Virginia
Reston

European settlers first came to the present location of Reston in the mid-1600s, after England’s King Charles II deeded a vast expanse of land to seven of his supporters, at a price equivalent to $5 an acre. In the 1890s, Dr. Carl Adolph Max Wiehle drafted plans for a Utopian town that he envisioned building there, but it never came to fruition. Instead, in the 1960s, Robert E. Simon Jr. sold New York’s Carnegie Hall, which was owned by his family, and used the money to buy 6,750 acres of Sunset Hills Farm, which included Wiehle’s planned site. Simon’s aim was to develop a completely new sort of suburb, modeled after towns that he’d seen in Europe. Simon’s “New Town” aimed, daringly, to be inclusive to all races in then-segregated Virginia, and include a mix of ages and incomes as well. Simon worked with the architectural firm of Whittlesey and Conklin to create one of the nation’s first master-plan communities, with residential clusters, mixed-use development, recreational space and hiking and biking trails, public art and conservation of the natural landscape. The idea was to combine the best of urban living with the benefits of a country lifestyle in a place filled with ponds and green space. The housing stock includes single-family brick homes, townhouses and high-rise condominiums.