Reston, Virginia: The Lasting Legacy of the First Residential Planned Community
“The demands of the modern age require new concepts in the development of new communities.”
These words, written by planner and developer Robert E. Simon, Jr. in 1962 in the Preface of the Reston Master Plan, provided the guiding vision for the creation of Reston, Virginia. Using the lessons learned from innovative city planning initiatives across the country in the early 20th century, Simon sought to create the first residential planned community in the country where residents could “work, play, and live.”
In this article, I will explore Robert Simon’s upbringing, charting a course through major cultural institutions and real estate developments. It will highlight the social and market conditions of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region in the middle of the twentieth century that preceded the formation of Reston. Then, I’ll review the details of the planning intentions that went into the city’s creation. Finally, I’ll talk about the lasting successes and failures of Robert Simon’s visionary plans.
From Carnegie Hall to Radburn to Levittown
On March 21, 1925, Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of the finest Russian pianists and composers of the twentieth century, performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In attendance that afternoon were the new owners of the legendary concert hall, the Simon family. The patriarch of the Simon family, Robert Simon, Sr., a real estate developer and financier, brought with him his 11-year-old son, Robert E. “Bob” Simon, Jr. Having purchased the hall less than a month prior from the previous owner (Louise Carnegie, the widow of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie) the Simons took their place among New York’s cultural elites.
Over the next ten years, Bob Simon learned from his father as much about cultural aesthetics as he did real estate transactions.
One early deal that Bob Simon learned from his father was the creation of the city of Radburn, New Jersey, the first “Garden City” experiment in the United States. In 1928, the City Housing Corporation established this independent town in the Fair Lawn borough of northwestern New Jersey. Led by planner Alexander Bing, the City Housing Corporation was formed out of New York City’s Regional Planning Association (RPA), the first major metropolitan regional planning initiative in the country. Investors in the City Housing Corporation included John D. Rockefeller and the Carnegie Foundation. Using his connections to the Carnegie family after his purchase of Carnegie Hall, Robert Simon, Sr. also invested in the creation of Radburn, New Jersey.
Even in adolescence, Bob Simon had a front row seat to the leading development and planning authorities of the day.
In 1935, at the ripe age of 21-years-old, Bob Simon assumed the mantle as the head of the Simon family real estate conglomerate after the passing of his father. For the next twenty-five years, save for three years of military service in World War II, Bob also took control of the Carnegie Hall Corporation.
Upon returning from the war, Bob, his wife, and his daughter took permanent residence in Syosset on Long Island, a typical car-dependent suburb of New York City. Though Carnegie Hall in Midtown Manhattan was located thirty miles away from the Simon’s house, Bob made the rail commute nearly every day. Moreover, Syosset was located less than ten miles from Levittown. Named after its developer, Abraham Levitt, Levittown featured an ingenious (and sometimes despised) housing type:
“Levittown was made up of mass-produced homes built using a strict division of labor that cut expenses and construction time... Levitt’s construction processes, inspired by auto manufacturing assembly lines, were the first of their kind in housing construction. Levitt realized that by combining standardized materials with hyper-specialized tasks for each worker that moved from house to house performing their one task, he could save immense amounts of time and money and turn home construction into a modern, industrial venture. The houses were so similar that some residents reported walking into the wrong one on accident.”
The innovative planning of Radburn, the lengthy commuter train trips into Manhattan, and the cookie-cutter suburban developments of Levittown made an indelible impression on Bob Simon that would carry with him throughout his planning career.
Twenty years after his family’s purchase of Carnegie Hall, a grim future lay on the horizon for the concert venue. Robert Moses, New York City’s Park Commissioner and de facto head urban planner, led the planning for the creation of the Lincoln Center, a new opera house for the New York Philharmonic. Lincoln Center was to be located less than a mile away from Carnegie Hall in the Upper West Side. At the time, the New York Philharmonic performed (and more importantly paid rent) at Carnegie Hall. Without this vital tenant, the future business prospects of the Carnegie Hall plummeted. It was only through New York’s state legislature passing the Bard Act in 1956 that allowed Simon to sell Carnegie Hall to New York City under the premise that the building had “a special character, or special historical or aesthetic interest.”
On July 10, 1960, Simon sold his family’s control of the historic concert venue for $5 million (almost $55 million, adjusted for inflation in November 2025.)
Less than a year later, an entrepreneurial real estate broker approached Bob Simon with a land deal in Fairfax County, Virginia that would culminate in Simon’s greatest planning achievement.
When Bob Simon first visited Fairfax County in late 1960 he saw a land of opportunity. He discovered an area where the growing population was wealthier and more educated than most around the country. He found a community bolstered by the expanded services of the federal government after World War II. Most importantly, he identified a place where he could fight some of the injustices of his time through the construction of his town where anyone could “work, play, and live.” Shortly after his visit, Simon purchased Sunset Hills Farm, 6,750 acres of undeveloped land in northwestern Fairfax County for $10,125,000 (over $110 million in November 2025-inflation adjusted dollars) with the intent of building his new town.
Reston: A Town of Firsts
Using his mantra that “the demands of the modern age require new concepts in the development of new communities,” Simon devised seven principles that would shape the function and design for his new community: Reston (so named using Bob’s initials.) Those seven principles, listed in order in the Reston Master Plan, included:
Sinews for form and activity
The pedestrian gets his way
Clustering gives form to medium density areas
Woods rather than lawns
Individually designed houses
Seven villages of 10,000 persons
Each village will have its own form
Notably, a sinew has a double meaning. First, it means something that gives strength. Sinew is also a chord or string of a musical instrument, a subtle callback to Simon’s musical and cultural upbringing around Carnegie Hall in New York City.
To achieve his seven principles, and indeed the entirety of Reston, Simon needed a new way to zone the land he was deeded. Prior to his purchase of Sunset Hills Farm, Fairfax County, like most jurisdictions at the time, allowed residential development on a dwelling per acre basis (e.g. four homes per acre.) Simon thought bigger, more holistically. Reston needed zoning to allow for development on a dwelling per community basis. This zoning would allow “no minimum lot size, no minimum setback lines, no maximum percentage of lot coverage. And, totally foreign to suburbia, commercial uses could mix with multifamily dwellings -- in other words, just as in small towns, people could live above the store.”
In July 1962, with his land-use attorneys in tow, Simon requested the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approve the nation’s first Residential Planned Community (RPC) zoning ordinance for Reston.
“Simon asked for flexibility: As long as he didn’t intend to cram more people onto his land, why couldn’t the developer cluster the houses as he wished, breaking up the monotonous suburban grid and surrounding houses with woods, parks and pathways that would bring homeowners together?"
The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the plan.
Several additional firsts followed the RPC zoning law. Reston became the first development in Virginia to be declared open: no race-based covenants or restrictions were included in housing contracts. “Three years prior to the Civil Rights Act, and located in the South, this was out of the ordinary.” In Kristina S. Alcorn’s biography of Simon, In His Own Words: Stories From the Extraordinary Life of Robert E. Simon Jr., she quoted Simon on the notion of Reston being an open community: “The idea of community means people of all incomes and races living happily together.”
Moreover, Simon hired several women in prominent roles on his development team. He hired Chloethiel Woodard Smith and her firm to design the Waterview Townhouses at Lake Anne, the centerpiece of the first village in Reston. Smith, the head of the largest female-run firm in the country, was one of the first ten women to be inducted as a fellow at the American Institute of Architects. Simon also charged Carol Lubin with creating the social plans for Reston. Lubin “created the ‘Master Plan’ for churches, schools, and community programs and social amenities in Reston before the first people moved in.”
On December 4, 1964, the Lake Anne Village Center became the first of the seven villages open to homeowners and businesses alike.
When A Planner Loses His Fight
Two years after the opening of Lake Anne Village Center, Simon’s vision of the ideal community was butting against the nationwide trend of growing families living in larger homes.
In the 1960s across the country, nearly eighty percent of all new home construction was in the detached, single-family segment. In Reston, this trend was reversed: nearly all new construction housing was in attached townhouses instead of detached, single-family homes. While the townhouses in Lake Anne were comparable in size to the median detached, single-family home, prices in Reston were significantly more expensive. Townhouses in Lake Anne Village in 1966 were selling for $35,000. (That's about $350,000 in November 2025 inflation adjusted dollars.) Median housing prices in Fairfax County wouldn’t reach that mark for another four years.
Financially, Bob Simon’s plan was starting to show cracks.
In 1967, to shore up finances for Simon Enterprises, Simon approached the Gulf Oil Corporation, after rejection from 50 different banking institutions, to infuse large amounts of capital into the construction of Reston. In dealings with his new partner, Simon “refused to compromise on building materials or design, which drove up construction costs.” For their part, Gulf Oil allowed the development to continue around the ideals of the seven principles but heavily emphasized that the development must remain profitable. “The modern row-style town house now prevalent here has not attracted buyers in droves. Hence, traditional architecture will make a comeback at Reston. So too will the detached house which up to now has been assigned a second class ‘typical suburbia’ rating by Reston planners. An in-between model, a detached town house called a ‘patio house’ will be introduced.”
Issues persisted in the partnership. Not enough potential homeowners in the middle of the twentieth century in the Northern Virginia region shared all of the same community principles as Simon, or at least not enough were willing to pay for it. Less than a year after forming his partnership with Gulf Oil, Simon was ousted from Reston’s development.
Simon would spend the next twenty-six years living in New York City, having no more formal involvement in his vision for a new city.
In 1993, Simon would permanently move into a home in Lake Anne Village in Reston. Nine years later, the American Institute of Certified Planners would honor Simon as a National Planning Pioneer and would bestow Reston the moniker of a National Planning Landmark.
Analysis
From Robert Simon’s upbringing, we discovered how a personal and professional career centered around both arts and culture as well as real estate development formed the fruits of his principled planning development. In the Northern Virginia region of Washington, D.C. in the twenty years after World War II, Simon found the perfect geographical, societal, and market conditions to make his vision a reality. Using the novel zoning ordinance of a Residential Planned Community, Reston grew around Simon’s seven key principles. Finally, though Simon was ousted from his own development project, Reston continues to thrive as an innovative place to “work, play, and live.”