Here’s an interesting post office in Arlington, Virginia that sort of anchors a tiny strip plaza:

As you can tell from the strip plaza’s small size and minimal setback from the street, it’s rather old, from a time when strip malls still resembled streetcar corridors, and were not entirely oriented around the automobile. As you can also surmise, the larger building did not begin life as a post office.

What does it look like? My first guess would be a grand old bank.

That would be a good guess, but it’s not correct.

What other type of urban/early suburban structure might look like this?

I can’t share this photo because it’s copyrighted, but click here for the answer.

It was a movie theater! Called the Buckingham Theatre, it opened in 1939 and closed in 1986. A few years later it became a post office, as it remains today.

Arlington is full of streetcar-era and early suburban development, much of it walkable or semi-walkable. The comments on this post from Cinema Treasures note that Buckingham was the name of a dairy farm on the land where the theater and some nearby apartments were built. One person remembers walking there with his parents from their nearby house. The strip plaza is probably from the same year or period as the theater. All of it is now more than 80 years old.

And while we’re here, look at this: the original developer built a matching strip plaza with another anchor space across the street, making the retail and entertainment form a sort of gate at the street leading to the nearby homes.

Neat. A little bit of attentive design that makes the most of this sort of development. Who knows, maybe one day a neighborhood theater will make its way back.

Related Reading:

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #6

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #19

An Old Movie

Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 400 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this!

Share