Nauck, Virginia
It is bordered by Four Mile Run and Shirlington to the south, Douglas Park to the west, I-395 to the east, and Columbia Heights and the Army-Navy Country Club to the north.
[8] The line, which traveled through the valley of Four Mile Run, had stations named Nauck and (later) Cowdon where it crossed Shirlington Road.
After the war ended in 1865, Thornton and Selina Gray, an African American couple that had earlier been slaves at Arlington House, purchased a small piece of property in the area in 1867.
[6] During 1874–1875, John D. Nauck, a former Confederate Army soldier who had immigrated from Germany, purchased a 69 acres (28 ha) parcel of land in the area.
[5] In 1876, William Augustus Rowe, an African American who lived in Freedman's Village and was elected to a number of political positions, was among those who purchased property in the area during that period.
[6] In 1885, a "Map of the Town of Nauck, Alexandria County, Virginia" that resulted from an earlier land survey was recorded.
[5][13] However, the 1902 Virginia Constitution, which established racial segregation throughout the state and restricted the rights of African Americans, stopped the neighborhood's expansion.
Property owners continued to subdivide their lands to accommodate more people, but Nauck's boundaries largely remained unchanged.
[12] During World War II, the federal government constructed Paul Dunbar Homes, an 11 acres (4 ha) segregated barracks-style wartime emergency low-income housing community for African Americans.
Some of those communities' displaced residents relocated to Nauck, thus stimulating the neighborhood's development and increasing its African American population.
Developers have recently demolished many of Nauck's older houses and replaced them with larger homes because of increases in residential land values that the neighborhood experienced during the 2000s and 2010s.
Recent residential redevelopment in the neighborhood has included the construction of the Townes of Shirlington,[16] Shirlington Crest,[17] and The Macedonian, an affordable housing project that tax exempt bonds from the Virginia Housing Development Authority and low-interest loans from the Arlington County government financed.
[20] The Four Mile Run valley, within which the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad traveled through Nauck until 1968, is the last large area in Arlington County that still contains a concentration of properties zoned for industrial uses.
[21] In 2013, the Arlington County Board designated the Green Valley Pharmacy in Nauck as a local historic district.
[22] In 2014, the county's government held an unveiling ceremony for a historical marker that it had recently erected at the Pharmacy's site.
[36] Around 1821, Anthony Frazer built on his 1,000 acres (405 ha) plantation a mansion named the "Green Valley Manor".
[3] The letter argued that the historically black neighborhood should no longer be named after a former Confederate soldier while stating that the writer had found no record or evidence linking Nauck to efforts to improve the quality of life for its residents.
