Judah Greenzaid, a dapper gent of 76, runs a practiced hand over a bolt of brown Belgian mohair velvet and emits a sigh of $100-per-yard contentment. Moments later, he will wax rhapsodic about
a Valentino ivory Indian silk, bordered with hand-
made crepe flowers, wispy feathers and sparkling beads priced at $370 a yard.
His enthusiasm quickly shifts to $12.77 denim twill (he adores both the chartreuse and the red) and $2.97 floral prints so beloved by quilters and crafters who flock to his four-store G Street Fabrics empire.
"Some of these fabrics are like little works of art," says the company chairman, explaining in great detail the dyeing, weaving and finishing processes involved in the manufacture of exquisitely patterned Japanese silks and the lightest-weight Italian wools.
For more than 50 years -- first in downtown Washington and now at stores in Rockville, Centreville, Falls Church and Potomac Mills -- Judah Greenzaid, or Mr. G., as he is universally known, even to grown sons Joel and Michael, has indulged a passion for fabric.
He learned the business from his own father, David, a Russian immigrant and onetime pushcart peddler in New York's teeming Lower East Side, who moved to Washington during the Depression and sold bolt ends, zippers and lining to the city's tailors and dressmakers. By 1942, David had opened the tiny G Street Remnant Shop a short walk from the White House, returning regularly to Manhattan by Greyhound bus to restock.
"The first shop at 11th and G was 100 square feet," recalls Judah during a recent tour of his 20,000-square-foot Rockville flagship. "My baby brother was sleeping on cashmere remnants. There was no air conditioning. You'd open windows to get some air and then the bugs and moths came in, so you had to put all the woolens in mothballs. When it got really hot in the summer, we slept at Hains Point."
In those early days, G Street Remnants was all about apparel fabric: fine men's suiting preferred by diplomats and politicians; exquisite satins and chiffons favored by socialites and embassy wives; sensible cottons for the thousands of "government girls" who came to work in wartime Washington and never left.
In the mid-1950s, David closed the store and moved the family to Israel. But when Judah -- in his mid-twenties and an international relations graduate of George Washington University -- didn't find work he liked there, back he came. Using a cache of apparel remnants his father judiciously left behind, he opened a shop at 805 G St.
In the 1960s, he added a small department: "home dec," as in decorating.
"It was not nearly as sophisticated as it is now," says son Joel, 44, company president and CEO. "There was a lot of lime green and Naugahyde upholstery fabric."
