by Elmer and Marjorie Kohlmeier. The Kohlmeier’s farmhouse still stands today near the school. Sleepy Hollow’s name hearkens back to an earlier era in Fairfax County history, and a beloved short story, one of the most popular pieces of early American fiction.