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Arlington Public Library, Center for Local History
Arlington Public Library, Center for Local History© 2000 Arlington Public Library, Center for Local History
The collection is open for research.
There are no restrictions.
Records of the Lyon Village Civic Association, Collection # RG 84, Arlington Public Library, Center for Local History
Gift of Ditty Boaz, member of the Lyon Village Civic Association, in 1998.
Founded in 1926, the Lyon Village Civic Association is open to all those 18 or older who are residents of or real property owners in Lyon Village, a residential neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia. It consists predominantly of older single-family detached houses. Lyon Village is bordered on the northwest by Kirkwood Road, on the northeast by Lee Highway, on the east by N. Veitch Street, and on the south by Wilson Boulevard.
In the 1990s a controversial plan to introduce traffic calming measures aroused dissension within the neighborhood. Eventually the association persuaded the county to install such measures as speed humps and raised crosswalks. Neighborhood social life revolves around the Lyon Village Community House and the park and playground.
Record Group 84 houses the records of the Lyon Village Civic Association. The collection measures approximately 4.5 linear feet, and dates from 1926 to 1998. Additions are expected. Types of material include bylaws, minutes, newsletters, correspondence, directories, printed reports, photographs, and clippings.
Minutes, newsletters, correspondence, and reports reflect neighborhood interests over the years. Major concerns were the building of Interstate 66, the Arlington Neighborhood Conservation Program, and traffic in the neighborhood and surrounding areas. Commercial traffic caused by businesses in nearby Clarendon was always a concern. Zoning issues included limiting group homes, controlling noise from National Airport, controlling height and building density in nearby areas (for example, the Olmstead Building next to the Clarendon Metro station), and preventing the building of large commercial enterprises seen as disruptive, such as a planned (and never-built) Home Depot store in Clarendon. Bulletins and minutes detail many activities such as weekend and holiday dances, parties and parades, and large celebrations for the 40th, 50th, 70th, and 75th anniversaries of the building of Lyon Village. There are many photographs of the neighborhood's Fourth of July festivities in the 1970s and of the construction and use of the playground next to the Lyon Village Community House.
Record Group 84 is divided into six series by type of material: bylaws, minutes, directories, bulletins, correspondence, and clippings; and into three subject series: alphabetical subject files, traffic study, and neighborhood conservation program. Arrangement within series is generally chronological, except for the alphabetical subject files. Folders containing photographs have an asterisk [*] after the file name. Folders with oversized materials have a double asterisk [**] to denote where material was removed and separation sheets added. Series 6, File 38, has both photographs and oversized material.
RG 49, Women's Club of Lyon Village , holds materials about this women's club in the middle of the twentieth century. The records of other civic associations in the county can be found throughout the Arlington Community Archives.