The Apartment Bungalow & California-type Houses of Arlington County Multiple Property Documentation (MPD) form facilitates the nomination to the registers of two relatively rare and infrequently acknowledged house forms in Arlington County—the apartment bungalow and the California-type house. These house forms are found in defined neighborhoods rather than county-wide, reflecting the works of select builders and the overall growth pattern of Arlington County. Each house form has a distinctly different development period, with the apartment bungalow dating from 1938 to 1939 and the California-type house constructed after World War II from 1946 to 1952. The four-room apartment bungalow was the quintessential small house, providing approximately 900 square feet in a 30-foot by 30-foot plan. The California-type house, recalling many of the features of the popular ranch house, presented a one-story rectangular plan of 1,141 square feet with combined living and dining areas, kitchen, and two bedrooms. Despite these few disparities, the two house forms share a number of notable similarities in their attempt to provide efficiency of living and economically built housing in the burgeoning suburbs of Washington, D.C.; the similarities have resulted in the preparation of this single Multiple Property Documentation form.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia