Three well-respected personalities within the DC restaurant and bar scene came to Streetsense with a tall ask—to design a world-class interior bar in 790 square feet during COVID—in the heart of Washington DC’s popular 14th Street corridor.
Jane Jane draws inspiration from vintage homes and cocktail dens from middle America to Scandinavia, delivering on the design team’s goal of making it feel familiar without being generic. With no back of house, Jane Jane’s marquis showpiece is the bar with bartenders both serving premium cocktails and serving as masters of ceremony to a room filled with friends. Bright and colorful by day and warmly snug at night, Jane Jane provides an intimate, community feeling amid the bustle of 14th Street.
Jane Jane is a hit. According to the Washingtonian, it achieves a feeling that is both elevated, but with “no need to feel obnoxious.” Expecting the worst with opening a bar in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the owners were blown away to see a nightly line out the door of people excited to hang out in this cozy, neighborhood space.
To work within 790 square feet, the team embraced intimacy, foregoing a back-of-house, shaping every detail everywhere (from the tile to the wallpaper to the leather bar top), and centralizing the bartender as the center of the room—without compromising their working space.
To get through a construction timeline that kicked off in February 2021 and finished in August 2021, the team got creative, working through building material shortages, COVID safety requirements, and even project managing construction through Zoom.
To achieve a seamless look of the intricate tile design spilling across the floor and up the entire space of the bar, the team had to delicately design the pattern, down to quarter-cuts of the tile. It’s the first thing a customer sees upon entering the space, and the level of detail exudes a feeling of perfection.
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