At 45 minutes past midnight on July 1, 1955, a haggard Walter J. Bierwagen, president of the D.C. Transit Workers Union, left the negotiation room that recently had become his home away from home. For months, the 2,400 or so members of his union had been seeking a quarter-an-hour raise and a few other contract sweeteners from the Capital Transit Company, which operated most of the buses and all of the streetcars within the metropolitan Washington area.
In an era of prosperity and peace, of sporty cars and speakeasies, of Calvin Coolidge and Al Capone, he led a fashion-conscious city through the Roaring Twenties. His name was Julius Garfinckel, and in his time he reigned as the merchant prince of the nation’s capital.