A new cocktail lounge is opening Thursday inside Washington Union Station's Beaux-Arts Main Hall, taking over a storied suite that once welcomed a sitting U.S. president. Continental Club, operated by local hospitality group SHKR, is billed as a pre-Prohibition-inspired lounge with a design modeled after vintage parlor cars, and it's set to pop up through the end of 2026.
The lounge draws its aesthetic straight from the golden age of rail, according to Axios, with mahogany, brass, blue velvet, gilded architecture and historic Legionnaires statues filling out the space. SHKR founder Rochelle Julich said the rooms overlooking Union Station reminded her of train cars, which inspired the vintage parlor-car concept. At launch, Continental Club is walk-in only, though the operator plans to begin accepting reservations soon.
Getting there is part of the experience: visitors are guided through an “All Aboard” stand in the Main Hall, handed a printed ticket with directions, and sent up an elevator to reach the lounge. Guests can also bring and check their luggage, a nod to the space's transit-hub setting.
A Suite With Presidential History
The room housing Continental Club has a lineage that predates the cocktail lounge trend by more than a century. Built in 1907 as the Presidential Suite, the space was created as a safe waiting area following the 1881 assassination of President James A. Garfield, according to Virginia Railway Express. President William Howard Taft was the first to use the suite, in 1909, and it went on to host destination dining for decades, per the same account.
Before Continental Club, the space was home to B. Smith's, the restaurant founded by Barbara B. Smith, a Black lifestyle trailblazer, which closed in 2013 after 20 years in business. Earlier still, in what is now Union Station's East Hall, a restaurant called Savarins billed itself as “Washington's best restaurant” back in 1910. Union Station has had destination dining since its early days, a throughline Continental Club is now extending into a new era.
What's on the Menu
The beverage program leans hard into the rail theme. Continental Club serves bee's knees and Manhattans alongside a cucumber-basil Capitol Gimlet, and its menu features the Pullman Old Fashioned, made with Uncle Nearest 1856 Whiskey as an explicit homage to African American Pullman Porters, and the Manhattan Limited, according to PoPville. Food options at launch include fried chicken biscuit bites, truffle popcorn, and railway-style hot dogs topped with mustard, relish and onions. SHKR plans an expanded food menu, live music, private events, and a martini happy hour aimed at the Hill crowd once the concept settles in this fall.
SHKR itself has a rapid backstory. The female-led catering and events group was founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic by Julich, starting as a mobile bartending and event staffing company before expanding into pop-up venues and mixology workshops, per SHKR. In six years, the company grew from an event-staffing startup into one of D.C.'s recognized hospitality brands.
Part of a Bigger Station Overhaul
Continental Club's arrival is one piece of a much larger push to remake Union Station into a culinary and retail destination. The Union Station Redevelopment Corporation says 21 new retail tenants have signed leases or opened at the terminal over the past 24 months, with upcoming launches including Andy's Pizza, Capo Deli, Housebar, Joe & The Juice and Springbone Kitchen, according to the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation. Hoodline previously reported on Andy's Pizza coming to Union Station as part of that same tenant refresh. The redevelopment corporation is investing millions of dollars to revamp the transit hub, and in July the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded a $24 million grant to establish a public-private partnership meant to draw private investment for major long-term station upgrades.
The scale of foot traffic behind the push is substantial. Washington Union Station recorded just over 6 million Amtrak passenger boardings and alightings in fiscal year 2025, keeping it the second-busiest Amtrak hub in the country behind New York Penn Station, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Nationally, Amtrak logged an all-time record of 32.8 million customers in fiscal year 2024, generating $2.5 billion in ticket revenue.
Preserving Burnham's Vision
Any activation inside the Main Hall operates within the bounds of a building designed to last. Architect Daniel Burnham's Beaux-Arts design, which opened in October 1907, features 96-foot barrel-vaulted coffered ceilings decorated with 70 pounds of 22-karat gold leaf, according to the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation. That grandeur has required upkeep: a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in 2011 cracked all 255 octagonal ceiling coffers in the Main Hall, prompting a multi-year restoration in which craftspeople worked on 90-foot scaffolding to repair and re-gild the plasterwork, as reported by Architect Magazine.
Continental Club's temporary run also sits inside a much longer institutional timeline. In March 2024, the Federal Railroad Administration approved the regulatory framework for the Washington Union Station Expansion Project, which envisions underground parking, a 39-slip bus facility and consolidated train concourses as part of a multibillion-dollar plan to accommodate future passenger growth. Against that backdrop, a pop-up cocktail lounge in a century-old Presidential Suite is a small but visible signal of how the station is trying to balance its transit function with its identity as a destination in its own right.
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