Andrew Wise remembers the exact moment that spurred the move to his Lincolnia Park house in 1997. He had been sitting in traffic en route to a grocery errand at the infamous Springfield, Virginia, interchange — a meeting of Interstates 95, 395 and the Capital Beltway, also known as the Mixing Bowl — and suddenly realized he’d had enough.
Andrew Wise remembers the exact moment that spurred the move to his Lincolnia Park house in 1997. He had been sitting in traffic en route to a grocery errand at the infamous Springfield, Virginia, interchange — a meeting of Interstates 95, 395 and the Capital Beltway, also known as the Mixing Bowl — and suddenly realized he’d had enough.
“I just turned around and I went home, and I said to my wife, ‘We’re moving,’” Wise recalled.
In short order, they were house-hunting in Fairfax County’s Lincolnia, a wooded enclave closer to Washington but beyond the bustle and steep real estate prices of Arlington County.
The house that would become their home of nearly 30 years was the second they viewed, a 1967 multilevel modern with sloped roofs that Wise says his relatives call “the Brady Bunch house.” Designed by a local architect, the home has near-twins in other parts of the neighborhood. Wise said his family loves it. And, in general, he said, he’s found that the area gives good odds for finding a dream home.
“The lots are usually half an acre. And houses go all the way from starter homes to bigger, nicer houses, and you can get a pretty good bargain for your money,” he said.
Margaret Ryan, who moved into Lincolnia Park in 1977, said the neighborhood is unlike most others in the region in that it wasn’t formally planned by a developer.
“People bought the land, and they built what they wanted on it,” she said. She and her husband purchased the house she still lives in nearly a half-century ago from the original owner who “literally built it with his own hands,” she said.
Behind the eclectic mix of ramblers, split-levels and Colonials is a more complex history: The broader region of Lincolnia took shape after the Civil War as a community for freed enslaved people. What’s now Lincolnia Park, Ryan said, was distinctive in that many homes did not have restrictive covenants, meaning Black and White home buyers alike could purchase in the neighborhood. Organic neighborhood development and greater diversity of race and income level contributed to the varied home styles and architecture.
“We don’t have any McMansions. We have very little in the way of actual shacks,” Ryan said. “It’s really a range of houses, and that means you get a range of people, and that’s good.”
Lincolnia Park houses remain relatively affordable for the area, said Alex Thiel, a real estate agent with Long & Foster with ties to Lincolnia Park through the neighborhood swim team, where some of his children compete.
“It’s one of the only neighborhoods that I know of inside of the Beltway where you can get a home at a relatively reasonable price,” Thiel said. “If you need to get into D.C. with no traffic, knock on wood, you can be there in like 10, 15 minutes, which is really incredible.”
According to Thiel, 17 single-family homes sold in Lincolnia Park in the last 12 months, ranging from a five-bedroom, five-bathroom 2001 Colonial that sold for $1.275 million to a modest three-bedroom, two-bathroom rowhouse for $517,500. Seven homes are listed as active or coming soon, with prices ranging from $650,000 to $1.799 million.
Thiel predicts the neighborhood’s affordability and location will become only more attractive in the near future with the completion of the Inova Alexandria Hospital complex, under construction at the site of the former Landmark Mall. It will be a 10-minute commute from Lincolnia Park when it opens in 2028.
“It feels quiet. It’s mostly residential, but you’re so close to so much,” he said of the neighborhood. “You can drive five minutes in any direction, and the world’s at your fingertips.”
Just north of the neighborhood are shopping and dining options at Pinecrest Plaza. The idyllic and expansive Green Spring Gardens are free to visit and a four-minute drive across Little River Turnpike.
For Wise, a community core for the neighborhood is the Lincolnia Park Recreational Club, where he manages membership for the swim team, the Lincolnia Park Lazers. The association recently hosted a Halloween parade, highlighting the neighborhood’s young families and children.
“When we moved in on our street, the average age was probably about 70. And then that totally turned over,” Wise said, recalling his children as preteens playing hide-and-seek all over the neighborhood with friends, and parents gathering for Friday pot luck gatherings in their cul-de-sac.
Now that Wise’s children are older, those events have become less common, he said. But he continues to love the neighborhood’s peaceful hideaway feel and insulation from the commuter chaos he sought to escape three decades ago.
“People are just walking on the side of the road, like you might find out in the country,” he said. “When people get to my house, they say, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know this was back here.’”
Boundaries: Lincolnia Park is bounded by Little River Turnpike to the north; Braddock Road to the west; the Indian Run stream to the south; and I-395 and Manitoba Drive to the east.
Public Schools: Weyanoke Elementary, Holmes Middle, Annandale High.
Transportation: Multiple Fairfax Connector and Washington Metro bus lines stop along Braddock Road. The Van Dorn Street Metro station, on the Blue Line, is about two-and-a-half miles away.
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