HISTORY PRESERVED: MAYWOOD
If you love classic American architecture, Maywood is the place to be. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places (and the only full neighborhood to be included among 30 locally designated Arlington Historic Districts), it’s a veritable trove of restored Queen Anne, American Foursquare, Craftsman bungalow, Cape Cod and Colonial dwellings.
Roughly 200 of the neighborhood’s 350 homes were built between 1909 and 1925, back when Maywood was a trolley suburb of Washington. Though the origins of its name have been debated, some historic records suggest that developer Hugh Thrift (who built some of the first houses) named the neighborhood after his wife, Mary, who went by the nickname “May.”
Getting a permit to remodel is no cakewalk in Arlington, but it’s an even tougher endeavor in Maywood, where all home renovation projects must also be approved by the county’s Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board. Residents take great care to preserve the scale and character of their vintage homes—sweating the accuracy of details ranging from window styles and porch brackets to roof pitch. As Matt Leighton of Century 21 Redwood Realty notes on his website, “Demanding a two-car garage in Maywood would be a lost cause.”
And yet there is one aspect of the neighborhood that isn’t trapped in time. Whereas Thrift sold his first lots for $750 an acre in 1909, the average home price in Maywood today is $943,500.