Pearl Dive Oyster Palace/Black Jack

Where: 1612 14th Street, NW, Washington, D.C.

Who: Black Restaurant Group LLC (Partners Jeff Black, Barbara Black, Jon Lincke)

What: To create a façade-to-flooring identity for a 1940s New Orleans-inspired oyster palace and upstairs bar located on the young, hip, urbane 14th Street Corridor—a new demographic target for Black Restaurant Group. Shelter’s brief called for branding the two spaces through every graphic element, from logos, menus, signage, photography and website to finishes, murals, wallpaper—even  floor entrances.

Challenges:  “I thought, we need to open a lower-priced seafood place,” client Jeff Black recalls. “So I called Scott and Charma, we talked about the feel, the vibe. Then I turned them loose on everything—name, logo, color schemes.” Shelter’s goal for Pearl Dive Oyster Bar was to build an identity that implied a long and somewhat shady history. Unfortunately, the building—former home to a number of uninspiring establishments, including a tire store—had been gutted. The only intriguing architectural features that remained were a second-floor skylight and the façade. How to create an experience for diners that would believably immerse them in Pearl Dive’s fictional world was the question.

Solutions: Shelter chose the restaurant name for its allusive triple play: “pearl dive” is sexual slang,  “pearl divers” is what restaurant dishwashers—the human kind—were called in the old days, and of course, pearls come from oysters and “dive” defines a low-end bar or eatery. We drew from various sources—brasserie menus, nudist magazines— for the brand elements, from type style to photography.  The arresting mural behind the oyster bar was inspired by a series of early 20^th-century French postcards, while all signage was purposely aged to resemble Deco-era hotel signs.

To create the impression of a decades-old, once-chic eatery way down on its heels, we used rustic white Venetian finish to overlay the remnants of plaster on the few original walls. The treatment turned Pearl Dive into the world-weary survivor of decorating attempts by owners long gone and forgotten.

Challenges:  Black Restaurant Group gave us the name Black Jack for this bar with a minimal menu. Shelter’s  concept: “sailors’ haunt with a long history.” Restraint was the issue: how to create an unforgettable last-century environment and experience without going over the top or into kitsch.

A heavily draped bar backdrop in red looks like a theater stage, while a Victorian-type ornament decorates the bar itself. The images of the tattooed woman placed front and center on the bar, more tattooed women and men on the bathroom wallpaper, and a screaming red monkey with a top hat on the entrance floor to the stairs are there to keep nostalgia at bay.

The bar’s booths use scans from vintage record spines and broken records. Carefully applied “trace evidence” of Black Jack’s history includes a dirty damask finish on the remaining walls’ islands of plaster. It describes the path of a fictional fire.   Menu covers echo the imagery used throughout the space; each patron’s menu becomes one of a kind.

“It used to be I could walk into a restaurant and tell who designed it—the architects defined it,” Jeff Black says of the Pearl Dive/Black Jack projects. “But I want restaurants that you know are Black restaurants. Scott and Charma ‘get’ it—they innovate, they hear what you are saying. I consider them integral to the process and to my team.”