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Ballston was one of the first communities in Arlington to have a school. Originally called Walker School, the school was opened at the Good Templar's Hall in Balls' Cross-Roads the first year the County began sponsoring public school in 1871. After using this space for six years and a small wood-frame school house from 1878 to 1893 the new Ballston School house, pictured here, was opened in 1893. The red-brick, two story Ballston School had the same design as the Hume School which still stands.

This image from 1907 shows Carl Porter and his mother standing in front of Ballston School.

Here a trolley car from the Washington, Arlington, and Fall's Church Railway line approaches the Lacey Station in Ballston. Trolley lines helped further growth of Arlington's late-eighteenth century communities, like Ballston, as well as the nearly two dozen new nineteenth century communities. They helped to spur the development of Arlington as a suburban enclave of Washington, D.C. by providing easier access for commuters.

The Lacey Station was one of the stops used for the Ballston community on the Fairfax Line of the Washington, Arlington, and Fall's Church Railway. In the nineteenth and early-twentieth century trolley and railway development expanded commuter travel, encouraging and reacting to a rising commuter community in Arlington County.

Here, Carl Porter and his family are pictured at the station in 1906.