Clyde’s Restaurant Group CEO John Laytham, who worked with the stalwart Washington restaurant group for more than 55 years, died Thursday at Washington Hospital Center. He was 74.

Laytham succumbed after battling a heart condition for many years, according to a release from Clyde’s Restaurant Group.

Laytham steered Clyde’s from its first location, which opened on M Street in Georgetown in 1963, into a local restaurant powerhouse with 13 locations in D.C., suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia. Even as the city modernized and its dining scene grew tremendously, Clyde’s remained a fixture of Washington’s restaurant world with new additions such as The Hamilton, a large and extremely busy restaurant and music venue just blocks from the White House.

After landing a job as a dishwasher shortly after Clyde’s opened, Laytham, a student at Georgetown University at the time, worked his way up to general manager and became a partner in the business in 1970. Sally Davidson,…