It’s been a rough time for closures of some of the District’s beloved bars. First came the news that Duffy’s shuttered after eight years. Now the Washington Post reports that the Passenger and Columbia Room will close their doors January 1. The building where both are housed is slated to become an office space by Douglas Development.
Though the blow is a tough one for fans of Derek and Tom Brown‘s path-paving watering holes, the news isn’t entirely unexpected. Hogo, the Browns’ rum-heavy tiki bar next door, already bid farewell this summer. According to the Post, the brothers always knew there was an expiration date on the spaces when signing the leases, just not exactly when the end would arrive.
The good news: Plans are underway to resurrect the Passenger and Columbia Room. The latter is already set for a new home in Blagden Alley for the end of 2015, and will grow considerably in size from its ten-seat incarnation. When it comes to Passenger, things are less certain. Tom is currently looking for other Shaw spaces, which, as we know from the recent boom, are increasingly hard to come by. We’ll update when details become available.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
