Monday, January 4, 2021

RESTON HISTORIC BLDG SURVEY MTG @ TUE JAN 5

The Fairfax County Dept. of Planning and Development and Virginia Dept. of Historic Resources survey consultant Hanbury Preservation Consulting has completed their draft report and published it for community review on a Fairfax County webpage.  According to the official meeting agenda, Fairfax County Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn will welcome attendees, and the project team leaders will then brief the Reston community on the project and initial survey findings during a virtual meeting from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 5, 2021.  HCA Members and others can attend using a WebEx link, or via telephone at (844) 621-3956 with access code 179 469 1739.  The meeting will also stream live on Alcorn's YouTube webpage.  The 2019 kick-off meeting was reported in an earlier post on this website

The survey is a key element of Fairfax County's belated response to their tragic and avoidable 2016 approval of demolition of Bauhaus Architect and Professor Marcel Brauer's striking 1964 Reston American Press Institute Building that made way for yet more generic cookie-cutter townhomes.  The API building and many others were not on the County Inventory of Historic Sites because that deficient list then covered buildings only through about 1920.  Architect Charles M. Goodman's 1965 Hickory Cluster was an important focus of the current survey that will be used to inform government agencies and hopefully prevent future losses of early Reston significant Mid-Century Modern Architecture.