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Wagshals - Press - Historical Highlights
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Wagshal’s Historical Highlights
We have been DC's premier delicatessen and market for the last 30 years.
Sam Wagshal moved to Washington DC in 1925 from Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1939 Wagshal’s moved to a new shopping center in Spring Valley.
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Wagshal’s Historical Highlights
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Washington legends who were Wagshal’s
customers include Presidents George Herbert Walker
Bush, Gerald Ford, Richard
Nixon, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Supreme
Court Justices William Brennan, Wiley
Rutledge, William O. Douglas, and
Felix Frankfurter were regulars as well as
Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, Nancy
Reagan, Alice Roosevelt and
Katherine Anne Porter
.
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In January, 1956, a big birthday party was
held for Vice President Richard Nixon
in the National Press Club. Wagshal’s was asked to cater it. Nixon said “this is the first big party to be given for me since I came to Washington.”
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Speaker of the House Tip
O’Neill
delighted Wagshal’s customers with his Irish witticisms and tales. “Treat everyone alike – nice” he was known to say.
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NBC-TV’s weatherman Willard
Scott
once sold his eggs in Wagshal’s. They came from chickens raised on Scott’s farm in Berryville, VA.
- Washington Post humorist Art
Buchwald told author Kitty Kelley, “You
do not have the right to report my shouting match with
Nancy Reagan
in Wagshal’s any more than you do to say I am one of the great ear-lobe kissers of the ’60s.”
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From Life Magazine by Hugh
Sidey
: “Wagshal’s Delicatessen is a Massachusetts Avenue emporium as important to some government families as the Congressional Record.”
- Readers Digest 1950 featured a
bylined article by Sam Wagshal about his friend
and customer, Supreme Court Justice Wiley
Rutledge
.
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In 1925, Sam Wagshal and his
13-year old son, Ben, opened Wagshal’s
Delicatessen at 9th and G Streets, NW where Ben
had to stand on a wooden crate to reach the cash register.
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In 1939, Wagshal’s joined DGS Market and an Esso gas station in the Spring Valley Shopping Center on Massachusetts Avenue, which was designated a District of Columbia Historic Site in 1989.
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In the 1930s, merchants didn’t receive utility
bills. The cooler cases had slots for quarters, like soda
machines. “It took $1.75 to
$2.75 each day to keep the coolers going,” said
Ben Wagshal
. “It drove us crazy.”
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In 1990, the Fuchs and
Socha families purchased Wagshal’s delicatessen
from Ben and Lillian Wagshal.
Today, it is still a family-run operation owned by Bill
Fuchs
.
- Washingtonian
magazine has named Wagshal’s “the best butcher shop in the metropolitan area with the finest freshest seafood.” It is known for its prime meats, seafood, produce and flowers.
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