Sterling Park, Virginia is an early planned community that opened in 1963 on former farmland near the new Dulles Airport. Houses were prefabricated, all-electric, and, at around $20,000, relatively inexpensive. Unusually for the time, all had central air conditioning. Homeowners had access to a swimming pool and a golf course.

The elementary school featured central air-conditioning, asbestos ceiling tiles, heavily soundproofed double-paned windows encasing a multitude of dead flies, and rock samples in the schoolyard.