The Line DC
A 1912 church in Adams Morgan — restored with organ pipes, vaulted ceilings, Erik Bruner-Yang's restaurant.
The Line DC is a 220-room hotel inside a 1912 church in Adams Morgan, with the original organ pipes, vaulted ceilings, and stained glass restored as part of the public space rather than papered over. Sydell Group — five hotels, also behind NoMad and the original Ace — opened it in 2017. The restoration is the headline. The neighborhood is the second.
The Line is bigger than most properties on this list. It's also the one most likely to feel like a hotel a non-tourist resident would actually walk into for a drink, which in a city built on convention hotels is a small miracle.
The setting
Adams Morgan is one of DC's older bohemian neighborhoods — 18th Street, Columbia Road, the row of late-night bars and small restaurants that have given the area its character for forty years. Less polished than Georgetown, livelier than Logan Circle, with the embassies of Kalorama uphill to the north. The hotel sits at 1770 Euclid Street, on the southern edge of the neighborhood, walkable to the National Zoo, the Woodley Park Metro, and the U Street corridor.
The drive from National Airport is about twenty minutes; from Dulles, forty-five. Metro: Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan station is a ten-minute walk.
The building
The shell is the former First Church of Christ, Scientist — a 1912 limestone-and-marble structure built in the Beaux-Arts ecclesiastical idiom, with a 70-foot vaulted nave. Sydell's restoration kept the organ pipes, the stained glass, the choir loft, and most of the original interior architecture, building hotel program around them rather than inside them. Public spaces are the strongest part of the building: the lobby is in the former nave, with the original ceiling and pipes intact.
The rooms
220 rooms across the main church building and a contemporary annex. Layouts vary — some rooms have the original window proportions; some are new-build to a more standard hotel template. Materials are concrete, glass, timber, brass, velvet. The better rooms face the street or the courtyard rather than the interior light wells. From around $395 in shoulder seasons.
Food & drink
A Rake's Progress, the hotel's main restaurant, was opened by chef Spike Gjerde of Baltimore's Woodberry Kitchen — a serious mid-Atlantic, hyper-local kitchen that's gone through several iterations under different chefs. The Cafe handles all-day. Brothers and Sisters, the lobby café, is a popular neighborhood working spot. The bar program is one of the better hotel bar setups in DC.
On the property
For a 220-room urban hotel, the program is restrained and weighted toward food and drink.
- Multiple restaurants and bars on site, open to non-guests
- Original 1912 church architecture as public space
- Fitness center
- Walking access to Adams Morgan, Woodley Park, the National Zoo, and U Street
- Open year-round
Who it's for
- Travelers who'd rather stay in Adams Morgan than downtown
- Architecture and adaptive-reuse weekenders
- Anyone tired of K Street convention hotels
- Locals using the bars and restaurants more than the rooms
Who it's not for
- Guests who need a Mall-adjacent location — you're a Metro ride or rideshare from the museums
- Travelers expecting a full destination spa
- Light sleepers in rooms facing 18th Street on summer weekends
Nearby
The National Zoo is a ten-minute walk uphill. Rock Creek Park's trails start a few blocks west. The Phillips Collection is fifteen minutes south on foot. The U Street corridor — Ben's Chili Bowl, the Lincoln Theatre, Right Proper — is twenty minutes by foot or five by Metro. The National Mall museums are a fifteen-minute Metro ride south.
