Bidding Goodbye to a Room With a View

Key Bridge Marriott Closing Its Popular Top-Floor Restaurant

Waiter Boan Minh describes his years at the restaurant atop the Key Bridge Marriott to regulars Carolyn Lane and Bishop Buckley. Lane and Buckley, who spend every Sunday at brunch over sparkling wine and newspapers, are among a host of loyal customers. (By Chris Combs For The Washington Post)

After 26 years of enthusiastically serving thousands of customers, waiter Boan Minh was visibly saddened Sunday, just days before his longtime employer, a restaurant atop the Key Bridge Marriott, was scheduled to close.

"What can you do?" he asked, gazing outside at the restaurant's unobstructed view of Washington, the monuments and the Potomac River. "I can do nothing. We've been here a long time. It's very sad."

JW's View Steakhouse, atop the 47-year-old Key Bridge Marriott, has hosted countless wedding receptions, graduation parties and other special celebrations over years. But come July 4, after the last of the annual fireworks display on the National Mall fades from the night sky, the restaurant will close its doors.

To many, the restaurant's closing signals the end of an era, the loss of an intimate, friendly space where the waiters treated customers like family -- a place where diners could escape hurried city life and enjoy a fine, relaxing meal and a spectacular view.

The rooftop restaurant originally opened as the Chaparrall Restaurant in 1970; it became the View Restaurant in 1980 and changed to JW's in the mid-1990s.

After years of analyzing the hotel's space and needs, officials concluded that the 582-room hotel needed more meeting space rather than a high-end restaurant. In addition, more and more restaurants are opening in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, giving diners more options and siphoning away JW's clientele, they said.

Still, the restaurant's impending closing is "a bittersweet moment for the hotel," said Carol Chu, director of marketing and sales for the hotel.

The new space is scheduled to reopen in December -- after a $5 million renovation -- as the 4,000-square-foot Capitol View Ballroom, Chu said.

"We came to the decision to convert the space into a ballroom, but we're grieving as a hotel because the staff has been with us for so long. . . . We keep going back and forth on the spectrum of emotions," she said.

Longtime customers are feeling the same way. For years, friends Carolyn Lane and Bishop Buckley have come each Sunday to linger at a table near the window, one of dozens along the restaurant's walls that provide stunning views of Georgetown University, kayakers and boaters on the Potomac, and joggers on the Key Bridge.

You could set your watch by their arrival each week; the two have missed few Sundays over the last five years. Together they sit, read the newspaper and chat over brunch and sparkling wine. Lane, 48, and Buckley, 60, know many of the restaurant's waiters and waitresses by name and have been invited to their birthday parties and other celebrations over the years.

"There is going to be a void to fill," Buckley said Sunday, as he and Lane looked out the floor-to-ceiling window for perhaps the last time.