RESTON HISTORIC BLDG SURVEY MTG @ TUE DEC 17

In 1991, the Virginia Dept. of Historic Resources initiated a Survey and Planning Cost Share Program to assist local governments.  The program also supports the DHR mission to identify cultural resources statewide and record them in the DHR VCRIS digital database.  More than 120 Virginia communities have competed to participate and receive limited matching annual funding, and with DHR have conducted 150-plus projects in every region of the Commonwealth.  As a result, each year the DHR inventory of architectural and archeological resources grows with the addition of more than 4,000 newly recorded properties. 

In 2019, DHR selected Fairfax County to participate in a survey covering all of Reston except within the existing Lake Anne Historic Overlay District as designated by Fairfax County.  DHR thoroughly documented and added Lake Anne Village Center to the Virginia Landmarks Register in 2017, which led to listing in the U.S. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places.  DHR listed Reston overall in 2014.

For the 2019 Reston survey project, DHR will hire expert consultants to photograph, map, and document properties with information about building style, construction date, architectural description, and preliminary evaluation of relative significance.  The sites or buildings can then be nominated to be included in the County Inventory of Historic Sites, the Virginia Landmarks Register, or the National Register of Historic Places.  Although such honorary designations do not ensure a building's survival, Bauhaus Professor and Master Architect Marcel Breuer's 1964 Reston API Building, the only Breuer building in Virginia, was permitted for 2016 demolition primarily because it was not listed within the incomplete and outdated Fairfax County inventory that covered Hunter Mill District sites and buildings through only 1920.  Sadly, the permitted developer replaced the bold modernist Breuer API Building with typical, nondescript, cookie-cutter townhomes.

DHR and Fairfax County will hold a joint public information meeting this evening to kick off the project at RCC Lake Anne at 7:00 p.m.  They will also brief the community on completed survey findings early next year.