STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Former church gets new life as the Line, a hip hotel in Washington, D.C.
You need to have a little faith to stand in the middle of the lobby at the Line hotel. High above is a chandelier made of organ pipes with very pointy tips. Before its life as a ceiling-grazing fixture, the instrument served Christian Scientists. You might want to think twice before taking the Line’s name in vain.
The 220-room hotel, located in Washington, D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighbourhood, honours the building ’s former self as the First Church of Christ, Scientist — though it does take some liberties. You can take a seat in the former nave and order an I’ve Done Some Dastardly Things cocktail from the bar at Brothers and Sisters. Instead of hard pews, you can sink into velvety blue couches shaped like surprised eyebrows.
And instead of hearing anything from the pulpit, you can hear the rousing words of the check-in staff. “I’m going to put you in a room with a view of the Washington Monument,” an employee informed me during a recent stay.
Amen to that.
Built in 1912, the church lay dormant for nearly a quarter-century before the Sydell Group bought it five years ago. (The New Yorkbased company operates several hotel brands, including the Line, NoMad, Saguaro and the Ned.) When the new owners entered the neoclassical building, they discovered a scene frozen in place and prayer, down to the tithe envelopes tucked inside the prayer books. The design team salvaged many of the furnishings and materials. They painted the pews in Rothko shades and set them by the elevators. On each of the eight floors, they placed room numbers inside hymnal boards to help guests find their accommodations. And they preserved the arched milk-glass windows that diffuse the sun’s light like a squeeze bottle of golden honey.
“The remnants and the relics of the church were very inspiring,” said Kathryn Bangs, the hotel’s creative director. “We thought about the church as a sanctuary and a place of community.”
“Lobby” is too restrictive and commonplace a term for the Line’s main public space. The multi-faceted (and multitasking) area contains Brothers and Sisters restaurant and bar by Washington chef Erik Bruner-Yang; the Cup We All Race 4, a coffee and pastry nook by Baltimore chef Spike Gjerde, who also runs A Rake’s Bar and A Rake’s Progress restaurant upstairs; and Full Service Radio, a podcast-recording studio and live internet radio station. (To listen, pop in your ear buds or turn on the TV in your guest room.) If you time it right, you can meet — or at least rubberneck — one of the 30-plus hosts and their special guests.
The hotel’s boundary-free culture extends to the guests, too. Over one weekend, I saw pods of pals digging into octopus hotdogs and Béarnaise-dipped french fries, and sipping cocktails seemingly inspired by refrigerator magnet poetry (ergo, “I’m Hip” and “Very Bitter”); a man exercising his sweater-wrapped terrier indoors; millennials hunched over gadgets at long wooden tables reminiscent of their college library days; and staff members weaving through the crowd dressed in casual threads from Redeem, a local apparel store.
As a brand, the Line, which has also opened properties in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, embraces the local scene, but not the souvenir-store version of the destination.
The Washington hotel, for instance, boasts a collection of 3,000 artworks by Washington-area artists, of which 90 per cent are by women. The guest rooms, which occupy the new brick construction behind the church, were modelled after a studio apartment in a District townhouse.
“We wanted to give D.C. its due and not talk down to the city and label it as one thing,” Bangs said. “We want this hotel to be the Bsides of Washington, the countercultural capital.”
As someone who calls such a place home, many of the features looked familiar: the hardwood floors, the area rugs, the higgledy-piggledy display of artwork, the stack of used books from Idle Time Books and the plant from Little Leaf. As an apartment-dweller, I was also inured to the sound of my next-door neighbours, whose voices pierced the shared wall. I could only hope that they would be as understanding when I invited friends over.