Until it closed last year, Monarch Novelties was the only souvenir store in Washington, D.C., that sold campaign memorabilia exclusive to the three presidential elections of the 1960s. The store was an oddity, a decaying building on 14th Street that, for more than 80 years, trafficked in eccentricities: not just Kennedy – and Nixon -era nostalgia but also carnival trinkets, defective bingo sets, and false teeth. It was one of the last remaining fixtures of a weirder, seedier side of the city that urban revitalization has all but wiped out in the last two decades.

Monarch was owned and staffed by Douglas Robinson, one of 11 children in a sprawling Catholic family, all of whom were brought up in the carnival business . Robinson lived above the store, and his health was poor. All d

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