As you get ready for Thanksgiving this week week, it’s important to take some time to think about those that have much less than us to be thankful for. And to turn those thoughts into action, please consider giving to Georgetown Ministry Center.
The institution, based right in the heart of Georgetown, offer services and programs to the area’s homeless. And in cold winter nights, it offers a place to sleep, which can be a question of life or death.
If you’re a federal employee who participates in the Combined Federal Campaign, please add the center (CFC# 31661) to your list of charities. Then pass the gravy!
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.
Every month, the Old Georgetown Board publishes the plans they will be reviewing that month. And since stores have to apply to do something as small as install a sign, it is often a great place to get the first tip for a new store or restaurant coming to the neighborhood.
But for some months there’s simply not much revealed. That’s the case this month. The only interesting piece of news I could extract was that Warby Parker is moving (or expanding) next door.
They currently occupy 3225 M St. They are applying to take over 3233 M St., which is the long vacant storefront that last hosted a souvenir shop about ten years ago:
It will be good to see this ling empty storefront finally returned to life. Although that leaves open the question of what will happen to the current Warby Parker space. My guess is that if the store is really leaving the space, the landlord probably won’t have much trouble filling it again.
PBS published this wonderful piece on Georgetown’s Yarrow Mamout. It’s goes wonderfully deep on Yarrow and his identity as a muslim in early America. Enjoy!
Just an update from my Barnes and Noble article, apparently they do plan on having a coffee shop on the third floor. They are aiming to open it by the spring.
Late last week, my neighbors on 33rd St. woke up to find no parking signs plastered up an down the block. This is not a rare phenomenon. But what was particularly irksome was that the permit claimed the entire block for a whole month. This would be unprecedented. So I dug into the permit and here’s what I found.
First of all, while the permit is good for 30 days, my understanding is that it will be a moving project and once they are done with a block, the restrictions will be removed. It looks like they are going to take about 3-4 days a block, which is a pain, but is far better than 30 days. Also, while the restrictions are post on both sides, it looks like the work is mostly on the east side and they are not demanding cars be moved from the west side of the street.
So the parking restrictions are annoying but not the end of the world. But what is really irking me (and anyone I mention this to) is that this work is involving digging a trench. But this trench is getting dug in a street that just was repaved last year!! This is such a wasteful destruction of public infrastructure. But surely it’s for a good cause?
It’s for a slightly upgraded business internet service. That’s it. Our streets were nicely repaved just last year, but that gets to be thrown into the dumpster because AT&T wants to make a buck.
Looking through permits, this work has been going on across the city. This particular job appears to be heading up 33rd St. and spreading on Volta and Q. It may spread beyond that in Georgetown, and I’m digging for answers on that question.
And it’s not just our nicely paved streets that AT&T is being allowed to vandalize. As part of the digging, they spray paint all the sewer and gas lines going into each house. So now our sidewalk and street look like this:
And, of course, they only just replaced all these bricks a year or two ago. So these neon lines will be with us for a long time.
I levied a complaint with DDOT for this wasteful practice. They acknowledged that they are supposed to coordinate work like this with plans for repaving. But “it just fell through the cracks”. Of course, falling through the cracks doesn’t apparently lead to any consequences for the massive telecom company. Only residents and taxpayers.
I will be asking AT&T to come before the ANC and explain this work, why we had zero notice, and how much more of it we’re going to have to endure. I’ll keep you posted on that.
Feeling like it’s 2011 again, I went to visit the Barnes and Noble the other day. The bookstore, newly returned to its location at M and Thomas Jefferson, felt both familiar and strange. Come check it out with me!
Right off the bat, the entrance might throw you off, were you to have magically appeared here from 13 years ago. The old entrance was through a vestibule on the corner, not the mid-block entrance that the Nike Store created. But that’s really neither here nor there, in terms of the experience.
Once you enter, you see a spacious first floor that is part new releases and part gift shop:
(You also might notice that they kept the Hoya-themed gym floor that Nike installed)
I was a little surprised that they did not use this first floor for the coffee shop. But I guess putting it upstairs would force customers past the bookshelves. It does, however, leave a somewhat empty feel to the first floor (an excessive spaciousness that afflicted the Nike Store too):
The second story is where the real book-heavy sections begin:
As you may recall, in its old iteration the store had a large music section on the second floor. It also had the Starbucks there. Again this new iteration appears to have located its coffee shop even higher up as it does not appear on the second story.
Onward to the third story I expected to finally find the coffee shop. But no. There’s not one there either. They really did build the store without a coffee shop. That seems mad to me, because coffee shops and bookstores go so well together. And in Georgetown specifically, opening a coffee shop seems like a no brainer for generating foot traffic. Maybe they’re planning on adding one later?
One section I was pleased to find was the magazine section:
In the old Barnes and Noble you could find a huge variety of magazines. Moreover you could find a good selection of dry political journals that hardly anyone read. Since my girlfriend (now wife) worked for one of those journals that hardly anyone read, it was nice to at least see them on the newsstand. The selection of magazines at the new store is much smaller than the old one, which probably reflects a decline in publishing generally rather than a choice by B&N. It does have a tiny vestigial dry political journal section though!
Overall, the store certainly is a genuine full service bookstore. It’s not a sparse and token offering of books like the short-lived Amazon bookstore was or what you’ll find in airports these days. But without a cafe, I don’t know that it will restore its place as a prime “third place” like it once was. We’ll see…
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
You must be logged in to post a comment.