Georgetown Time Machine: Wisemiller’s Block

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m visiting one of the quintessential commercial pockets buried deep in the Georgetown neighborhood. This particular pocket is the 1200 block of 36th St. It comes from the DC Historical Society archives.

The information with the photo states that it comes from February 1965. And that should help us identify some of the shops on this stretch. Just to the left of the center of the photo is Wisemiller’s Deli. Even at 1965, Wisemiller’s was already a stalwart, having opened twelve years earlier.

Moreover, the 1789 Restaurant and the Tombs were also open by the mid 60s. But their sister bar, F. Scott’s, was not open by 1965. According to the Post archives, a barber shop occupied 1234 36th St. (the north half of what would become F. Scott’s). The other half of what would become F. Scott’s was already a restaurant, as you can see when you zoom in:

The restaurant was named Tehaan’s (which is sometimes mistakenly spelled “Tehan’s”). It operated at this location starting in 1911, according to this matchbook:

Here is a story retold to the Washington Post in 2009 about the place (and the restrictive DC liquor laws at the time):

How can one forget the place where he had his first beer? I’ll never forget where my friends and I gathered: Sam Tehan’s on 36th Street in Georgetown (next to what is now the 1789). Ernestine, our waitress, made sure we were well taken care of and, as one of our group after devouring two cheeseburgers and a large plate of fries would say, “Once around again, Ernie.”

It was my freshman year at Georgetown, and I spent frequent evenings with my classmates at Tehan’s. On one of those evenings, after consuming several glasses of draft beer while listening to repeated playings of Jo Stafford’s rendition of “You Belong to Me” on the jukebox, I stood, in a burst of youthful exuberance, to propose a toast. Before I could utter a word, nearly everyone in the place shouted, “Sit down! You can’t stand up with a drink in D.C.”

Puzzled but chastened, I shrank back into my chair, where it was then explained to me that there was a District law prohibiting anyone other than bartenders and servers from standing or walking while carrying an alcoholic beverage. I never felt quite so much like the newcomer from Ohio that I was.

— Jim Smith, Potomac

That leaves the rest of the block between Wisemiller’s and N St. As far as I can tell, this whole building was operated as the Georgetown University Shop, which specialized in clothes for college students: