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"Tyson's Corner - 1940" by Paul McGehee. It is
difficult to imagine that the busy Northern Virginia city now known as
Tysons was once a sleepy rural crossroads. The area where Routes 7 and
123 intersect was originally known as Peach Grove, but became popularly
known as Tyson's Crossroads sometime after the Civil War years. It was
named after William Tyson, who was the Postmaster of Peach Grove back
in those days. The country crossing became a meeting place for locals,
and as years went by a couple small stores, a fruit stand and a gas
station were built at Tyson's Corner. The Corner, adjacent farmland and
forest, remained untouched by urban development until 1963 when
contracts were awarded to turn the bucolic crossroads into a modern hub
of transportation and commercial activity. The centerpiece of it all
was to be a huge shopping complex built upon a 150 acre tract, Tyson's
Corner Center, to be constructed over the next few years. When it
finally opened in 1968, Tyson's Corner Center was the largest enclosed
shopping mall in the world. Today, Tysons (a suburb of Washington, DC)
is a sprawling landscape of corporate office buildings, with an
elevated rail system, multi-lane highways and two large shopping
complexes. The Tysons area is ranked as the 12th largest employer in
the United States. "Tyson's Corner - 1940" is faithfully reproduced
from Paul's original color pencil acrylic paint artwork as an archival
quality print issued in a strictly limited edition of only 2,000 pieces
each hand-signed by the artist.
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