The Civic Association of Hollin Hills will host a house and garden tour to raise money to become part of the National Register of Historic Places.
Donna Anderson, who has been working on the tour, said, "Inclusion in the Register will expand knowledge of the community's historic value while encouraging preservation.”
On Saturday, May 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., nine homes and five gardens will be open for viewing by the public. The neighborhood is known for its contemporary houses that have award-winning designs. The homes selected for this tour include both original designs and houses with extensive renovations or additions.
Hollin Hills was designed by renowned architect Charles Goodman and developed by Robert Davenport in the late 1940s. For the first time in this area, they brought contemporary style to home construction. This community of houses has large expanses of glass, sleek lines and unusual settings. This has garnered several awards, including the Revere Quality House award from the Southwest Research Institute in 1950; and two 1982 Test of Time awards from the Virginia Society of the American Institute of Architects, for houses on Stafford Road. Hollin Hills also is on the Fairfax County, Virginia, Inventory of Historic Sites.
Landscape designs for Hollin Hills homes were prepared by landscape architects Lou Bernard Voigt, Dan Kiley and Eric Paepcke. They believed that interior spaces should flow into exteriors, and that grounds of one home should merge with the next, all in a park-like setting. These original concepts are still visible in the look of the neighborhood as a whole and the individual homes.
Addison Ullrich’s home is on the tour, and said, “It’s an incentive to get things done.” She and her husband have been renovating the past few years and spent the past couple of weeks putting the finishing touches on a bathroom, front walk and a roof.
“What I like about the house is the windows,” Ullrich said. “I saw this house and that was it.”
Every room has wall to ceiling windows which look out on a cornucopia of azaleas, dogwoods and Japanese maples. Ullrich said that when they purchased the home, the property was in very bad condition, but they were able to restore it. She especially likes the master bedroom, which is a five-sided room with vaulted ceilings.