WASHINGTON — A D.C. restaurant that’s been open for more than 80 years is keeping the city’s history alive with a new addition.
Martin’s Tavern in Georgetown, the city’s oldest family-run restaurant, opened in 1933 when Prohibition ended.
Diners can sit in the booth where John F. Kennedy proposed to Jackie in 1953, and occupy the same space as many other Commanders in Chief.
“We have had the honor of serving every president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush,” says the restaurant’s Chrissy Gardner.
The newest plaque inside Martin’s Tavern honors Baseball Hall of Famer Walter Johnson, who was a pitcher for and manager of the Washington Senators.
To find it you have to make your way to the back of the restaurant, into a cozy place called the “Dugout Room.”
“Ty Cobb sat back there, Mickey Mantle … Yogi Berra,” Gardner says.
The new plaque also recognizes Johnson’s buddy Henry Copperthite, who in the late 1800s opened a pie bakery in Georgetown that became the largest in the world.
“We have been here long before the Pie Sisters,” says Henry’s great-grandson Mike Copperthite.
Today, the business is known as the Connecticut Copperthite Pie Baking Company, and it primarily bakes pies for special events.
The Copperthite family has frequented Martin’s Tavern for years, and thought it was time to honor the two men on the wall of one of their favorite places.
“This is a famous haunt, and it’s got a lot of tradition. It’s not about getting drunk. It is actually a family place,” Copperthite says.
He shared a funny story about D.C. brewer Christian Heurich, who today you can learn more about at the Heurich House Museum.
“My family, my grandfather would tell me, would trade day-old pie for buckets of beer. And old man Heurich was kind of stingy. He didn’t want to get rid of his bottles. So he said, ‘you bring buckets around, we’ll fill those up with the beer,’” says Copperthite.
