Part Three: The Cokinos Brothers Go Their Separate Ways /Macomb Street

Hain's Point abt 1920 Pete, Pota, Katy, Adam and little George

The Cokinos Brothers came to Washington, D.C. from Greece in the early 1900s. My grandfather Pete and his brothers Adam and Alec lived above the various candy shops they ran until they had enough money to do other things. Adam and Pete both bought homes for their families near the shops on 9th Street NW and H Street NE, but those two had very different ideas about their retirement gigs.

In 1922 Adam bought a fifty acre farm on the Rockville Pike at Montrose Road in Montgomery County, Maryland. Today high rises and shopping centers have replaced the barns and fields, but in those days the fifty-six acre tract was known as the National Vaccine and Anti-Toxin property, 

Here is a picture of the original house which was built with rammed earth and stone by Rudolph Gaegler in the 1850s or so.

Adam wanted to have a farm to table kind of place which would supply restaurants with fresh produce. Unfortunately his property manager smoked in bed and burned the place down.

At least that’s what my father always told me.

I discovered another somewhat harrowing explanation in a Washington Star article from July 1925.  John Cooley, the property manager and his 35 year old son Jesse were living in an outbuilding on the farm because Adam had already sold off the Gaegler house and eight acres in 1924. According to the article, poor Jesse was pumping the kitchen's coal oil stove when it exploded. His clothing caught on fire, and a neighbor severely burned his hands trying to get Jesse’s clothes off. In desperation, Jesse ran to a nearby creek to douse himself, but it was no use. A passing motorist took him to a hospital where he died.

Adam never did move to the farm, and after this unhappy event, he sold both the property and his candy store. He moved the family up to Philadelphia where his wife Katy could be near her folks again. 

In 1920 Pete bought property on Macomb Street back when the street car turned here off Wisconsin Avenue and trundled on to American University. Not much else was here at the time. Pete filed a permit in 1925 to build a two story building with storefronts and apartments above the shops. 

The Cokinos family moved here from H Street NE in 1926.

Pete and Pota
Catherine, Nick and George on Macomb.

The first tenants were a druggist, a grocer and a hardware man. My brother Peter remembered a High's store which sold ice cream when he lived there in the 1940s. Today the whole building houses one restaurant- Cactus Cantina. In 1927, Pete opened another candy store, but most of the customers were construction workers from the National Cathedral looking for lunch. Pota would run upstairs and get them soup or a sandwich.  Here's my grandmother hanging out the window of her apartment.

Another photo, taken in 1927 shows the building when it backed up to the eighteen hole golf course which was part of the Mclean Estate. (later McLean Gardens)  Evalyn and her husband Ned McLean squandered millions and threw lavish parties on the 75 acre property which included their home, a cast iron swimming pool, and stables.  

 

Rumor has it that Evalyn allowed her dog to wear the Hope Diamond. Maybe that's why it's now safely stowed in the Smithsonian. 

By 1929 Pete and Pota converted the candy shop into a lunch room. They called it Macomb Cafeteria although it was more like a diner with a few stools and booths. The ad below might send mixed signals, but whatever the dining experience, the room was only one storefront wide.

Unfortunately Pete found out a bit too late that his apartment manager liked to gamble. Pete had to sell part of the building to pay the back taxes. Two Amy's Pizza occupies this space these days. You can see the painted dividing line. 

Meanwhile the youngest brother Alec had moved uptown with Pete. Alec was still a lonely bachelor, but happily for him, the Haramkapolos brothers had just brought their sister Koula over from Greece.  (Not to be confused with my grandmother Pota who was a Haralampakos which might explain why my father was always confused about her maiden name.) 

Alec and Koula were married in 1926 and lived in an apartment over Burka’s Liquor Store for about six years. Their daughter Catherine was born in 1927. Here they are right in front of the building on Macomb with Wisconsin Avenue behind them.

In the early 1930s, another baby was on the way, and the apartment wasn't getting any bigger. Alec and Koula became the caretakers of St Sophia's church which was on 8th and L Street NW at the time. The church provided them with their own digs right next door, and that is where they brought up their family.  Their door was always open...

Part Two: How the Cokinos Brothers Found Love

Adam Cokinos, batchelor

The Cokinos Brothers came to America for opportunity. They may not have planned to stay, but by 1911 they had three candy shops going, and I'm thinking it made sense to get married and settle here for good.

Adam was the first of the brothers to find a bride. Greek women were scarce in Washington at the time, but luckily he found Kalliope Condrackos (Katy) in Philadelphia- probably through a candy store connection. He married her in 1912 and brought her back to Washington where they raised a fine crop of girls named Jean, Mary and Thetis.

Pete was the next brother to get hitched. My grandmother Pota Haralampakos had lost her father in Greece and was sent to live with her brother Tom, another candy man, in New Jersey.  My dad always told me that Tom's wife Christine was none too thrilled about the arrangement. I'm guessing none of them were judging by this photo from about 1912.

Fortunately Pete found Pota through the confectioner's grapevine. In July 1914, he took a train up to Elizabeth, New Jersey to get hitched. The two were married at 3 p.m. and promptly took the 6 o' clock train back to D.C.  So much for a honeymoon. No time for wedding pictures either, but this might have been the picture that caught Pete's eye in the first place.

Pota and Pete lived above the candy shop on H Street NE. Their first baby Catherine came along in April 1915- a respectable nine months after their marriage.  In 1916 they bought a nearby row house on 11th Street NE. George was born at home that same year in April, nine months after his parents' first anniversary. Their last child Nick was also born in April a few years later which tells you a thing or two about their matrimonial schedule.

Back at the candy shop,  the children weren't allowed to sample the wares, but George had a powerful sweet tooth. He took to wearing a bulky overcoat with lots of pockets- both during the winter and suspiciously summer, too. This get-up allowed him to become an intrepid shoplifter. He claimed he lost all his baby teeth to his voracious sugar habit, but despite my father's thievery, the stores were a success, and he grew up to have a fine set of choppers.

Cokinos Family on H Street NE abt 1920

Part One : How The Cokinos Brothers Came to D.C.

Once upon a time nine children grew up in a large house in a tiny Greek village called Agulinitsa. The village was very close to the sea and not far from Olympia where the ancient games were held. The family had olive groves and farmland nearby, but three of the brothers, including my grandfather Pete, and his brothers Adam and Alec decided America held more opportunity. 

The first time I visited Agulinitsa in 1988, it just boggled my mind to think of how Pete and his brothers got out of Dodge in the early 1900s. I pictured them riding donkeys or perhaps walking over the mountains, carrying their things in a rucksack. My vivid imagination and horrible sense of history both overlooked the fact of a railroad.  Years later I realized I had missed seeing the tiny station the first time I was there. It was the size of a bus stop. Pete and his brothers only had to walk a few blocks to catch a train to the port of Patras.

Digging into history, I discovered that our cousin James was actually the first Cokinos to arrive from Agulinitsa.  He landed in Wilmington, Delaware in 1903  and worked in the candy business there until his cousin Pete joined him two years later. They moved to Washington soon after and opened a confectionary called the Sugar Bowl at 721 8th Street SE. The two lived above the shop and made candy and ice cream in the basement by hand until there was enough money to bring over more family. In 1908 they sent for Adam and opened another store at 1203 H Street NE. The next year Pete and James moved to H Street to make room for James' brother Daniel and Pete's brother Alec. 

Business was booming.

Alec and Pete at 1203 H Street NE abt 1910

The crew soon opened another candy store at 909 41/2 Street SE which I have now learned was not a typo in the DC street directory, but an actual thing. Creative math was part of a 1905 plan to further organize the city on an alphabetical and numerical grid. This street and the neighborhood were eventually wiped out in the 1950s in the name of “urban renewal,”  but now the area has a new baseball stadium and a revitalized waterfront. A nearby historic plaque remembers 4 ½ Street as a major shopping destination in its day. 

4 1/2 Street SW  (Library of Congress) 

In 1910 the Cokinos Brothers opened the last store of their empire.  This one was at 924 9th Street NW - a block from where the ever growing Greek community had just bought property to build St Sophia's church at 8th and L. (Smart cookies, eh?)