Qualla: Pentagon City

Pentagon City: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Avriette at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. When Morris Cafritz and Charles H. Tompkins bought 190 acres in southeast Arlington for $1.5 million in 1946, the parcel was mostly empty fields and warehouses. The Pentagon, a five-sided monster of a building that had been completed five years earlier, dominated the immediate skyline to the north. Arlington National Cemetery sat just beyond. The Potomac River ran a mile east. The land had no name. The developers called what they were planning Pentagon City. For most of the next thirty years, the development moved slowly - a Western Electric telephone manufacturing plant in the 1950s, a few high-rise apartment buildings in the 1960s on Hayes, Fern, and Joyce Streets. The real transformation began on July 1, 1977, when the Pentagon City Metrorail station opened on the Blue Line. The empty field next to the new station rapidly filled with development. Forty-eight years later, Pentagon City is one of the densest, busiest, and most economically consequential districts in the Washington region.

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Image: Avriette at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pentagon City: Cafritz Buys the Fields

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elvert Barnes, CC BY 2.0. The Pentagon was completed on January 15, 1943 - a wartime emergency project designed by George Bergstrom and built in sixteen months. The building's footprint covered 29 acres; its five concentric rings of corridors stretched 17.5 miles in total length. Around it, much of southe...

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Image: Elvert Barnes | CC BY 2.0

Pentagon City: The Metro Station and the Mall

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anthony Bailey, CC BY-SA 3.0. The opening of the Pentagon City Metro station on July 1, 1977, transformed the development calculus. The Washington Metro - then in its first decade - was establishing the high-density development patterns that would shape the entire region. Pentagon City sat at the intersection...

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Image: Anthony Bailey | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pentagon City: The Baseball Stadium That Didn't Happen

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sdkb, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2003, the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority proposed five Northern Virginia sites as possible homes for the Montreal Expos, which Major League Baseball was preparing to relocate. Three of the five proposed sites were in Arlington County: Pentagon Centre, an undeveloped parce...

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Image: Sdkb | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pentagon City: TSA, DEA, Amazon

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim1965, CC BY-SA 3.0. The neighborhood's office stock has reflected its proximity to the Pentagon. The Transportation Security Administration is headquartered here. The Drug Enforcement Administration occupies a major office complex on Army Navy Drive, along with the DEA's Museum and Visitors Center. ...

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Image: Tim1965 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pentagon City: Robert A.M. Stern's Apartments

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ben Schumin, CC BY-SA 3.0. On Fern Street, next to the neighborhood's Costco store, the eight-phase Metropolitan Park development by Kettler has been replacing older warehouses with high-density residential buildings throughout the 2000s and 2010s. The first two phases - Gramercy at Metropolitan Park (comp...

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Image: Ben Schumin | CC BY-SA 3.0