“After Mackey’s raid, Rosslyn had some bordellos and gambling dens and a few saloons but it started getting more desperate. The lumber yards moved in, the junk yards, the pawn shops. And it became a real dive. Even as late as the 1960s, people didn’t want to come to Rosslyn. It was so bad that they would form armed convoys to go back and forth. To go into D.C. they would have to line up along Lee Highway and form a convoy.”

I don't think their chronology is accurate. By the 1960s, Rosslyn was full of high rise office buildings. I started work in one of them in 1968; the building was far from new.

I was here off and on during the 1960s and I don't recall anything like that.  Maybe out Lee Highway towards Falls Church, where there were some AMPS, but Rosslyn in my memory was pretty tame...

the way we got to Georgetown night spots & Dixie Liquor, right at the DC end of Key Bridge.  Back then, the drinking age in DC was 18, but 21 in VA.  We used to joke that, when the bars closed at midnight Saturday night in Georgetown, there was a brief 'rush hour' while all the VA boys & girls  went home.  I hit many night spots in Georgetown and bought a lot of six-packs at Dixie, which BTW is still in operation in its original location on M St.  Rosslyn started changing in the 50s; I remember the night of the big fire at the major lumber yard in Rosslyn; I lived about 3-4 miles away and the entire night sky in that direction was aglow from the huge fire.  The lumber yard never came back and this sort of kick-started the transition to a high rise apartment & office concentration.