Crystal City, Virginia
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Crystal City is an unincorporated area located in the southeastern corner of Arlington County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC. Crystal City is centered along a stretch of Jefferson Davis Highway (U.S. Route 1), just south of The Pentagon, just east of Pentagon City, and within walking distance to the west of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Characterized as one of many "urban villages" by Arlington County, Crystal City is almost exclusively populated by high rise apartment buildings, corporate offices, hotels, and numerous shops and restaurants. There is also an extensive network of underground shopping areas and connecting corridors beneath Crystal City.
Prior to development by the Charles E. Smith Co. (which also built much of downtown Washington), the area was mostly composed of industrial sites, junkyards, and low rent motels. The RF & P railroad tracks were also moved closer to National Airport to accommodate more space for development.
Though it was not intended as a planned community, it unfolded that way after construction began on the first condominiums and office buildings in 1963. The name "Crystal City" came from the first building, which was called Crystal House and had an elaborate crystal chandelier in the lobby. Every subsequent building took on the Crystal name (i.e., Crystal Gateway, Crystal Towers), and eventually the whole neighborhood. Crystal City is largely integrated in layout and extensive landscaping, as well as the style and materials of the high rise buildings, most of which have a speckled granite exterior.
Due to Crystal City's extensive integration with both office buildings and residential high-rise buildings, it is possible for residents to traverse from one end to the other (roughly north-south), performing any shopping or dining along the way, entirely underground, thus making Crystal City a classic underground city. This is of particular importance to residents who rely upon this fact in inclement weather. During the winter months, it can reach temperatures of the low teens (fahrenheit), and snow storms and heavy rains are possible. Additionally all the high-rise apartment buildings are structured such that they have internal hallways with horizontally opposed apartments, forcing neighbors to interact with each other more so than would be in an "open" building.
Crystal City presently has over 6,000 residents, while around 60,000 come to work there every weekday. It was home to the United States Patent and Trademark Office until mid-2005, when that office moved to nearby Alexandria. It is also has offices of the United States Department of Labor, and serves as many satellite offices for The Pentagon which is presently being renovated.
The layout of Crystal City was considered avant-garde back when it was built, with superblocks bounded by arterial and circulating roads, and with pedestrian traffic and the businesses serving it relocated from the streets to the pedestrian tunnels. However, as of 2005, Crystal City is being redesigned to give it a more traditionally urban feel, with restaurants at street level, and with traffic patterns changed to make streets like Crystal Drive function as city streets, rather than as circulating roads. Additionally, the buildings in Crystal City have shed their original names (e.g. Crystal Square, Crystal Mall, Crystal Gateway) in favor of traditional street addresses, and signage in the Crystal City underground has been updated with the new building names, and directions to surface streets.
Crystal City has a station on the Washington Metro Blue and Yellow Lines, and on the Virginia Railway Express commuter train system.
It is worth noting that Charles E. Smith Residential Realty was purchased in a merger with Archstone, forming the Archstone-Smith Company. Charles E. Smith Commercial Realty (itself a holding of the Vornado Realty Trust), which still owns the commercial buildings in Crystal City, remains separate to this day.
