Roofs in Arlington's 1940s subdivisions: a neighborhood-by-neighborhood field guide

The field guide: three subdivisions

The three documents below are the most detailed public descriptions of what roofs on Arlington's small-house subdivisions looked like when the neighborhoods were nominated. All three come from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Each is a snapshot, not a roof inventory.

Arlington Forest

The 2005 nomination counts 724 contributing and 92 non-contributing primary resources and gives 1939 to 1948 as the period of significance. It describes four roof types: side gable, hipped, gambrel and pyramidal. The side gable is the predominant form, found in 85 percent of the houses. On materials it is direct: with the exception of two standing seam metal roofs at 117 North Galveston Street and 398 North Edison Street, the roofs of all the dwellings are asphalt shingle. The plat drawn by architect Robert O. Scholz shows the original shingle colors as blends of red, green or purple, and blue-black.

Brick matters here too. The nomination counts 682 houses of all-brick construction and says the others combine brick with wood siding on the second level. The list of alterations the nomination discusses covers porch enclosures, additions and replacement windows. It does not mention replacement roofs.

Dominion Hills

The 2011 nomination says the neighborhood was platted in 1942 but did not start to develop until April 1945, because of wartime shortages. Mace Properties built 367 houses in two models and Benson and Vest built 67 in three. The nomination describes side-gabled roofs of asphalt shingles, with shed-roofed side porches also in asphalt shingle.

The detail that sets Dominion Hills apart is cladding. The nomination says the upper gable ends are clad with asbestos shingles, and that the vast majority of the houses retain the original asbestos shingles, though some owners have replaced or covered them with vinyl or aluminum. It calls asbestos shingle a modern material that was fire-resistant, inexpensive and durable. This is wall cladding in the gable triangle, directly above the roof edge, so a roofer working at the gable end should ask what is behind the siding.

Glebewood Village

Glebewood is the exception on both counts. The 2004 nomination dates its 105 contributing buildings to 1937 and 1938, so it is a late 1930s rowhouse neighborhood, and it describes brick two-story rowhouses with asymmetrical side-gabled roofs. Many entries in the nomination describe roofs covered with slate shingles. Among the minor alterations it records is replacing the slate shingles with asphalt shingles, and it says these have very little impact on the integrity of the district. For a Glebewood owner, then, the original material in the record is slate, and our sibling page on slate roofs on Arlington's historic apartments and houses covers that story.

Census snapshot for the 1940s belt

The Census Bureau does not publish roof data, and it does not publish neighborhood data for these subdivisions. What it does publish is year built by ZIP Code Tabulation Area, which approximates a USPS ZIP code. Two Arlington ZIP areas are mostly detached houses, and they show how much of the stock dates from the 1940s.

Source: Census Bureau American Community Survey 2024 five-year estimates, tables B25034, B25032, B25003, B25024 and B25035, accessed October 17, 2026. Percentages are of all homes in the area, except owner-occupied, which is a share of occupied homes. Owner-occupied one-unit counts below come from B25127.

Read it as context, not as a roof count. A home built in the 1940s may have had its roof replaced more than once since, and the table cannot say which. What it does show is that 22205 has the 1940s as its single largest building decade, and that the county-wide 33.5% built before 1960 is well below the 68.3% in 22205. Countywide, 20,070 owner-occupied one-unit homes were built before 1960, which is 61.5% of the 32,624 such homes. Our Arlington hub has the full ZIP table.

What the nominations record and what they do not

Sources: Virginia Department of Historic Resources nominations 000-7808, 000-4212 and 000-9414.

The last row matters for planning. The county describes the National Register as an honorific list, and the process that reviews exterior work belongs to local historic districts. If your address is not on the county's local list, the roof path is the permit table on the hub page. If you are unsure, ask the county before you sign a contract.

Old shingles and asbestos: what neutral sources say

Because the Dominion Hills nomination names asbestos shingles, this page states only what the public agencies say and leaves any decision about a specific house to a person who can examine it.

• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists roofing and siding shingles among the building products where asbestos may be found, and says exposure may occur when asbestos-containing material is disturbed or damaged during maintenance, repair or remodeling.
• Virginia's asbestos project regulation (16VAC25-20) defines asbestos as material containing more than 1.0 percent asbestos by area as determined by microscopy. Its definition of an asbestos project excludes nonfriable asbestos-containing roofing, flooring and siding material that does not become friable when installed, encapsulated or removed, and it treats previously nonfriable material as friable once damage lets it be crumbled by hand pressure.
• The same chapter says no notification or fee is required for asbestos projects in residential buildings as the chapter defines them. EPA's national work-practice rule excludes residential buildings with four or fewer dwelling units.
• Under the Code of Virginia (54.1-500), asbestos inspector’s and asbestos contractor’s licenses are issued by the Virginia Board for Asbestos, Lead, and Home Inspectors.

For the work itself, our roof replacement page explains how the work is sequenced, and the fiberglass shingles page covers the asphalt family the nominations describe. None of the sources above tells a homeowner what is on a given roof. Before a roofer cuts, pulls or sands any material you suspect, ask the county and your roofer whether a rule applies to your house, and ask a qualified inspector to test it.

Questions to settle before a quote

• What is on the roof now, and what is on the gable ends and porch roofs? In Dominion Hills the record says the two may differ.
• Is any decking being replaced, and how much? The county's residential permit table uses 256 square feet of replaced decking as its line.
• Does the address appear on the county's local historic district list, or only on the honorific National Register list?
• If the house is one of the all-brick Arlington Forest houses the nomination counts, how will the roofer handle the roof edge and the chimney at the masonry?
• If the house is a Glebewood-style rowhouse, who owns the shared party wall and how is the roof line handled at the ends of the row?
• Could a different material, such as metal roofing or composite roofing, change the review or permit answer for the address?

Roofers of Arlington can talk through these checks by phone first. Book a phone consultation from our services page. Neighbors across the line in Falls Church have their own county rules, so confirm the jurisdiction before you compare notes.