Rosslyn, Virginia

Recently I returned to this neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon.  I checked the entertainment center at River Place, walked around the grounds, went through the Rosslyn Metro Mall, and exercised at Gold’s Gym.  This was the Gold’s location at which I originally established my memebership in September 1999.

Personal Origins.   During home leave of summer 1980, our family stayed at the Key Bridge Marriott.  Its claim to fame is a pool which is both indoor and outdoor; you can swim under the glass window from one side to the other. 

            Sometime in 1984, my parents purchased a co-op efficiency (studio) in Rosslyn, Virginia.  During the summer of 1986, my entire family stayed in this efficiency during our summer home leave.  That’s two adult parents, two adult males (my brother and I) and our younger sister, who was 11 years old at the time. Two sofa beds and a cot took up 95% of the floor space when we were sleeping. This was somewhat claustrophobic, so we spent most of the time out and about, coming home just to sleep. 

            In summer 1990, I graduated from University of Maryland, College Park, my parents moved back to the US from Paris, and in August 1990 I started school at the George Mason University School of Law, which is located in Arlington.  Back then it was still in the former Kann’s Department Store building.   Since Rosslyn was just a few Metro stops, an hour walk, or a 10 minute drive, from there, I ended up moving into that efficiency.  In October 2004 I moved to a larger efficiency at Skyline (Route 7 & George Mason Drive), so it’s been 10 years since I lived in Rosslyn. 

History.  As you might imagine, my father knew much more about the world around us than I did – going back to the 1930s.  An example of this was his description of Rosslyn in the 1950s.   At that time, pawnshops were illegal in DC but legal in Virginia, so Rosslyn was a sleazy den of pawnshops.  By now only National Pawnbrokers, up the street on Lee Highway, remains.  

            In more recent times, Rosslyn is exempt from DC’s restriction on building heights – as not to obscure the Washington Monument – so it has a fairly modest skyline of skyscrapers, the tallest and oldest of which are the USA Today buildings; as a skyline, it’s about the same as Norfolk or Richmond, nothing too dramatic, but enough to piss off armchair architectural aesthetes from DC.  Too bad.  This little skyscraper city version of Rosslyn, as it is today, is the Rosslyn I lived in for 14 years. 

Road Hub.  More so than any other part of Northern Virginia, Rosslyn is the biggest hub of roads.  First off there’s Key Bridge, which crosses the Potomac into DC, veering west to Canal Road and Foxhall Road, and east to M Street and Georgetown.  From the northwest comes down the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which leads further south to Reagan National Airport and Old Town Alexandria. From Rosslyn, Route 110 runs south to the Pentagon, Crystal City, and I-395.  I-66 comes out of Rosslyn and goes due west, all the way out to Front Royal and I-81.  Not to be confused with the older Route 66 – Chicago to L.A. and mostly replaced by I-40 in the early 1950s – this highway is the main east-west highway in Northern Virginia. Route 29, also known as Lee Highway, goes roughly northwest of Rosslyn over to Fairfax.  Route 50, aka Arlington Blvd, also goes west to Fairfax and follows I-66 almost parallel, and it intersects Route 29 in downtown Fairfax.  Finally, Wilson Blvd. goes up the hill and leads through Arlington all the way to Seven Corners, where I work today. 

            About the only two major roads which don’t pass through Rosslyn are 495, the Beltway – Rosslyn is well within the Beltway; and 395, the extension of I-95 (the Maine to Florida interstate highway) which goes inside the Beltway up to DC.  I-395 comes over the 14^th Street Bridge a bit further south than Rosslyn, although it’s a short 5 minutes on the GW Parkway passing by the Pentagon to get onto.  

            Another Dad-Nugget:  I-95 coming down from Baltimore does NOT hook up with I-395 coming up from the Virginia section of the Beltway.  Why not?  Because DC spent the money originally allocated for that connection to build the DC Metro.  I-395 finally expires in the center of town at New York Avenue.  Anyone driving from north of DC (coming down from Baltimore) and intending to continue south of DC (down towards Richmond), or vice versa, is theoretically supposed to follow 95/495 on its eastern half.  This is why the western half of the Beltway, running through Montgomery County, Maryland, spouting off to 270 northwest, and going into Northern Virginia, is called “495”, while the eastern half, going past College Park and through Prince George’s County, Maryland, across the huge Woodrow Wilson Bridge, and through Alexandria, is called 95/495.  Bypassing Baltimore on I-95 is as simple as just going through the Fort McHenry Tunnel, or the Harbor Tunnel, instead of having to take I-695 all the way around. 

River Place.   This is a co-op complex of 4 10 story brick buildings, all in a cross-shape.  My unit was in the North Building, on the fifth floor, facing southwest down Route 50, with a view of the front gate and Lynn Street.  The complex had an outdoor pool and an indoor “entertainment complex”.  This complex was primarily a poorly stocked gym with one treadmill, a ping-pong table, and 3 permanently disabled hot tubs.  Since I left, they’ve upgraded this to a somewhat more modern gym and pool tables. 

Phil Next Door.  My best friend Phil, who had visited me at River Place several time and fully appreciated Rosslyn’s hublike qualities, moved there in 1993 into a duplex.  He remained there until 2000, when he and his then-wife Julie moved to a larger single-family house in nearby McLean.  His duplex was a short 10 minute walk from me, so I could drink at his place and walk home.  That was fun and convenient while it lasted. 

Key Bridge & Georgetown.   Key Bridge is a large, ornate 20’s era bridge from Virginia to DC.  The DC end is Georgetown, a neighborhood consisting of M Street and Wisconsin Ave (perpendicular to each other).  There are lots of bars and trendy stores, so it’s a great place to hang out and socialize, especially on Halloween.   Walking across Key Bridge is a nice experience:  you can look up the Potomac and see DC. 

            In January 1996 I went to see Motorhead at the Bayou (a now-defunct club under the K Street Whitehurst Freeway).  Bone dry, walking across.  By the time the show was over, the bridge and all of Rosslyn was covered in 2 feet of snow.  This blizzard was so enormous, it killed almost a whole week of work.  My brother, who had been living with me at the time and working at TASC next door, was stuck out in Centreville with his wife’s family.   

Local neighborhood.  One of the very first Chipotle locations in Northern Virginia was in Rosslyn, at the corner of Wilson Blvd. and Lynn Street.  For awhile I resisted going, as it appeared super pretentious, but eventually I relented, and have been addicted ever since.  The USA Today Building’s mini-mall has basically lapsed, but the Rosslyn Metro Mall is still in existence.  Tom Sarris’ New Orleans Steakhouse is gone, as is the Roy Roger’s.  There really aren’t any clubs or bars, but some upscale condo buildings are going up.