After a college evening spent enjoying a few libations, alum Peter James Callahan said he remembers losing a friend in the E Street CVS while grabbing some food — only to find him asleep in front of the drink case. 

“I woke him up and was like, ‘Dude, you cannot sleep here. My apartment’s a block away,’” he said. 

Located next to Riverside Liquors, 500 feet from International House and just a couple blocks from the Elliott School of International Affairs, the E Street CVS has seen its fair share of students, thieves and locals in its tenure — from those looking for snacks to fuel grueling study sessions to customers snagging red solo cups for dorm festivities. After 65 years in operation, the campus locale closed its doors for good on May 6. 

As other CVS locations around the District have closed over the past couple years — including the one on 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue — students are left with only the 24-hour 2000 Pennsylvania Ave. store in Western Market. In the wake of the company shifting gears toward health care services and products over retail, hundreds of locations have closed, with others slated to cease operations by the end of this year.

First opened in June 1960 under the now-defunct, regionally owned Peoples Drug, the company was purchased by Melville Corp. in 1990. At the time, Melville Corp. owned CVS, but the two labels have since merged, becoming CVS Corporation in 1996. 

In its longstanding residency, the convenience store became a pillar of student life, like in 2008 when a line of students and locals wrapped around the store to wait for a special edition of the Washington Post in honor of former President Barack Obama’s election. In an Instagram repost by Washingtonian Problems of The Hatchet’s post announcing the location’s closure, GW students and alumni flocked to the comments stating “that cvs got me through college, rip,” and “a gw institution fr.”

“When I was at GW (Thurston > 2109 F St > Letterman House) I obtained 70% of the food I consumed at this CVS. End of an era. Thanks for keeping me alive, E St CVS,” Callahan said in response to the original post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Callahan, a 2008 journalism and mass communications graduate, said he frequented the CVS around “once a day” by the end of his college career. He said he lived at the Letterman House apartment building on F Street during his junior and senior years, and he and his then-girlfriend would utilize the location to fill prescriptions and buy french bread pizza and White Castle sliders. 

“It was really convenient,” he said. “It’s a cool building, too. I also went to that liquor store a lot for all of my party needs next door. On that end of campus, there’s not a lot of that kind of thing.”

Callahan said he connected with staff there, including an employee named Carlos who would strike up conversations with him about products he was buying. He said the location was a “staple” part of his college experience, being his go-to, nearby spot for anything he needed. 

“I remember the staff being really, really cool and skewing younger than most CVSes in the area,” he said. “At one point, I knew everyone by their first names that worked there. Really fun, talked sports and stuff. It was a good vibe.”

Shawn Pasternak, a 2015 graduate, said he “sporadically” visited the CVS as a student but became a regular after graduating and moving into an apartment building a block from the convenience store. 

“You always had a interesting mixture of students, people staying at the State Plaza Hotel, tourists passing through, people in suits nearby for a conference,” he said. “So it was always an interesting mix no matter when I ended up there.”

He said he would often go to the store to get a “breath of fresh air” when working from home, buying large bottles of Evian and Poland Spring water and seasonal snacks and candy, like Reese’s. 

“The employees were always great. They were always really courteous.” he said. “You always got the sense they were putting up with a lot in general, so you always wanted to try and be as efficient as possible and paying and all that.”

Holden Serwe, a rising senior studying international affairs, said he worked at the location for about a year, starting in fall 2023. He said robberies were commonplace at the location, but he said they are “normal” for stores like CVS in the area. 

Despite a break-in last August that resulted in a shattered front door and destroyed ATM machine, a representative from CVS said crime and theft were not factors in the location’s closure. Across the District, robberies at CVS have been a consistent issue, leading to some locations’ closures.

“You hear, ‘This place gets robbed every day,’ like that sounds crazy, but it’s really not,” he said. “It was pretty calm.”

Serwe said there was an eclectic group of people who visited the store, including students, State Department employees and tourists. He said he recognized many locals throughout his time as an employee, including some who would often steal from the store.

He said employees were told not to intervene during thefts, but he once called the police on a perpetrator who waited outside the store afterward, leading to his arrest.

Serwe said despite strange interactions — including a customer who would come in “without his shirt on” and yell things through the aisles — he enjoyed working with his coworkers and recognized many University staff members and fellow students who would stop in.

“I got a 30 percent discount,” he said. “And that’s probably my favorite part.”