Dart Drug and Vienna Hat Co. 11th Street NW at G Street. c. 1980
Compass Coffee. 11th Street NW at G Street. 2025.
Then and Now: Dart Drug at the corner on 11th and G Streets NW.
Dart Drug was a short-lived chain, first opened in DC in 1954. By the 1990s the company had dissolved, but not after pioneering the “superstore” format, growing from a simple pharmacy to a find-anything type retail format similar to a modern day Walgreens, CVS, or Duane Reade. Basically the owners sold whatever they could get a steep discount on while wholesale buying.
The Dart corporation also grew to encompass many other retail formats such as auto part stores and book stores.
In the early years Dart shook up the pharmaceutical industry by selling drugs below the wholesale price, forcing the large drug companies to adapt and change the way they market and sell drugs to distributor pharmacies.
The flame shone too bright however. Economic turmoil within the company and internal strife within the family that owned Dart led to its downfall as a corporation in the 1990s.
Today this former location of Dart Drug is inhabited by a coffee shop.
