Garfinckel’s is Washington’s high-fashion department store. A couple of years ago, its proprietors bought out the ancient and aristocratic New York men’s furnishing house, Brooks Brothers. Within a few months, the Garfinckel octopus reached out and gobbled up one of New York’s oldest and best-known Fifth Avenue stores, de Pinna.
While this was going on, a couple of smart Swedes, who had made a tremendous success at Olmsted’s Restaurant, a popular eatery with fine food in the NW business section, bought New York’s oldest and most famous restaurant, Luchow’s, on 14th Street, one of the last places left in the country where dining is still a fine art.
Reference to the appendix will show many other Washington eating places, some good, some bad and not all recommended, but most of them are in NW.
One of the best-known and best is Harvey’s, on Connecticut Avenue, near the Mayflower. This is J. Edgar Hoover’s nightly eating place when he is in Washington. Like most Washington restaurants, Harvey’s has been in business long. It specializes in sea food. The room does a sell-out business and it’s almost impossible to get a table at the height of the dining hour. Service by ancient Negro waiters is slow. Best time to eat is after 9, because most Washingtonians dine early; 6 o’clock is the standard time. Many start at 5. Those are the homely habits. Some restaurants close at 8, and a few at 7.
Julius Lully, who owns Harvey’s, is the butt of J. Edgar’s robust sense of humor. Once Hoover had a batch of wanted-fugitive-identification “fliers” made up showing Lully in his World War I private’s uniform. He had them nailed up on posts for miles around Lully’s country place. When the hick sheriff locked up the restaurateur, who sputtered and gave Hoover as a reference, J. Edgar said he had never heard of him.
On another occasion Hoover sent a letter, purporting to be from Oscar of the Waldorf, threatening to sue Harvey’s for appropriating his salad dressing. Lully hired a lawyer and told him to offer the Waldorf $2,500, but J. Edgar advised him it wouldn’t be enough.
The Occidental is hoary with age and legend. Pictures of presidents, cabinet officers and generals cover the walls. This was our favorite, but the Occidental has succumbed to the new boom. An officious head waiter, with a typical Prussian attitude toward customers, lined us up like prisoners of war, then heaped contemptuous abuse when we dared question his excellency about the possible chances of being seated and served. Washingtonians take it. They are used to being kicked around. Senators or cabinet officers they may be, but at heart most are grass-rooters overawed by the big city. We didn’t take it. We walked out. We are used to consideration and hospitality, spoiled by the good manners of heartless Manhattan.
When Major L’Enfant plotted the city, he provided that the streets should run in three directions, north and south, east and west, and diagonal. Where the diagonal avenues, which are named after states, cross the rectangular streets, generally numbered or alphabetically lettered, there are wide circles or broad squares. One of those is Lafayette Park, known to all Americans because it is the square in front of the White House. Here, less than a hundred yards from the President’s front door, is one of the most sordid spots in the world. At night, under the heroic equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson and in the shadow of the foliage of overhanging trees, there is a constant and continuous soprano symphony of homosexual twittering.
The President knows about it; he reads the papers. The police superintendent knows about it. Congress, which governs the District, knows about it. Recently, the secretary of a Senator was arrested there, charged with indescribable misbehavior. He was acquitted by a jury. There are few convictions.
Lafayette Park is one of the showplaces of NW. Another is Thomas Circle. Years ago, the circle and all the streets leading into it were lined with mansions. Now you can pull up in your car in front of a newsdealer there, at any hour, day or night, and place a bet on a horse, buy a deck of junk or get a girl—$10 asking price, $5 if you put up a struggle.