Wakefield Shopping Center, 1309-21 Court House Road, Arlington, Arlington County, Virginia

Significance: Built to serve the Mihran Mesrobian designed Wakefield Manor apartments (1943), the Wakefield Shopping Center fell under the planning aegis that paired apartment complexes with low-scale commercial centers in the second quarter of the twentieth century. The garden apartment concept oriented the apartment buildings inward, toward a courtyard, effectively eliminating street frontage. The hope was to offer pleasant views and to bring light into each unit. The garden apartment was one design solution for permanent, cost-efficient, and affordable housing that was built from the mid-1930s to the mid 1950s. In this time period, Arlington saw 176 apartment buildings and complexes go up in the county; the first was Colonial Village (b. 1935) and many, including Wakefield, were underway by the early 1940s.
Survey number: HABS VA-1279
Building/structure dates: 1990 Demolished
Building/structure dates: 1945-1946 Initial Construction