page_title: Tysons, Virginia
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tysons, Virginia / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Apple Store, Tysons Corner at Tysons Corner Center in Tysons Corner, w:Virginia
context_page_description: Tysons, also known as Tysons Corner, is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Located in Northern Virginia between the community of McLean and the town of Vienna along the Capital Beltway, it lies within the Washington Metropolitan Area. Tysons is home to two super-regional shopping malls—Tysons Corner Center and Tysons Galleria—and the corporate headquarters of numerous companies such as Intelsat, DXC Technology, Gannett, Hilton Worldwide, Freddie Mac, Capital One, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Tysons is Fairfax County's central business district and a regional commercial center. It has been characterized as a quintessential example of an edge city. The population was 19,627 as of the 2010 census.
context_section_description: Known originally as Peach Grove, the area received the designation Tysons Crossroads after the Civil War. William Tyson, a Maryland native from Cecil County, purchased a tract of land from A. Lawrence Foster. Tyson served as postmaster of the now discontinued Peach Grove Post Office from 1854–1866. The Peach Grove Post Office was established on April 22, 1851.
  As recently as the 1950s, Tysons was a quiet rural intersection flanked by a few small stores, and a fruit stand operated by Mr. Tyson, who sold apples and apple cider from the corner of his property. Big changes came in 1963 when the Tysons area moved from a country crossroads to a giant commercial urban area with the awarding of contracts at the interchange of Route 7 and Route 123.
  In 1962, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the Tysons Corner Shopping Center (now Tysons Corner Center), which was planned to be 88.13 acres (356,600 m²) within a 150 acres (0.61 km²) triangle bordered by Chain Bridge Road, Leesburg Pike, and the Capital Beltway. Developers proclaimed it as the largest enclosed mall in the world when it opened July 25, 1968.
  In recent years, the influx of technology companies into Northern Virginia has brought many new office buildings and hotels to the landscape. The rapid growth of Tysons (in comparison to other locations near the Capital Beltway) has been the topic of numerous studies. One factor was the aggressive promotion of Tysons by Earle Williams, for many years the CEO of the defense contracting firm Braddock Dunn & McDonald. Tysons serves as a "downtown" of Fairfax County, with one quarter of all office space and one eighth of all retail in the county. It is an auto-oriented edge city with severe traffic congestion, and it faces competition from the urban areas of Arlington and newer suburban edge cities such as Dulles.
  In 2008, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to begin a 40-year plan to urbanize Tysons around the coming four stops of Washington Metro's Silver Line in the vein of neighboring Arlington County's Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. A preliminary estimate from the Fairfax County Department of Transportation suggested that $7.83 billion in transportation infrastructure projects will be necessary to transform Tysons Corner into a high-density urban center from 2010 to 2050, most of which will be allocated to both construction phases of the Silver Line. Existing plans call for construction of a grid layout for streets around the rail stations, projected to cost $742 million. An additional $1 billion will be spent on further transit and street grid projects from 2030 to 2050.
  In November 2012, the county approved Arbor Row, a 2,500,000 ft (762,000 m) mixed-used development containing office and residential highrises, ground-floor retail, and underground parking near the Tysons Corner Station. In April 2013, the county approved Scotts Run Station South, a 6,700,000 ft (2,042,160 m) development containing 17 buildings, including six office and residential buildings, one hotel, and ground-floor retail near the McLean Station. This development alone will be larger than Reston Town Center.
  Ahead of the Washington Metro Silver Line opening in mid-2014, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the Tysons Partnership, a nonprofit association that represents the area's stakeholders, began rebranding the area as simply "Tysons", dropping "Corner" from the name. The change started as a matter of convenience, but later took hold to market the change in the area's character, according to members of the board. The change was unofficial at the time, and either "Tysons" or "Tysons Corner" could be used in addresses. However, in November 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau announced the CDP's name would officially be changed to Tysons effective the following summer.
caption: A line for the opening of the world's first Apple Store at Tysons Corner Center in 2001
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