Columbia Pike garden apartment roofs: Arlington Village and the Commons of Arlington

From 1939 to 2003 in order

The Virginia Department of Historic Resources summarizes the period this way: 176 apartment buildings or complexes were built in Arlington County between 1934 and 1954. The two complexes here, from 1939 and 1948, fall inside that run, and the nominations give enough dates to line up their roofs with their owners.

1. 1939: Arlington Village is built, begun in October with a Federal Housing Administration mortgage, to the design of architect Harvey Warwick. Its four standard buildings repeat with alternating roof designs.
2. 1947: Walter Reed Gardens, Inc. buys the land along the west boundary of Arlington Village in September.
3. 1948: Walter Reed Gardens is built: 147 one-bedroom units in 18 buildings.
4. 1950: The developer of Arlington Village sells it to New England Life Insurance.
5. 1971: A pool, pool house and two tennis courts are added to Arlington Village.
6. 1979: Arlington Village is converted into cooperatives and condominiums.
7. 1982 to 1984: Walter Reed Gardens becomes a condominium, now the Commons of Arlington, and its built-up flat roof is replaced.
8. 2002 and 2003: Both complexes are added to the Virginia Landmarks Register (December 4, 2002) and the National Register (April 11 and May 22, 2003).

Sources: the two DHR nominations and the DHR register pages, all listed at the end.

Arlington Village, building by building

Arlington Village covers about 53 acres south of Columbia Pike, bounded by South 16th Street on the west and South Barton Street on the south, with South 13th Road running through it. The nomination describes 656 apartment units "presented as rowhouses" in two-story, two-bay brick buildings, grouped around courts. Four standard building designs carry three roof designs, and the nomination counts them.

Flat roofs make up 421 of 656 units, or 64.2% (our arithmetic from the nomination's counts). The nomination describes end units and duplexes, so a roof can sit over more than one household, a point that matters once the complex becomes an association (see the timeline above).

The nomination's overall verdict on alterations is that "the exteriors of the buildings have been retained as originally designed." It records the replacement windows, the tar roofs, new exterior fire stairs and rear decks, and it was written in 2002 and 2003. Nothing in it describes the roofs as they are today.

The Commons of Arlington

Walter Reed Gardens, known today as the Commons of Arlington, is on about five acres along the west boundary of Arlington Village, with South 13th Street to the north and South Walter Reed Drive to the west. The nomination describes 18 two- and three-story brick buildings in four clusters, and four building designs that share two roof designs.

1. Design 1, five buildings, three stories: a one-story entrance porch with an asphalt-shingled, half-hipped roof, and a main roof that is flat. The nomination says "the built-up, flat roof was replaced" during the 1982-1984 conversion.
2. Design 2, three buildings, two stories: six or seven bays wide with an asphalt-shingled side-gable roof.
3. Design 3, seven corner buildings: L-shaped, with a half-hipped porch roof and an asphalt-shingled side-gable roof, sometimes with paired chimneys at one end.
4. Design 4, three buildings, two or three stories: seven bays wide with an asphalt-shingled side-gable roof, paired chimneys and a center front gable.

The conversion changed more than the roof. The nomination says the windows, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, kitchens and bathrooms were renovated or replaced, and the 147 one-bedroom units were reconfigured into 134 units, 56 one-bedroom and 78 two-bedroom. The swimming pool came after the conversion. The owner named in the nomination is the Commons of Arlington Condominium Association.

Where the nomination is silent: it does not name the replacement flat-roof material, and it does not date any reroofing of the asphalt-shingled pitched roofs.

The two complexes side by side

Sources: DHR nominations 000-0024 and 000-8824; county Local Historic Districts list (archived December 16, 2025).

Along the Pike and in 22204

Columbia Pike is the northern edge of Arlington Village, and its six-store shopping center at 2500-2516 Columbia Pike is part of the district. The nomination says the shopping center is one story on the Pike side and uses "a combination of roof designs" along the street. A separate nomination, for Glebe Center, notes that by 1941 the county had a neighborhood shopping center on nearly every major artery, three of them on Columbia Pike, and names the Arlington Village center among those tied to garden-apartment projects.

The Census Bureau's ZIP Code Tabulation Area 22204, which covers Columbia Heights, has 24,089 homes, the most of any ZIP area in the county. 61.2% are in buildings with five or more units, 38.6% were built before 1960, the median year built is 1966 and 40.2% are owner-occupied (American Community Survey 2024 five-year estimates). For a roof, that means 22204 is a mix of building types, so the type of building at an address, not the ZIP code, sets the process. The county hub page has the full ZIP table at Roofing in Arlington, VA.

What the documents leave open

For a board or a unit owner

• Ask the association for its latest reserve study. Virginia Code 55.1-1965 has a condominium board conduct one at least once every five years, unless the instruments say otherwise, and review it at least annually.
• "Capital components" in the Condominium Act are items, whether or not part of the common elements, that the association has the obligation to repair, replace or restore and for which the board determines funding is necessary. Ask whether the roof is on that list.
• Ask for the roof type of your building (flat, gable or gambrel at Arlington Village) and the last recorded work. The nominations stop at 2003.
• Ask Historic Preservation whether National Register status brings any review for your address. The county says the National Register list is honorific, and its Certificate of Appropriateness applies in local districts.
• For the cooperative side of Arlington Village, ask your own association or attorney who holds the roof obligation. That is a legal question the nominations do not answer.

See the flat roof page, the materials overview, EPDM roofing and roof replacement. For other building types, read about flat-roofed apartments in Clarendon and Lyon Park and condo and co-op roof replacement, or return to the Arlington hub. Book a phone consultation from the services page.