Un/common Places

This ongoing series will feature places attached to personal stories we hope will distinguish them as “uncommon places” that help us better understand Arlington County’s history and cultural diversity, and perhaps heighten recognition of the importance of place in all of our lives.  

Some of the qualities that make a place “uncommon” are historic value, longstanding use, aesthetic value, public spaces that facilitate congregation, neighborhood enhancement including qualities that contribute to local character or that may act as landmarks.

 #1   A Place of Longstanding Use 
Virginia Hardware

Virginia Hardware was a part of Arlington since 1924.  Harry Goldman operated the business in Rosslyn then, but moved to Clarendon in 1963.  In 1985 Harry’s son Allen hired 16 year old Rick Iglesias,  who had been referred by the Arlington Career Center, to work at the store.    From Allen, Rick learned not only about the hardware business but also to “go from being afraid of people to at the end you can solve anything for anyone.  You could talk to people; you can answer the phone; you can handle the difficult ones.”  Allen became a mentor to Rick and, in 1998, he helped Rick to buy the business.  Rick says, “ I tell everyone, even though I paid for stuff. . .I still feel like almost as if he gave me everything,  because of him trusting me with the store.”  Sadly, though, Virginia Hardware closed its doors in September of 2005.  Changing times and the high cost of running a small business forced owner Rick Iglesias to make the difficult decision to cease operations:

“It’s a great need, I think, for the community and for the county, but it’s one of those things that doesn’t make any money.  It’s a lot of nickel and dime sales, finding that one screw, the one nut for customers.  They walk out of here really happy when they spend ten cents, but it doesn’t really help us. . . It’s sad for me, but I guess everything has an end.”

Photos by Cynthia Connolly

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#2  A Place of Longstanding Use
Judson's Shoe Repair 

Judson Bowman began his career at Shoe Repair in 1959 as assistant to former proprietor Zimmie Bradley.  He bought the business from Mr. Bradley’s estate in 1996.  However,  the shoe repair shop at 3219 Washington Boulevard will soon disappear from Arlington’s streetscape. With the ongoing redevelopment of Clarendon and the high cost of doing business, there is little chance that the shop will see another year, and the art of shoe repair will further fade from our cultural consciousness.  Like many natural species, the art and craft of shoe repair is on the “endangered list.”   Consumer demands for low-cost goods, our throwaway culture and the industry’s hunger for increased profits have effected the survival of the craft. 

        “See, it all started with the tennis shoes, quite frankly” says Mr. Bowman, “Everybody started wearing them: senior citizens, grandma, the kids—everybody.  Back in the day tennis shoes was the thing you wore on the weekends.

        “Then they (the manufacturers) figured out why give good quality when they can make something for $3.00 and sell it for $300. . .They could give you a leather top with a tennis shoe bottom and soled with . . . paper.  That used to be individual layer of leather like that years ago.  Do you get my drift?” 

        Thus, shoe repair has become increasingly frustrating while the concept of even learning such a trade has become more archaic.  Mr. Bowman began his education in shoe repair at the age of 16, learning by example from an experienced tradesman.  But, now, he says, “A few people come in here that are teachers and we talk about trades.  Years ago they had trades in school.  Everybody is not going to be a computer genius. . . . But there’s no trades in schools anymore.”  And there are fewer and fewer Zimmie Bradleys and Judson Bowmans to pass on their knowledge.

 
Judson's Shoe Repair 
Top: Exterior, Bottom: Interior
Photos by Cynthia Connolly

Pictured above:   Rick Carlisle and Orpheus Records
photo by: Cynthia Connolly

#8  Neighborhood Enhancement: T.A. Sullivan & Son

By Gabriella Boston
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published September 24, 2006

Once in a while, something along the road begs further investigation. It can be a for-sale sign, a stand laden with fruit or an inviting-looking restaurant. Along Washington Boulevard, in a commercially booming part of Clarendon where buildings are mostly 10 stories high and more, many drivers find that something is a tiny one-story beige house with brown trim, surrounded by hundreds of gravestones, some standing upright, some stacked.
    "I call it my gingerbread house," says Joe Poldiak, owner of T.A. Sullivan and Son, a company that has been carving gravestones since 1885.
    His associate and daughter-in-law Mischelle Poldiak adds: "A lot of people come in just because they're curious about who we are."
    What they find is something as unusual and old-timey as the building itself. The office looks like that of a private detective in a film noir -- except for the urns and marble vases in a corner of the main room. Papers are stacked high and often collapse, cigarette smoke snakes through the air, the smell of coffee lingers, and a brown leather desk chair mended with red duct tape sits behind a large mahogany desk.
    Also behind the desk is Mr. Poldiak, 67, who favors wearing suspenders over his dress shirt, a thick gold chain around his neck, his hair long, white and wavy.
    "He's definitely a character," says Rob Lingerfelt, 21, who started working with Mr. Poldiak a couple of months ago. "Maybe it's a way to deal with the morbid aspect of the job. He jokes a lot."
    Mr. Poldiak says he didn't get into the stone-carving business because he loved sculpting or carving or had a morbid bent. It just seemed a good way to dig out of poverty.
    "I grew up poor in a mining town in Pennsylvania. Everyone around me was poor, except for the doctors, ministers and undertakers. They had money," Mr. Poldiak says. "So, I thought, I'm not smart enough to be a doctor, and I'm not good enough to be a minister, but I can be an undertaker."
    He moved to the Washington area first to become an embalmer and funeral director. Then he served 18 months in Vietnam. When he came back, he became a gravestone carver. He says the constant and direct dealings with death and grieving families required of a funeral director were taking an emotional toll and he needed a buffer. That buffer became slabs of granite.

    Learning to become a monument carver is something one does on the job. Mr. Poldiak learned from older, more experienced carvers, and he's teaching Mr. Lingerfelt and Brian Hood, 25. He also employs his daughter Lea-Anne Kennedy, but not as a carver.
    "What does it take? Well, we're all artists and sculptors here, but you have to be able to lift. And you need patience and a good eye."
    A mistake can be costly.
    "It can be thousands of dollars," Mr. Poldiak says.
    The basic method of gravestone carving starts with gluing a rubber sheet with perforated letters -- the name of the deceased -- and numbers -- dates of birth and death -- onto the stone, which is cut to size and polished at the quarries.
    "That's where I start people. Just centering the letters," Mr. Poldiak says, standing next to a marker on which Mr. Lingerfelt is centering the rubber sheet. They're in a little shop behind the gingerbread house.
    The next step is to remove the rubber letters baring the parts of the stone where the carving is to take place. The rest of the stone remains covered in the rubber sheet, which will protect the stone from indentation while the letters are being sandblasted, the modern form of carving. With gray granite, the most common stone, the letters are made about half a centimeter (not quite one-tenth of an inch) deep.
    "You have to be really careful with the angle and the amount of time you spend on each letter," Mr. Hood says. "It's really easy to make a mistake and carve too much."
    The inside of P's and A's are particularly difficult, he says.
    "You know why I have a punching bag in the shop?" asks Mr. Poldiak, called "Pappy" by his 10-year-old grandson, Blake. "It's so when someone makes a mistake I have something to hit," he jokes.
    The real reason? Mr. Lingerfelt put it up for after-hour workouts. He also brings his pit bull, Tara, to work sometimes. And Mr. Hood smokes nonstop. This is no corporate office environment.
    After the letters are carved, the rubber is removed and the stone is cleaned with soap, water and gasoline. Stones run from $300 to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the stone, workmanship and lettering. (Gold leaf is expensive.)
    "It's extremely gratifying work," says Mr. Lingerfelt, who fell into the business by chance, answering a vague ad on Craigslist.org asking for someone strong and attentive to detail. "You're making something that will be around for a long, long time, and you want it to be as perfect as possible."
    For Mr. Poldiak, after more than 30 years of carving, the most gratifying aspects of the job are satisfying the wishes of people who have lost a loved one and undertaking the occasional challenging assignment, such as elaborate hand-etchings done with a Dremel tool. He did a pictorial history for the headstone of a mother and teacher who had grown up on a farm in West Virginia. The etching included farm animals, a schoolhouse and children, covering much of the stone.
    Other times when customers have asked for lots of carved details, he has dissuaded them. This was the case with the late Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg. Mr. Poldiak tells the story of how he went to Justice Goldberg's house when the jurist was planning his marker to find out what the distinguished man wanted carved on the stone: a list of the -- many -- highlights of his career.
    When asked for his feedback, Mr. Poldiak said: "I told him I could do it but thought it would look like a damn billboard. ... His secretary almost fell off her chair. But I always tell it like it is."
    This way of doing business will win some and lose some, he acknowledges. Justice Goldberg still chose Mr. Poldiak's work. However, when a young widow with two toddling children came to him, wanting to spend more than $10,000 on her husband's grave, Mr. Poldiak suggested she might want to talk it over with family and friends, maybe a minister, before making the decision to go the costly route.
    "She ended up going to the competition," he says.
    Many -- as in thousands -- of Mr. Poldiak's stones are at Arlington Cemetery. Among them are the Shuttle Challenger Memorial and the headstone for Maj. Marie Therese Rossi, who was killed when the helicopter she was piloting crashed on March 1, 1991, during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq.
    Other cemeteries where Mr. Poldiak's stones can be seen include Columbia Gardens, Cedar Hill and Oakwood Cemetery, where a temporary marker marks the grave of Walter "Ray" Brady, Mr. Poldiak's foreman, colleague and friend for 26 years. He died in January at age 48.
    "I used to tell him if he died before me I'd just pull together some stone scraps for him," Mr. Poldiak says, attempting a smile. He plans a black granite stone for Mr. Brady and says he's still working on it.
    "It's really hard for him," his daughter-in-law says. "They worked together for so long."
    The business of death evidently isn't any easier for those who deal with it daily.
    Except Mr. Poldiak, who's not planning to leave or sell the gingerbread house on its prime real estate anytime soon -- maybe never. He treats his own demise with a hint of comedy.
    "I'll probably die down here," he says, "but that will work out well. There'll be a stone ready for me," he says and laughs.

Copyright © 2006 The Washingon Times LLC. This reprint does not constitute or imply any endorsement or sponsorship of any product, service, company or organization.  Visit our website at http://www.washingtontimes.com.  

Pictured: 
Above right: The front of the T.A. Sullivan & Son building on Washington Blvd.
Above left:  Detail on a gravestone hand etched by Mr. Poldiak.
Photos by Chris Williams
 

#9    A Place of Historic Value

The "house of tomorrow" is now on the endangered species list: The Lustron Houses

Once there were eleven and now there are five---as Arlington’s inventory of Lustron houses continues to dwindle. All of the Lustrons in Arlington were built in 1949 and where the "Westchester Deluxe 02" model with two bedrooms, and one bath in 1,093 square feet of living space, a really cozy fit by today’s standards. But in post-WWII America these prefabricated metal porcelain enamel houses were marketed as a "new standard of living."

The house arrived in a kit that contained every panel, nut and bolt necessary and not a stick of wood. Everything was made of steel, including the roof shingles. Impervious to termites, fire and weather, the houses never needed painting. But, to quote Sam Samuels of the New York Times, "What time and wind cannot bring down, real estate prices can, especially when the land the Lustron sits on is worth more than the house itself." Such is the story of the Lustron house that formerly graced a corner lot in the Virginia Heights neighborhood on South 12^th Street. From the Washington City Paper: "’My original idea was to tear it down, but when I discovered that the thing was historic, I decided it would be better to save it,’" remarked the property owner. He donated the house to Arlington County, which is looking for someplace to put it. For now it is boxed, relegated once more to "kit" status, awaiting rebirth, once again the "house of tomorrow."

For more information: http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/CPHD/ons/hp/CPHDOnsInsider_Lustron.aspx

The Lustron House: Top Left: Front, Top Right: Rear Bottom Left: Bedroom with built-in vanity  Bottom Right: The front door and dining room

 

# 10 -  A Place of Aesthetic Value (if only for one day)
           Guatemalan Alfombra (flower carpet)
           Good Friday, 2007
           

St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Falls Church played host to its annual Good Friday processional and mass on the evening of Friday, April 6. These recreations of the last moments leading to the crucifixion take place in churches and communities around the globe, as Catholics reflect on the passion and the coming resurrection.

In Falls Church this year, a distinctly uncommon element was added to the St. Anthony’s parish ritual when Guatemalan immigrants from around the Washington region gathered at 7am to begin their preparations of the alfombra (flower carpet), their pictographic representation of Jesus’ path to the cross. Their devotional art form takes weeks to plan and prepare for. Created from hand-dyed sawdust, rice, dried beans, flowers and other vegetable materials, the alfombra depicts scenes from the life of Jesus, as well as images used in pre-literate communities to depict devotional, spiritual, and moral behavior.

Scholars debate the history of these carpets – some say they’re Spanish, brought to the new world during the 16^th century while others believe they’re examples of pre-Colombian art, Christianized in an attempt to bridge the gap between the native and European cultures. Whatever the scholarly explanation may be, the alfombra is a living tradition, practiced in Guatemalan villages and in communities far from their country for the last four centuries.

The alfombra – uncommon though it may be to our eyes – focuses the parishioners on the path Jesus followed. And, in the end, their creation lasts but twelve hours. As the priests and processional replay the last steps of Jesus on his way to the cross, they wipe away the works of mankind, no matter how beautifully crafted, and clear the path in expectation of Easter morning.

Photos by Chris Williams
 

When the government decided to sell the development after the war ended, the black residents already living there wanted to stay and formed a non-profit housing cooperative to put together a bid, but could not obtain local funding. James A Hewitt, a white real estate broker in Washington, DC helped the Dunbar Association secure loan money from a New York bank, and also lent them the money for closing. The government accepted Dunbar’s bid of $264,000 and during the 25 years of its first mortgage, members paid $65 a month for a 2-bedroom or $72 a month for a 3-bedroom, plus a down payment. Because it was a cooperative, members bought in, they did not rent. Through these beginnings, a generation of people of modest resources built self-sufficiency and paid their own way."
Text originally obtained from The Black Heritage Museum of Arlington, Virginia

The Community Center at Dunbar Homes has served as the original meeting place of many churches and other organizations in the Nauck Community as well as recreational activities such as dances and movies throughout its history. It will be greatly missed. You can no longer see this icon of the Arlington Community as the whole complex has been torn down to make way for Shirlington Crest at Nauck which will be coming soon to a site near you!

The Dunbar Center	View of Dunbar Homes from the top of the hill
Kemper Road	Playing Field behind the Dunbar Center

Photos taken in 2006 by Terrie Jackson-Pitt