Reston's Oldest House Isn't in Great Shape, and Neither Are Its Neighbors

Sad news. Reston's oldest house -- and the namesake for the nascent community that predated Bob Simon's exurban pipedream -- was walloped by last week's wild storms. Check out the damage to the Robert Wiehle House, posted to the Reston, Remember When group on the Face Books:

Nestled in the trees off Old Reston Avenue between an apartment complex, a townhouse complex, and an exclusive, probably gated community currently being built, the Wiehle House is the oldest extant structure from the planned community of Wiehle. 

Here's a history some filthy "web logger" wrote: 

Not to be confused with Linden Springs or the Bowman House, the Robert Wiehle House is all that's left of the first attempt to build a planned community in the wilds of the Virginia countryside, nearly a full century before Reston was a gleam in Bob Simon's eye. When Carl Adolph Max Wiehle, a doctor from Philadelphia, bought the chunk of land that is now Reston in 1886, he envisioned an 800-home bedroom community, presumably with detailed rules about appropriate burlap window treatments and on-street horse parking. Only 10 houses were actually built, though, and most of them went to family members, and then Wiehle said, "eh, this real estate stuff is hard, let's just get someone to build a distillery instead and get hammered every night," which is exactly what happened until the nudists showed up. 

Apparently no one was hurt in last week's accident, and your Restonian Eyewitness Action On Your Side I-Team(R)(tm) went by the site earlier in the week and witnessed a crew clearing the trees. Hopefully the home will be repaired. But its historic neighbors aren't doing a heck of a lot better.

The 1892 distillery building right next door on Old Reston Avenue (pictured at center of the old-timey photo above) has been on the market for months for a cool $2.5 million. It's definitely what they'd call a fixer-upper, and it's been put up for sale before, but this time, a Realtor(R)(tm) said something a little bit different in their Tic Tac:

"This property was previously approved for condo and townhouse development, but of course, the buyers will have to do their due diligence."

OF COURSE. You can build a lot of townhouses on 0.23 acres, if you do it right. (And by "right," we mean using an industrial press to squeeze them really close together.)

But we digress. Right across the street, where the Bowman House mansion sits, there are the telltale yellow signs of yet another rezoning proposal. Plans for the property have been filed on and off since 2006, but they're now moving ahead. Give us some good zoning blockquote, BFFs at Reston Now:

The Fairfax County Planning Commission on June 3 recommended approval of redevelopment plans for a 5.2-acre Reston site that will retain the historic A. Smith Bowman House as its centerpiece... Plans from developer EYA and the American Armed Forces Mutual Aid Association (AAFMAA), the property owner, call for razing the association’s existing three-story office building and replacing it with 57 townhouses and two public parks. As part of the development plan, the 19th-century Bowman manor house could remain in its current use as an office, be converted to a community clubhouse, or return to its original use as a single-family home.

 COMPUTER, show us some sweeeet renderings:

Historic! We can only hope the property will be called "Distillery View," or maybe "Distillery View Which Was Previously Approved For Condo and Townhouse Development, But Of Course The Buyers Will Have To Do Their Due Diligence" if that will fit on a sign, the end.