A simple corner drug store was a gathering place for famous Georgetowners in the 1970s. "Doc" Dalinsky's drug store at 1344 Wisonsin Avenue was a popular hangout for many notable Georgetowners, especially when Doc hosted brunch on Sunday — the day his store was closed. According to humorist Art Buchwald, Doc Dalinsky was everybody's druggist and father. "Loveable and surly," Harry 'Doc' Dalinsky was a "character and a card; he created a place for community, a town hall, a locus of sanity and humor presided over by a gentle man with a quick wit."
Often seen in the front room were journalists Ben Breadlee, Art Buchwald, David Brinkley, and Herblock, while other luminaries of the press, judiciary and cinema came and went. In town making All the President's Men, Robert Redford, Jason Robards and Dustin Hoffman hung out there absorbing information on the personalities they would portray. There might be various Kennedys; actresses Lauren Bacall, Gene Tierney and Eva Gabor; and writer Larry McMurtry in attendance. While merriment reigned out front, Doc would often be in the back room dispensing kindly advice on the phone to friends. Doc retired in 1983; the brunches ended earlier, a victim of their own success — too many people.
Georgetown has long attracted writers. Louisa May Alcott nursed Civil War
wounded in a converted tavern at 30th and M Streets and wrote about her experience in Hospital Sketches. Sinclair Lewis wrote Elmer Gantry while living on Q Street. Katherine Anne Porter lived nearby while working on Ship of Fools. Poet and diplomat St.-John Perse, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960, lived on 34th Street. Archibald MacLeish, Herman Wouk, Walter Lippman, plus countless historians, political commentators, pundits and sages have lived and worked here.
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