Arlington Realty Building, 2300 North Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Arlington County, Virginia

Significance: The headquarters building of the Navy League of the United States is representative of the commercial boom that characterized the Courtlands subdivision, now known as the Clarendon-Courthouse neighborhood, in Arlington County during the post-war years. A small-scale office building by today's standards, the three-story structure was erected for the Cafab Investment Corporation who then leased it to several local businesses in 1956. At that time, the building took its name from the principal lessee, that of the Arlington Realty Company. The steel frame and concrete construction of the Arlington Realty Building place it firmly in the modernist, twentieth-century building tradition; furthermore, its suspended ceilings, curtain walls, and air conditioning are features now standard in any commercial space. Moreover, the use of stone in the north and east front sections and of brick walls to the south does not detract from the modernist aesthetic. Instead, the flat, smooth surfaces enriched the Arlington Realty Building, giving it an appearance in keeping with the modernist, and reductionist, tenets of twentieth-century architecture. Without irony, the high-end and traditional Virginia building materials emphasize the different blocks of the building, expressing function through form and hierarchy of use in a rational, quite modern manner.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N705
Survey number: HABS VA-1369
Building/structure dates: 1955-1956 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 2001 Demolished