The chairs and couches are long gone. So is the man whose name is atop the building. But I wondered who and what the Grogan Furniture, Carpets & Co. once was when seeing the sign stripped across the side of the red brick building on 7th St. N.W. less than 2 blocks above Verizon Center.

It never hurts to come from a family that dates back 200 years in town. The older relatives remember the 1930s and they heard stories from their elders. So I turned to my mom over Grogan’s. Turns out it was a shopping district area with many furniture stores in the area.

But the real defining information on Grogan’s comes from Streets of Washington.com, a great blog that exhaustingly details long forgotten parts of town. Indeed, author John Ferrari has a book coming out on lost buildings.

Peter Grogan, an Irish immigrant who opened in first furniture store in Baltimore in 1867 and 16 years later opened a second in Washington, came to this new five-story building in 1891. Grogan eventually passed the business on to his sons, but the Great Depression forced its 1933 closure. Another furniture store followed, but the 1968 riots depressed the area. It now has offices and condos.