7302 Rippon Rd, Alexandria, VA 22307

Take a trip back in time and enjoy the descriptions and highlights of this home when it was featured in the national magazine Better Homes and Gardens special edition: Circa 1949 Better Homes & Gardens Magazine: A HOME THAT EMPAHSIZES OUTDOOR LIVING. “Here is a home that has a vacation feeling the year round. It has three spacious outdoor living areas – one off the study, another for the lower level and a third off the owners/ bedroom wing. Each terrace is partially sheltered from the weather and sightseers by the house. The Hillside lot gave Architect Charles Goodman a chance to add a lower level to the house for eating and recreation, leaving room for four bedrooms and plenty of living space on the upper level. The house is still of moderate size. The split level has many advantages. The most obvious is the additional space created; another, the separation of living and working areas; the third, the chance to convert the lower level in an income producing apartment. Huddled between the owners’ bedroom and living room-study, this terrace is like another room in the house. Roof opening admits sun, still leaves partial shelter from bad weather. Terrace floor was made with mixture of cement, sharp sand and crushed rock. Door, right, enters from study and living room. Kitchen and dining-activity are separated by breakfast nook. Door at left leads to lower level’s own private terrace, handy for outdoor dining. There’s a fireplace in the recreation room, off picture right. Utility room is at right, also. Flagstone floor is easy to maintain, wears well under heavy traffic. A third terrace, at right is entered from hall off main bedroom. It is enclosed on one side by house and on the other by planter-retaining wall. Childrens bedroom wing extends from house on the left. Exterior of home is handsome combination of masonry and horizontal board siding. There’s privacy all around the house. Living room, foreground, divides from study by stair rail, right. Wall of built-in bookshelves and cabinets further define the two areas. Windows, background, look to terrace. Another wall of ceiling-to-floor windows overlooks yard. Stairway borders fireplace chimney that also serves lower-level fireplace.