News and notes from Reston (tm).

Monday, September 24, 2012

Flashback Monday: Reston's First School

Lake Anne ES.jpg
Please to be enjoying this halftoned ca. 1966-rendering of "the coming Reston elementary school," later known as Lake Anne. The sketch gives it that breezy, half Great Society, half Jetsons look that was in vogue at the time, but the price was apparently right. Here's the writeup from a 1966 newsletter:
Friday, May 13, brought good luck to Reston, for on that day it was learned that the Fairfax County School Board announced the award of the construction of the first Reston elementary school to Reston, Virginia, Inc., which will build the school without profit in addition to having donated the land. Construction will begin immediately so that the school will be ready for use by 1967.
This fall marked the end of a two-year renovation project at the school, which includes interactive whiteboards and stuff that would have seemed like science fiction when ground was first broken.

We actually took the photo above to the Restonian Photo Lab (actually a 1985 Commodore Amiga running a beta version of Photoshop 1.0), where at great expense, we colorized and restored it to its original 1966 splendor:

Little Dipper.jpg

You're welcome.

7 comments:

  1. Congratulations to Lake Anne Elementary School for finishing its two-year renovation this fall!

    The renovation work at the Terraset Cold War Nike Missile Silo Bunker Elementary School hasn't even begun as of yet due to late-breaking international political upheaval in the Middle East.

    Apparently, the U.S. State Department deal to send the school's old warheads located underneath the lunch room to Israel for storage has been nixed. I just hate it when problems with Iran mucks up K-6 school renovations in Reston.

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  2. The original Lake Anne sketch reminds me of when I attended DOD schools overseas ... all the "outdoor" connectors and "pods". Ironically, at South Lakes HS this year there are 11 "learning cottages" otherwise known as trailers. Some things never change, true?

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    Replies
    1. Fairfax County,the 7th wealthiest in the USA, and we are teaching our kids in trailers?

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    2. And in what school was the headline writer educated? "The coming Reston..."

      Is that a gerund? Or just they way those hipsters of the 1960s wrote?

      PS -- Sure looks like an Instagrammed image to me.

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  3. They call them "learning cottages"? I thought they were "Port-a-Potties".

    Next time, they should just use some of the junk cars stored in the Auto Shop chain link pen.

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  4. Fun fact of the day: Greg Kinnear attended Lake Anne Elementary School.

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  5. Hey,,. don't knock your schools. I just moved to Las Vegas where my daughter teaches math to junior high kids. She is really happy now that they reduced the class size from 41 to 32. Better when teaching six of those classes. The administration is working on the A/C which was out, even when the temperature hit 99 F. and never went below 90 during this past month. Summer school teachers have not been paid, but the administration only pays on the 25th of the month which means another month to wait now. She was educated in Fairfax County schools and I wish she had come back to teach.

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