CHURCH HALL
CHURCH HALL
“The last great bar in a very quiet Georgetown”
Tin Shop. was growing and Peter Bayne and I looked at a cavernous spot for rent in Georgetown. I remembered this as an indoor mall that had been built in the 1970’s, which had then turned into a parking garage when it had run its course. We kicked the tires a few times and eventually were seduced by the shear size of the space. We could build anything here.
Peter said the space was big enough to be a church and we ran with it— Church Hall was born. That’s how most of the names arrive, from a random comment or maybe a vintage magazine ad. We never know.
The bar sits under a long parking ramp that runs in from Wisconsin Avenue and this gave us a huge mezzanine space that seemed perfect for a second bar.
In many ways, this was a return to Georgetown for me. I had lived on 34th street until I was 8 years old, had torn tickets at the Georgetown Theater when I was in high school and had pumped gas at the Gulf Station at Wisconsin and Q St. I remember evenings, walking along the canal with my Dad, and waving to the conductor as the train delivered coal to the power plant, or lumber to Galliher Huguely Lumber Yard, both under Whitehurst Freeway.
Church Hall was an immediate hit with Georgetown University and other college students and that made us the go-to college bar. In my experience, that’s s tough business to survive, thanks to smart kids and fake ID’s. So when the pandemic struck, we decided to rebrand as Clubhouse, a 23 and up bar.
