Chesterbrook VA 1950s - Photo #22

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View of our house at 5433 Kirby Road (old numbering system), about 1950. Living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, 2 bedrooms, no basement. And a small utility room with a concrete tub where my mom did the laundry with brown soap and a washboard. The house cost $7000 in 1947 when it was new. I think this is one of the very few of the GI-Bill cubes left standing today (according to Google street view). My Dad and I built the addition on the back ourselves, with the help of a professional carpenter named Julian. Forest in the background, brand-new 1950 Ford in the driveway (we didn't have a car before that). There were no sewers then. There's a septic tank under the front lawn; you could see where it was because the grass was lusher. Wild onions grew with the grass, and my Mom had mint planted around the perimeter of the house but I don't see it in this picture. Next door: our neighbors the Casons, a retired couple whose phone we used until we got
New house in 2023
House on same lot in 2023
  
The same house in 2011
The same house in 2011 - Google Street View
our own. A lot of sharing in those early postwar years.... The first family that got a TV set was suddenly very popular, everybody went to their house to watch Martha Raye or Sid Caesar or a Wash­ington Senators ball game. Nobody had air conditioning though, so TV parties in the summer would be cooled by oscillating electric fans with ice-cube trays in front. The normal thing, however, was to stay home in the evenings and listen to radio dramas: Lone Ranger, Dragnet, Gangbusters...

The original house was replaced in 2015 by a frame house at 1849 Kirby Road (new numbering system), valued in Zillow at $1,812,900 as of late 2023.