Testosterone Replacement Therapy in Mantua, VA

“I use lots of trails,” Wassel said, including a short, zigzagging path to the W&OD Trail in the county bike trail network. “On Thursdays, we go west to Herndon — they have a farmers market,” she said.

The informal bike group is one of several groups she belongs to in Mantua, a community of more than 1,500 homes in the central part of Fairfax County, with quick access to Route 66, Interstate 495 and the Orange Line Metro stations at Vienna and Dunn Loring. A Metro bus line runs on Little River Turnpike that her husband uses to go to the Pentagon, where he hops on the subway for the rest of his commute.

“He prefers that over sitting in traffic,” she said. “He made the decision to not have a car — we’re in my car now.”

Transportation is just one plus for Mantua, which is dominated by shade trees, dead-end streets, the community pool and tennis club, and the park that splits the community from east to west, with Accotink Creek running through the middle.

These features are a backdrop for houses ranging from 1960s split-levels and ramblers to California modern and the larger infill homes that are popping up on lots throughout Mantua, giving it a heterogenous aura.

Convenience and community in a Columbia neighborhood

Recreation: Troy Sponaugle, a real estate agent with Troy Property Pros, doesn’t hesitate to point out the convenient location when showing a property in Mantua. Although the highways are close by, the noise is minimal because of its location. “It’s in that perfect spot,” Sponaugle said.

Anne and Sarah Harrington are a mother and daughter real estate team out of the Vienna Long & Foster office who also live in Mantua. The neighborhood togetherness and the popularity of the pool and tennis club keep them involved. “We listed 24 of the 60 homes that sold last year,” Sarah Harrington said. “The neighborhood is known for it’s larger lots,” she added.

Neighborhood children are involved with the swim teams at the club, adults play tennis, and for the hikers and bicyclists, there is the Eakin Community Park trail along Accotink Creek that goes all the way to Springfield. Every June, there is a neighborhood parade. “It’s really fun — the kids decorate their bikes,” said Sarah Harrington.

Eakin Community Park is a 57-acre county park that is managed by the Fairfax County Park Authority. The Accotink Trail follows the path of Accotink Creek and is part of the larger Cross County Trail, which runs north-south across Fairfax County.

Wassel’s children were on the swim team, and the pool and tennis club is a good place to meet people in the community, she said. “My kids all did swim team and enjoyed that; with or without kids, it’s good to have that,” she said.

In January, the club held a casino night, which was a big hit, said Mark Quigley, swim club president. “This is a chance for neighbors to have a good time with other neighbors right in our community,” he said. Residents also hold a chili cook-off, a master brewers’ brew-off and an Army-Navy football game gathering in early December.

Truxton Circle: The old and the new D.C. mix in a lively NW enclave

There is an informal Mantua Citizens’ Association. The group’s goals, according to its website, are to foster among its members a spirit of mutual cooperation and assistance; to promote a sense of civic responsibility; to be the means for the community to act together on civic matters of mutual interest; and to organize for the promotion of social welfare. It is open to nonresident property owners and tenants within the geographical boundaries of Mantua.

More recently, a neighborhood network has sought to help older residents stay in their homes, and Wassel has been part of it. It was initiated through email and is not run by the citizens association. “There’s a network of people that want to help with that,” Wassel said. “That’s really grown; there’s many original owners in the neighborhood.”

Living there: The eastern side of Mantua borders Prosperity Avenue and is dotted with one-third- to one-half-acre lots with a variety of houses from different builders, giving the community a country vibe. Some older, smaller houses have been replaced by houses twice as big, as is happening all over the county. Strips of larger houses are being built on the outer fringe of Mantua, with prices starting at $1 million.

In the western part of the community, marked by Prince William Drive, which runs north-south, there are smaller houses with a subdivision feel that are more affordable for younger families. Pickett Road borders Mantua on the west, but it does not connect to any of the neighborhood roads, and there is a hill between it and the community.

During the past year, 61 houses sold in Mantua, ranging from a five-bedroom, three-bath 2,800 square-foot split level at $650,000 to a six-bedroom, five-bath 3,700-square-foot Colonial at $1,195,000.

There are two houses for sale and five under contract, ranging from a five-bedroom, three-bath house for $674,000 to a four-bedroom, three-bath house listed at $815,000.

Schools: Mantua Elementary, Frost Middle and Woodson High.

Crime: According to crimereports.com , in the past six months, there were 29 incidents, including three assaults, one breaking-and-entering, one stolen vehicle, and an assortment of drug offenses, mostly in the southwestern section of Mantua near Little River Turnpike.

The decision was made to ensure student safety, Mantua Elementary Principal Linda Shannon said in a letter to parents.

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. — Mantua Elementary School Principal Linda Shannon sent a letter home to families Friday announcing that students will be banned from engaging in contact sports during recess from here on out.

The Mantua Administration made the decision Thursday to effectively ban team recreational sports that can't be supervised.

Shannon said the decision was made to ensure student safety, as there have been several avoidable injuries and spirited play that has resulted in fights that impact the school day.

Students will still be able to toss the football, shoot hoops, and play with the soccer ball at recess.

Anyone with questions or concerns regarding the allowed activities at recess is asked to contact Principal Shannon at lcshannon@fcps.edu.

Read the full letter sent to families below:

Dear Mantua Community,

Yesterday, Mantua Administration made the decision to adjust the allowable activities for students during their scheduled recess. Mantua will, for the foreseeable future, no longer allow students to play competitive, team-based contact or semi-contact sports.

It is my belief that above all else, recess needs to first and foremost be safe. In recreational settings, these team versus team sports require a referee, there are coaches, and often participants wear specialized clothing or protective equipment.

This decision was made to ensure student safety, as there have been avoidable injuries and spirited play has resulted in altercations impacting the school day.

I know this decision will be met with mixed feelings, please know that students will still be able to toss the football, they will be able to shoot hoops and play with the soccer ball – recess will still be fun!

If you have questions or concerns, please contact me at lcshannon@fcps.edu

Take good care,

Linda Shannon

Principal

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WILLIAMSBURG — In a world dominated by fast fashion, Colonial Williamsburg is inviting guests to take a step back and experience the historic art of mantua making.

On Wednesday, mantua makers at the Millinery Shop are undertaking the task of making a full dress in a day for the Gown in a Day program. The work will start at 8 a.m. as the mantua makers cut, assemble and sew a new dress for Bray School teacher Ann Wager, portrayed by Nicole Brown.

The program began in 1993. The gown created during the event is just one of many produced over the course of a year, tradeswoman Rebecca Godzik said.

“It’s just a consolidation so that the visitors can actually see the whole process,” she said. “You don’t have to be here two or three or four days to see one gown take shape. It’s really consolidated work time and then removing somebody from that work team to be able to talk.”

According to Godzik, it takes one pair of hands doing nothing but focusing on one task for about 10 or 11 hours to finish a gown. That time includes all the planning and three fittings as the gown is fitted directly on the model’s body.

Beyond just making the gown — a full day’s work on its own — the team in the millinery shop will also educate visitors on the prevalence and importance of sewing in the daily lives of those in the 18th century.

“What I love about this program is there’s so many layers to it,” Brown said. “There’s so many layers of understanding, looking at how things are racialized, how they’re gendered. It’s really interesting.”

In the 18th century, sewing was a universal skill, taught to both young boys and young girls, usually in the home.

“Everybody can sew a button; everybody can mend a tear; everybody can put a patch on something,” Godzik said. “It’s like learning how to read, learning how to write, learning how to type today. It’s just your basic kind of life skills.”

However, that universality did not necessarily translate to the manufacturing of clothing. Godzik compared the difference between seaming, tailoring, millinery and mantua-making — all different fields and skills in the world of clothing manufacturing — to knowing how to hammer a nail versus knowing how to build a house versus knowing how to build furniture.

“There’s a gender-dominated division of labor within the clothing trades to the degree that most tailors are men. Most mantua makers are women; most milliners are women,” Godzik said. “But that’s not a hard and fast divide.”

At the Williamsburg Bray School, a school for Black children, the students’ education included sewing. Much of what they learned is called “sampler work,” an expression in a physical form representing a variety of different skills.

According to the National Museum of American History, samplers have become important representations of early American female education, helping to illuminate the lives of women in early America. Like any schoolwork, some students might have enjoyed it while others didn’t.

“One of my favorite samplers in the 1840s (is) from this young girl who basically stitches out her name, her age and (that) she hated doing every single stitch,” Brown said.

When Brown wears her new gown, she will be able to interpret the experience of it being produced for visitors that come to Colonial Williamsburg.

“I can step out of characters and talk about, ‘Hey, I think you need to go talk to these wonderful tradeswomen at the shop,'” she said.

“It gives (Brown) as an actor a cultural literacy that Ann Wager would’ve had,” Godzik agreed. “The cultural literacy of the process of the making but also the cultural literacy of the community. (It’s) somebody talking to you and saying, ‘What do you need? What can I do for you? How does this work for you? How do you want it to look?'”

As Brown said, seeing the process in action gives her a better understanding of how people in the 18th century were laboring over everyday necessities such as clothing.

With the resurgence of skills such as knitting, crocheting and embroidery since 2020, it’s been rewarding to see handcrafting increase in popularity again.

“Anything to bring it back and to increase visibility and knowledge that this is a really cool thing that people can do,” Godzik said.

Sian Wilkerson, 757-342-6616, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com

Special to The Washington Post

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It was exciting to see all the comments to Amanda Abrams recent post on mid-century modern neighborhoods in our area. The passion displayed in the comments is good and will go a long way in helping to preserve the area's mid-century modern architecture and neighborhoods that dot the landscape among the more traditional architecture of the pre-World War II period or more recent McMansions.

While the D.C. area may be overlooked when speaking of major concentration’s of mid-century modern architecture, the major expansion in the federal government during and after World War II led to explosion of housing in the area. With a more contemporary-style architecture coming into vogue, Washington—long seen as a more traditional town—was not immune from this trend.

I like to say that Washington has three categories of mid-century architecture. There are custom mid-century modern homes throughout the area, including designs by internationally and locally recognized architects.These are typically located in nicely wooded areas—think places like McLean, Bethesda and the Forest Hills neighborhood in the city—to take advantage of large expanses of glass and the blending of outside and inside spaces, which are key hallmarks of mid-century modern architecture.

The second type are communities built and designed by a builder-architect team that sought to create a cohesive neighborhood based on a few basic designs. Five of our local neighborhoods have been added to the National Register of Historic Places for their architecture: In Maryland, Carderock Springs, Hammond Wood, Rock Creek Woods and five Charles Goodman-designed homes in Takoma Park and Homes Run Acres in Falls Church. Others in this category include Hollin Hills (which is working on its National Register designation), Pine Spring, Raymondale, Wessynton, Truro and Hickory Cluster in Virginia; New Mark Commons, Potomac Overlook, Flint Hill, Bradley Park and Charred Oak Estates in Maryland; and the Southwest D.C. waterfront area.

Many other neighborhoods have high concentrations of mid-century modern homes that were done by various architects and builders, providing a larger spectrum of styles. To name a few: Kenwood Park, Mohican Hills, Rollingwood, Dunlop Hills and Hollinridge in Maryland; Lake Barcroft, Mantua and Braewood in Virginia; and Hawthorne and Crestwood in DC.

Lastly, the area is also packed with many neighborhoods—stretching from Kemp Mill in Silver Spring to Michigan Park in DC to Stratford Landing south of Alexandria—that have homes that are not classic mid-century modern but do feature “atomic ranch”-style houses that are more open and more modern than your traditional architectural styles.

The good news is that if you are obsessed with mid-century design, you are not doomed to live in a traditional abode. There are all kinds of homes in our area to suit your modernist tastes and your budget.

What are your favorite mid-century modern communities and why?

Related: Enter our 'Mad Men' Look Contest

Related: Washington's mid-century modern neighborhoods

Related: A mid-century home in Carderock Springs

Michael Shapiro is a realtor with Long & Foster and founder of the web site Modern Capital.

Are you a neighborhood blogger or expert in real estate? Blog for Where We Live by contacting us at realestate@washpost.com.

The United States of America, the great melting pot. We take music, foods, words and traditions from all over the world, shake them up and blend them into something distinctly American. We took "O Sole Mio" and made "It's Now or Never." We took pizza and put cheese inside the crust. We take names from places all over the world to give to our towns and cities, and once they're ours, we'll pronounce them how we want to, thank you very much. Usually we simply use the English version of the word for a place: we don't say Par-EE, Texas, the French way, but PARE-iss, because that's how we say Paris in English. However, some towns that have borrowed city names from elsewhere don't even get the normal English pronunciation. Here are 20 American towns that have really cut the cord from the sources of their names.

1. Athens, Ill.; Athens, Ky.When we talk about Greece, we talk about Athens, cradle of Western civilization, birthplace of democracy. But these towns in Kentucky and Illinois are called EIGHTH-ens.

2. Berlin, Conn.; Berlin, Mass.; New Berlin, N.Y.; Berlin, Wisc.The German capital Ber-LIN has loaned its name to many an American town, but here we've turned it into BER-lin.

3. Cairo, Ga.; Cairo, Ill.If we're talking Egypt, we're talking KAI-ro. But in Georgia it's KAY-ro, and in Illinois, KEH-ro.

4. Chili, N.Y.There's a city in New York named after the South American country of Chile, which we would call CHILL-ee or if you want to get fancy, CHEE-lay—but there they call it CHAI-lai.

5. Riga, N.Y.Right over by Chili is Riga, a name shared with REE-ga, the capital of Latvia, but in New York it's RYE-ga.

6. Delhi, N.Y.; Delhi, Calif.Delhi, the capital of India, gets cities named after it in New York and California, but it's hard to tell because while we are used to calling it "Delly" the people in those cities pronounce it DEL-hai.

7. Lebanon, N.H.Lebanon? Not in LEB-nen New Hampshire.

8. Lima, OhioThe capital of Peru is Lima (LEE-ma). The town named for it in Ohio? LYE-ma.

9. New Madrid, Mo.Spain has Madrid (Ma-DRID). But in Missouri they've got New MAD-rid. Or wait, is it Missouruh? I don't think Missourians even agree on that. New MAD-rid though? That they're all cool with.

10. Mantua, Ohio; Mantua, UtahMantua, beautiful Italian city of culture. Opera and Virgil. No wonder we've borrowed its name for towns in Ohio and Utah. Oh, except in those places it's not MAN-tyoo-a, but MAN-a-way.

11. Milan, N.Y., Tenn., Ill., Wash.Milan is mi-LAN, or if you're really feeling it, mi-LAHN, and it's another Italian city we pay tribute to in our town names, everywhere from New York to Tennessee to Illinois to Washington state. Except in those places it's MY-lun.

12. Palermo, N.D.Sticking with Italy for a little longer, there's Palermo (Pa-LER-mo), or, as they say in North Dakota, PAL-er-mo.

13. Pompeii, Mich.Michigan honors the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. It's pom-PAY right? Not in Michigan, where the locals call it pom-pay-eye. What is that extra 'i' doing on the end there anyway? Might as well make sure you pronounce it.

14. Italy, TexasTexas has a town named for the whole country of Italy. Itly. Just two syllables.

15. Russia, OhioThe country of Russia is represented by a town in Ohio. ROO-shee, Ohio, to be exact.

16. Tripoli, IowaFrom the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of... Tri-POH-luh? While the capital city of Libya has miles of Mediterranean coastline, Iowa's Tripoli has no shore at all. So it goes its own way name-wise too.

17. Versailles, Ill., Ky., Ohio, Pa.When we speak about the palace in France or the treaty that ended WWI, it's ver-SAI. For towns from Pennsylvania to Illinois, it's ver-SAYLES.

18. Montpelier, Vt., Va., Idaho, Ky., La., Md., IowaThere are Montpeliers all over the place in the U.S. How do you pronounce yours? The Vermont way (mont-PEEL-yer) or the more French-style way people sometimes use (mont-pel-YAY)?

19. Vienna, Ill.; Vienna, S.D.When we talk about the Austrian city, the Chicago all beef hot dog, or even the city in Virginia, vee-EH-nuh is the way to go. But for towns in Illinois and South Dakota, it's vai-EH-nuh.

20. New Prague, Minn.The Czech city of Prague is full of old-world charm. The Minnesota city of New Prague has a new-world way of doing things, including pronouncing it PRAYG.