Residents in the Arlington neighborhood of Penrose refer to the big yellow corner house with a wraparound porch as the “kindness house.” From its mailbox marked North Pole for children to drop letters to Santa to a January coat drive, residents Susan Thompson-Gaines and David Gaines work daily to ease the lives of many in the community through their nonprofit Kindness Activists.
“Because of our kindness work, people know that it’s a safe place to come if they have a need or if they have an issue or if a child is coming home from school and has a problem,” Thompson-Gaines said. “They know if we’re home we will take the time to step out on the porch and listen and try to help them. So it’s kind of blended kindness and community,” she said.
They bought the now century-old house 25 years ago in the roughly rectangle-shaped neighborhood bordered by Columbia Pike, South Filmore Street, Arlington Boulevard (Rt. 50) and Washington Boulevard.
“We wanted to be close to an airport. We wanted to be able to walk to get groceries, walk to a bank, walk to restaurants,” said Thompson-Gaines, an American Sign Language interpreter. “We had never stayed anywhere for more than five years at a time. I don’t know whether that’s a testament to, you know, us getting older or just this neighborhood being fabulous, but I think it’s the latter.”
Those attributes have kept some residents in the community even longer. Two blocks away, Cathleen Drew lives in the two-story white house that her great-grandparents built in 1920 in what was then one of Arlington’s few Black communities. At the time, the neighborhood was called Butler Holmes for the two Black leaders who subdivided it in 1882. Unlike many other areas, it didn’t have restrictive race covenants.
Drew’s great-uncle, Charles Drew, lived in the house before going on to establish the nation’s first modern blood banks as medical director of the American Red Cross. Charles Drew’s daughter, former D.C. Council member and neuroscientist Charlene Drew Jarvis, co-wrote a book about him, published by Georgetown University Press in September.
Cathleen Drew, senior prevention program manager at the Drug Enforcement Administration, inherited the house in 2000. She remembers playing in the large yard as a child and got married in it in 1992.
“I love living in this neighborhood, but it has gotten progressively less African American over the years,” she said, noting that longtime owners have sold their homes as land values have skyrocketed. “It’s interesting seeing brand new houses go up on this very narrow street, only 16 feet wide, since there weren’t nearly as many cars when it was built. Even though so many changes have happened, it still has the same feel as when I was growing up.”
One street behind Drew’s house is Butler Holmes Park, named for the neighborhood’s founders, which has a playground and picnic shelter. Penrose takes its name from an old trolley stop in the neighborhood on a line that started in Georgetown. But it’s a moniker that has changed over the years, and parts of the community have variously also been known as Central Arlington, Arlington Heights, Butler Holmes and Hatfield. The community united under the name Penrose 30 years ago and uses a trolley car as its symbol.
The 1900 house that was part of the trolley stop known as Hunter Station is still standing and has been enlarged over the years. It recently went on the market and is under contract for $899,000. After the trolley stopped running in the 1930s, a neighborhood store called Finkelstein’s operated in the building until the early 1970s.
But not all houses in Penrose are historic. Of the approximately 800 homes, about 51 were built before 1925, said Long & Foster real estate agent Megan McMorrow.
“There’s bungalows, there’s townhouses, there’s duplexes, there’s farmhouses, there’s apartments,” McMorrow said. “Hardly two houses [are] the same, which provides a ton of character to the neighborhood.”
Thompson-Gaines agrees. “Every house is different, and they all blend, making Penrose eclectic and unique,” she said. “It’s kind of like a practical demonstration of what the idea of diversity is.”
That means people across the socioeconomic spectrum can call Penrose home, said Alex Sakes, president of the Penrose Neighborhood Association, a community group for local residents. The association hosts a picnic every October at Penrose Park in the middle of the neighborhood and meets monthly, often inviting local officials.
He said that more than 200 languages are spoken in the 22204 Zip code, which also encompasses several other South Arlington neighborhoods. “We call it ‘the world in a Zip code,’” he said.
“We’ve always been a more accessible income-wise area for folks versus north of Route 50 in North Arlington,” said Sakes, a photographer who grew up in the neighborhood and as a young adult now lives in a rented townhouse there. “North Arlington has been more expensive and some think they kind of put up their nose up, seeing us as something lesser, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. For me, it’s always been a great place to call home.”
House sales: From November 2024 through the end of this October, 24 houses sold in the neighborhood, McMorrow said. They ranged from a $485,000 townhouse with three bedrooms and two bathrooms to a $1.69 million five-bedroom, four-bathroom single-family house. There are 10 houses on the market, ranging from a $550,000 two-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse to a $1.99 million modern farmhouse with five bedrooms and five bathrooms.
Public schools: Alice West Fleet Elementary, Thomas Jefferson Middle and Westfield High School.
Transportation: The closest Metro station to Penrose is Clarendon on the Orange and Silver lines, about 1.5 miles away. Several Metro and Arlington Transit buses also serve the area. Interstate 395 is a little over a mile away.
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