Dock’s

*We will be approximating the location of Dock’s at this site for now until we are able to confirm its original location.*

Docks’s, another of the four main beer gardens which opened post-prohibition, was owned by Rosie Dock. Ms. Dock is remembered as a kind and generous businesswoman, known to have given food to the poor and those looking for seconds. Her nephew Arthur J. Dock, who owns and resides in the Quander-Dock House at 4033 Webster Street, was young when Ms. Dock operated her business, but remembers how “she had [the] outside fixed so they could put the party lights up and drink beer outside.” Valgene Banks recalls that Ms. Dock “never had a band or anything. It was always that jukebox.” 

Ms. Dock’s tavern seemed to be a more laidback establishment, without the live music of Sis’s or the disruption of Holmes’s. Instead, her business seems to have been more well known for the food she sold and gave away. According to James Greene,

Ms. Rosie Dock, she had a restaurant inside her house. Most of her business was food, and she sold beer, too, and that’s all. She didn’t sell no liquor. I had a buddy who used to go in there and get a big bowl of beans and eat it all up but a little bit. Then he catch a fly and put it in the bowl and told Ms. Rosie, “Ms. Rosie, this food got a fly in here.” And she would give him some more beans. Yeah, Ms. Rosie was nice. Her place was quiet, you know, didn’t have that much crowd like Ms. Sis’s had. Ms. Rosie, she let you have a little food if you were broke, you know, pay her later. Ms. Sis ain’t giving no credit to nobody. 

As Oscar O. Owens, who worked in the nearby Dave’s Market, recalled, “[Ms. Dock] served, you know, sandwiches, pig feet, chitlins. Chicken was the main gig. On Saturdays, Rosie Dock would want fifteen chickens. Now we never did go to Sis’s, we never did go to Holmes’s, we never did go to Brentwood Tavern. Just this particular little beer garden would get her stuff from us.”

While Ms. Dock supported other local businesses in North Brentwood to supply her tavern, she is also said to have shopped in D.C. William Redd Sharps recalled that “she used to get people to take her to the O Street Market early in the morning to get what she needed for a week or some things for three or four days. I used to ride with the guy that used to go and get her sometimes and take her to the market.”