Stuart James Long · 1988 Honoree

Stuart Long was born in Columbus, Ohio and moved to Washington when he was just one year old. He is the fourth in a succession of eight siblings whose ages span twenty-five years.

In 1955, at the age of thirteen, young Mr. Long received his introduction to the restaurant business when his father invested in one of the very first of the old Tops Drive-In franchises in our area. Whilst out of grammar school for the summer, he worked a sixty-five hour week in exchange for compensation of just $35.00. Thirty-three years later he remains in the restaurant business and insists that he “still makes the best onion rings in town.”

Mr. Long attended Gonzaga College High School, Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts and received a Law Degree from George Washington University in 1967. Responsible for his own tuition bills, he was always gainfully employed in his spare time. He worked as a laborer in his mother’s Capitol Hill restoration ventures, was a waiter at Holy Cross College and put himself through law school pouring concrete on the 12th Street Tunnel and the Roosevelt Bridge. 

Suffice it to say that when Michael and Henry Lange asked him to become a partner in a fledgling pub business, there were few skills Stu did not have at his command. Stuart and Michael renovated two adjacent buildings in the three-hundred block of Pennsylvania Avenue “with their own hands” and opened the Hawk and Dove Restaurant in December of 1967. 

Twenty years later, Mr. Long is President of the Capitol Hill Management Corporation which owns three restaurant properties on Capitol Hill and one in Northwest Washington. His restorations of commercial buildings on the South side of Pennsylvania Avenue are, in large part, responsible for the streetscape as we know it today. The personal pride he takes in the history of Capitol Hill is reflected in the names Jenkin’s Hill and Duddington’s.

Mr. Long is a member of the D.C. Armory Board and Chairman of the Mayor’s Police and Fire Department Meritorious Service Awards Selection Committee. He is a member of several bar associations and has served on the boards of the Washington D.C. Beverage & Restaurant Association and Federal City National Bank. In 1979, he received Gonzaga’s “Man of the Year” Award for his countless hours of work on behalf of his high school alma mater.

Stu believes that “common sense is not such a common commodity.” Despite his sophisticated educational background, he would be the first to admit that, what he learned waiting tables and working construction, may well have made the real difference along the way to his remarkable success.

Stuart Long has made a real difference in our community over the last twenty years, because of his business acumen and because of his loyal community support. His rare combination of common sense and uncommon abilities has made a major contribution toward the evolution of Capitol Hill as we know it today.