History on the Hill: The Soergel Home

This article is the third in a five-part series of historic homes in the Seminary Hill area of Alexandria.

Dagobert and Elizabeth Soergel’s North Quaker Lane home isn’t exactly what is used to be. It’s not even where it used to be.

The couple isn’t sure when the home, which is accessible only through Trinity Drive, was built, Elizabeth said.

“My understanding is it was built as a servants’ cottage or possibly a slave cottage depending on whether it was before the Civil War,” she said. “Some people think it was around 1840 or something like that, but I don’t know for sure.”

The servants or slaves would have tended to the Hooff Cottage, which today lies directly across Trinity Lane from the Soergel home.

All that is left of the original house is the living room and the two rooms above it. There was no kitchen, no bathroom. Everything else was added later.

The original house was located behind the Hooff Cottage. Elizabeth’s father, Joseph Waterman, bought the home in 1929 and bought a strip of land next door, and moved the house across what is now Trinity Drive. At the time, the land was part of Fairfax County, and Quaker Lane was a tiny, two-lane road.

At the time her father bought it, it was being used to store chicken feed.

Elizabeth’s father didn’t buy the house to live in himself. “It was not liveable at the time,” she said. “He bought it because he was a minister in West Virginia, and his idea was he would be able to come over here occasionally and kind of camp out in it when he was doing research at the seminary library.”

But after several years, people continued to inquire about renting the home. Her father had a cellar dug and a furnace installed, an he added a bathroom, kitchen and study.

The Hooff Cottage was a farmhouse, and all the land down to Fort Williams Parkway was part of the farm. The part of the strip of land the Soergel house sits on, Elizabeth believes, was an orchard.

“There’s still an old pear tree out there,” she said. “It doesn’t have many good pears, if any.”

Her father was due to retire in April 1970, but he died in December 1969. Although he never lived there, Elizabeth’s mother moved into the home after he died and lived there for many years.

The older parts of the house still retain an antique feel, with dark wood paneling that gives off a farmhouse look and antique furniture throughout. Most of the house is paneled in dark pine, which Elizabeth believes her father added after he purchased the house.

Some of the doors are still opened using metal latches. The living room includes a fireplace, which Elizabeth believes might have been added in the 1930s.

The original floors was made of squares of Masonite. “It was horrible,” Elizabeth said. “You couldn’t clean it — you could clean it, but it wouldn’t look any better than before you did."

Elizabeth lived in the house from 1964 to 1972, before moving to Maryland for a spell. She and Dagobert returned in 1976.

The kitchen, is the style of the time, is small and narrow. Today, the dining room is located just off the living room, with large windows and French doors that offer a view of a large, secluded lawn with a birdfeeder.

“We like it a lot better since we had those windows put in, because we can sit here and look out, watch the birds when I fill the feeder,” Elizabeth said.

Today, the home has three bathrooms and three bedrooms. The exterior is white wood constructed in a vertical orientation. There was a fire in the annex about five years ago. Only the annex burned, but the rest of the house suffered smoke damage.

Elizabeth still hasn’t re-hung drapes over the window, enjoying the light that comes in.

Dagobert, who teaches at the University of Buffalo, has a study in the home, piled high with papers and books. Elizabeth also has her own study.

Elizabeth said she can’t lay her finger on exactly what in the house appeals to her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I like old things.”

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