852 detached houses on roughly 219 acres, begun in 1939 by Meadowbrook Inc., finished in 1946, and extended by M.T. Broyhill & Sons in 1948.
Most Arlington neighborhoods accumulated. Arlington Forest was planned. Meadowbrook Inc. broke ground in 1939 and completed its work in 1946; M.T. Broyhill & Sons then recorded Broyhill's Addition in 1948. Two architects were involved, Robert O. Scholz for the Meadowbrook sections and J. Raymond Mims for the Broyhill addition, which is why the neighborhood reads as one idea executed by two hands. The 2022 Neighborhood Conservation Plan counts 852 detached houses across about 219 acres. The Virginia Landmarks Register listed the district in 2004 and the National Register followed in 2005, with 810 contributing buildings recorded under VDHR file 000-7808.
The seam between the Meadowbrook sections and Broyhill's Addition is the single most useful thing to know before touring here. Both were built inside the same decade to the same overall layout, but by different companies working from different architects' drawings, so massing, trim and porch treatment shift as you cross from one to the other. When you are comparing two houses that look like near-twins on a listing photo, ask which section each sits in and check the build year on the county record rather than the listing sheet. Covenants were recorded for the original sections; their content is a matter for the recorded documents and your closing attorney, not for a webpage.
The layout is the reason the neighborhood was found nationally significant. It follows Federal Housing Administration site-planning ideas of the late 1930s: curvilinear streets that follow grade instead of fighting it, cul-de-sacs instead of a continuous grid, parkland woven through the plan along the stream valley, and a shopping center built as part of the scheme rather than added afterward. That has a practical consequence for buyers. Lots on the curves and the closed ends are shaped irregularly, so two houses of identical square footage can have very different usable yard, driveway geometry and sight lines to neighbors. Walk the specific block, not the neighborhood.
Arlington Forest is on the National Register and the Virginia Landmarks Register. Neither listing is a local historic district, and neither one puts your exterior renovation in front of a review board. That distinction matters in Arlington, where local designation is enforceable through a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board and National Register listing on its own is largely honorary. What actually constrains an Arlington Forest lot is the ordinary set: the lot coverage caps for its zoning district, the county tree preservation and stormwater rules, and Chesapeake Bay Resource Protection Area buffers where a lot runs down to the stream valley.
The stock is eighty years old and was not built to the footprints buyers now shop for, so the questions on tour are mechanical: which systems have actually been replaced and when, whether the finished basement was permitted, and whether the addition or pop-top you are picturing fits the district's coverage limits before it fits your budget. Arlington's Expanded Housing Options rules apply to R-5 through R-20 lots countywide and were still in force as of August 2026 with the litigation pending before the Supreme Court of Virginia, so if you are valuing a lot for what could be built on it, get the current posture rather than last year's headline. Arlington Public Schools assigns elementary, middle and high school by address and redraws boundaries periodically; the three comprehensive high schools countywide are Washington-Liberty, Yorktown and Wakefield, and the assignment for a specific Arlington Forest address should be confirmed with APS.
Arlington Forest sits within Arlington — that guide covers the zoning, permitting and site constraints that apply across the wider area.
Artur can confirm what applies to a specific address here — lot, zoning, association documents and school assignment — before you write an offer.
