I’ve driven past this little restaurant many times on U.S. 1, going south, in suburban Alexandria, south of Washington, D.C.

It’s a Mexican restaurant now. Previously it was a different Mexican restaurant. It was empty for awhile. It was a car loan shop. And before that, for decades, it was Mike’s Italian Restaurant. Google Street View captures all of that.

I posted about it on a Route 1 memories Facebook group, and got hundreds of comments. So many people fondly remembered Mike’s, which decades ago was probably one of relatively few Italian restaurants, in an area that never had a whole lot of Italian Americans. It was one of the first restaurants in the area to serve pizza.

One person points out that if a proposed plan to widen Route 1 goes forward, this building would be torn down. You can tell that despite being a pretty standard roadside building, it still has some urban/town-like features. It has almost no front setback from the highway, it’s nestled into an odd lot, and it has a relatively small parking lot.

Someone who is familiar with the building says it’s from 1927, with some modifications over time. He said this too, which is fascinating: “Route 1 used to be MUCH lower, there were two steps down from the front door, to the highway.”

Another person: “when it was first built, it was (from what I was told) the only place from Ft. Belvoir to Alexandria where GIs could get drinks and gamble.” That reveals that its original use was as a road house, not a sit-down restaurant.

This is a real workhorse building, something very simple and sturdy, small and “lean” enough to be home to lots of different small businesses over the years. It’s not much to look at, but it’s a good thing. It’s the duplex or shotgun house of commercial buildings, and it makes space and opportunity for people who could never afford to rent a brand new, supersized retail building.

The broader point is that the development pattern along Route 1 is basically suburban, but it’s different in a lot of ways that matter from say, the development pattern I wrote about yesterday. Urban and suburban, car dependent and walkable, etc.: these are long sliding scales, and we won’t, and don’t have to, revolutionize these things overnight. It’s okay to just tilt the balance.

Related Reading:

Living in the Motel

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #5

A Little Bit of Motel

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