Georgetown Time Machine: Junkyard

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m returning to the great archives of the DC Historical Society. This particular photo shows a slice of grimy Georgetown past that has been largely airbrushed out of the Georgetown image: a junkyard on Potomac Street.

The junkyard was called the Georgetown Junk Company, which would now sound like some sort of a hip accessories store or something. According to the photo record, it stood on the east side of the 1000 block of Potomac St., which now looks like this:

However, I’m not so sure that is correct. See this article from 1954 about some boys causing a fire in the junkyard, which places it at the rear of 3254 M St.:

Here’s an ad for the junkyard from 1954 mentioning the same location:

I believe the junkyard was owned by Harry Steinbraker, whose family owned (and still owns) a handful of properties around that part of Georgetown. Perhaps the “rear of 3254 M St.” was a different junkyard they owned, and that the top photo really is from Potomac Street.

In either event, it is a window into the past when lower Georgetown was an active industrial neighborhood. Not coincidentally, a wood shop owned by the Steinbraker family was one of the last truly industrial spaces that existed into the recent past. It was still operational until 2013:

The family then closed up the shop and leased out the building to Chaia Tacos, which still occupies it.