Even before a visitor turns onto Launcelot Way off Annandale’s Little River Turnpike, two turret-shaped white entry walls inscribed in a blocky Medieval font herald the news: They’ve found Camelot.
The Tennyson-inspired street signs — King Arthur Road, Guinevere Drive and Round Table Court are all nearby — might suggest some kind of local attraction; but despite the prominent theming, neighbors say what makes Camelot most distinctive is the vibrancy of the community and the investments residents make to keep it lively and inviting.
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Camelot’s bold theming, especially remarkable alongside more conventional Northern Virginia neighborhoods with names like Lynnhurst and Southwick, dates to its development in the mid-1960s by the locally based Minchew Corporation.
“This is Camelot,” a brochure dating to the neighborhood’s establishment reads. “A million moods away from the hurly burly of today.” The brochure goes on to detail the six styles of homes, including split-levels, Dutch colonials and a few “Minchew original” designs, featuring names like “The Gawaine” and “The Galahad.” Though some of the neighborhood’s more than 400 homes have been remodeled and others knocked down to make way for new construction, the original styles remain dominant.
“That was, you know, the Kennedy era,” resident Tim Southworth said. “That was huge at the time.”
Southworth and his wife, Molly, moved to the neighborhood in 2010, following her parents, who had lived there since the 1990s. The couple purchased a larger Camelot home in 2019, cementing their commitment to the area. Southworth now presides over the neighborhood’s central social hub: the community pool. He said he loves that his 11-year-old son can easily walk to the pool (he’s on the swim team, which Molly Southworth manages). It’s not uncommon, he added, to see a group of a dozen or more children walking to Camelot Elementary School, just blocks away from the pool in the heart of the neighborhood.
“I think that kids definitely feel safe, and I don’t really worry about that either, with them riding their bikes anywhere, even walking to 7-Eleven,” Southworth said.
Originally dismissive of the value of a neighborhood pool, Southworth said he has come to love the full calendar of neighborhood events that revolve around it, from an annual ice cream social to a Fourth of July parade in which prizes are awarded for best bicycle decorations. The Southworths now host their own hot-ticket neighborhood event: an Independence Day barbecue that dozens of families attend.
“This past year, I smoked something like 14 racks of ribs,” he said.
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Longtime resident Diane Ramos described Camelot as a “throwback” neighborhood in the best sense, citing institutions like the Camelot Garden Club, established in 1965, which maintains a pollinator garden, hosts classes and events, and recently started offering a tree-planting service to residents to enhance the neighborhood canopy.
“The D.C. Metro area’s big, there’s lots of people … you’re kind of just in the crowd,” said Ramos, who has lived in her Camelot Colonial home since 2009. “But then you come back home, which people see as their safety and their comfort. And [Camelot is] a place where people know who you are.”
Though the neighborhood’s cloistered quality makes it feel safe and distinctive, it’s minutes from the popular Mosaic restaurant district, blocks from Inova Fairfax Hospital and bisected by the beloved Gerry Connolly Cross County Trail, which cuts a 40-mile swath through Fairfax County. Just beyond the Capital Beltway Outer Loop, Camelot is “20 minutes” from nearly everything, as Southworth put it.
Steve McIlvaine, a real estate agent with McIlvaine Home Team, part of KW United, has a special fondness for Camelot. A resident of the Winterset neighborhood to the west, his children grew up in and around the neighborhood, and he even had a stint as pool president.
Two underrated features of Camelot that set it apart from other neighborhoods in the area, he said, are its attractive tree-lined layout, with winding streets and abundant cul-de-sacs in lieu of a grid; and sidewalks everywhere.
“I think sidewalks matter,” McIlvaine said. “I think it opens people up to walking their dogs and being out and about more.”
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In the last year, 22 houses in the neighborhood have sold, with an average price of $842,000, McIlvaine said. The lowest sale price was $542,000 for a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath house in need of updating; the highest was $1.05 million for a 3,700-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bath custom house with a spacious garage, in-law suite and porch gazebo. No homes are currently on the market, McIlvaine said.
Camelot’s other claim to history is its neighborhood watch program, which began in 1979 and is recognized by the Virginia General Assembly as the oldest continuously active neighborhood crime prevention program in the United States. While the “Camelot Patrol” only walks the neighborhood about once a month, it still maintains a roster of 30 to 40 volunteers, said Rick Healy, Camelot’s historian.
A former president, or “magister” of the Court of Camelot, the neighborhood’s civic association, Healy said the neighborhood has remained stable because of the investments of residents who see it as a forever home. He’s one; he and his wife, Cecilia, “fell in love” with the neighborhood when they arrived in 1991 and have no plans to leave.
“We have at least half-a-dozen homeowners … who are second-generation,” Healy said. “They grew up here, they liked it; they bought into the neighborhood.”
Schools: Camelot Elementary School; Jackson Middle School; Falls Church High School.
Transit: The 29N and 29K buses stop along Little River Turnpike, Camelot’s southern boundary, while the 1A, 1C, 401 and 402 buses stop at the Inova Fairfax medical campus, just beyond the northern boundary.
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