Georgetown Time Machine: Stombock’s

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m checking out the one and only Stombock’s.

The photo is from the late 1950s and shows 3278 M St. Nowadays it’s J. McLaughlin and Pizzeria Paradiso. But in the middle part of last century it host W.H. Stombock and Sons. And it was a horse saddle shop, of all things. You can even see the model horse it famously kept on the sidewalk.

I wrote about the store back in 2016:

According to Capital Losses, the store opened in Georgetown in 1895 across the street at 3293 M St. But only a few years later it moved into 3278 M St. (which now houses J. McLaughlin).

At the turn of the century, a saddle shop in the middle of the city wasn’t an odd thing, seeing as so many people still got around by horse and buggy. But as the automobile took over, the shop switched to the equestrian sport business.

To grab the attention of passersby, the store installed a cast iron life-sized horse, seen above, that they’d roll out every morning.

The store finally left Georgetown in 1970 and moved to Poolesville, MD, and then later Gaithersburg. It closed for good in 1990.