Why These Seven Northern Virginia Communities Look the Way They Do

Get your bearings

Seven names, several kinds of places.

Arlington is a county. Alexandria and Falls Church are independent cities, with their own governments separate from surrounding counties. McLean, Annandale, Seven Corners and Bailey’s Crossroads are unincorporated Fairfax County communities. Their Census-designated place boundaries help locate them statistically; those lines do not create city governments.

A mailing address, historic village, Census boundary and neighborhood understood by residents can cover different ground. A Falls Church postal address does not automatically put a property inside Falls Church City. The maps show the boundary type, rather than pretending all seven names represent the same kind of jurisdiction. Numbered markers identify the article’s landmarks, not property lines.

Arlington

The skyline was a planning choice.

Arlington’s towers are more than the result of being close to Washington. The Rosslyn to Ballston corridor reflects a decision to put transit and substantial growth together. County officials pushed for an underground Metro route serving existing commercial areas, rather than treating the railway simply as a way to carry people through the county.

The five station areas are Rosslyn, Courthouse, Clarendon, Virginia Square and Ballston. They are the five stops in this corridor, not the whole Arlington Metro system. Along Wilson and Clarendon boulevards, the contrast between taller buildings near stations and nearby residential streets gives the plan a visible shape.

Alexandria

A port, a freight yard and a weapons factory.

Alexandria’s waterfront began as working infrastructure. The town founded in 1749 grew around trade: tobacco moving toward the Potomac, merchants connecting inland producers with ships, and streets linking the river to warehouses and businesses. The shoreline was not simply an attractive backdrop. It was a reason for the town to be there.

That history also includes enslaved labor and Alexandria’s role in the domestic slave trade. A picturesque waterfront is only part of the story. The city’s historical and archaeological accounts are useful because they explain the commercial systems, and the people affected by them, behind the preserved buildings.

Falls Church City

An old church and a newer cultural landmark.

The Falls Church gives the community its name, but the building and the congregation do not have the same birthday. An earlier wooden church was completed in 1734. The surviving brick church was begun in 1767 and completed in 1769. Calling the present building a 1734 church would collapse two different chapters of its history.

At the historic church, look at the brick building as a surviving connection to the older settlement. Then follow the city east toward Eden Center. These landmarks represent different eras and communities, but both explain why Falls Church has an identity much larger than a line on an envelope.

The center’s history is also part of a present-day conversation about its future. Read the Eden Center story.

McLean

You can drive an old trolley corridor.

Old Dominion Drive carries a piece of McLean’s rail history in its alignment. Fairfax County’s historical marker records an electric Great Falls and Old Dominion line opening in 1906, crossing Chain Bridge Road between Langley and Lewinsville. A station helped bring activity to a location between those older settlements.

The place took the name McLean in 1910, after John R. McLean, a railroad owner and publisher of The Washington Post. The county marker places the old station story around Old Dominion Drive, Chain Bridge Road and Elm Street. This was a transportation stop that became a community reference point.

Annandale

An older crossroads became a regional food destination.

Annandale’s commercial core grew around roads before it became known for restaurants. Little River Turnpike, Columbia Pike and Backlick Road connected the older settlement with a wider region. The county’s historical development study describes early businesses at those crossroads, then the growth of shops as surrounding farms became residential neighborhoods after the Second World War.

That sequence helps explain the landscape. The roads were already gathering places for trade and services. Later business owners adapted that commercial setting to serve new customers and communities. The story is a succession of uses around a connected crossroads, rather than a restaurant district appearing on an empty map.

Seven Corners

The name is written into the roads.

Seven Corners sounds like a count of seven separate streets. The more useful explanation is the geometry of a junction. The City’s regional history describes five roads converging to create seven corners: Route 7, Route 50, Wilson Boulevard, Sleepy Hollow Road and Hillwood Avenue. Connections and approaches make the intersection more complicated than a simple crossroads.

Route 7 is Leesburg Pike here, with East Broad Street on the city side; Route 50 is Arlington Boulevard. The local map and close view show actual roads rather than an invented diagram of seven spokes. Underpasses, connecting streets and shifted approaches are part of what makes the name easier to understand on a map than from behind a steering wheel.

The roads remain central to the area’s redevelopment debate. Read the Seven Corners road and redevelopment story.

Bailey’s Crossroads

An airport arrived long after the name.

Bailey’s Crossroads takes its name from the Bailey family associated with land near Leesburg and Columbia pikes. Fairfax County’s marker records Hachaliah Bailey buying property here in 1837. His earlier traveling menagerie included an elephant. This is Hachaliah Bailey’s story; it should not be casually substituted with the later Barnum and Bailey circus partnership.

The house called Moray is gone, but Moray Lane preserves a small naming clue. The crossroads already had a history before airplanes arrived. Keeping those periods separate matters: the airport explains a later use of part of the landscape, not why the entire community was founded or named.