Quirky Charm Legacy of Tabard Inn Continues to Attract Attention, Loyal Following by Rachel Ray With no elevator to be found, some guests may have to trudge up four flights of stairs to reach their rooms at the Tabard Inn. But the prospect of such a workout hasn’t deterred those who want to experience one of Washington’s most charming, comfortable and quirkily decorated hotels. For those unfamiliar with the origin of the hotel’s name, England’s Tabard Inn, which is no longer in existence, is referred to in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” as a place of respite for pilgrims. The English inn’s American namesake on N Street, NW, just south of Dupont Circle, has taken up the original Tabard’s mission with zeal, culminating in not only business success but also a legacy of loyal patrons who wouldn’t stay anywhere else in the nation’s capital. Irene Mayer, a self-described “hippie” and the hotel’s in-house designer, has worked at the Tabard Inn for 25 years. In describing her decorating philosophy, she recalled an ad for the Marriott hotel chain: “There are no surprises at the Marriott.” Mayer’s reaction to the ad was, “How sad,” and that reaction sums up her decorating philosophy. No rooms—hallways, crooks or crannies for that matter—should be the same at the Tabard Inn. Indeed, wandering through the three joined townhouses, built in the late 1800s, that make up the inn is like visiting the home of a lovable eccentric. One wonders why Mayer hasn’t created a guided tour of the Tabard to add to its already popular restaurant, bar, catering services and Victorian parlor with a working fireplace. Maintaining the Tabard’s homey ambience is paramount to Mayer, but there is also a work-in-progress theme to the decorating. “A person evolves and so does the Tabard Inn. It’s not supposed to look like it’s frozen in time,” she explained. Wall colors can range from bold burgundy to red to mango to green. Some furniture is scratched and chipped, adding to the hotel’s shabby chic. In one hallway, there’s an art deco table and in another, stamped leather chairs from Peru. In one room, a window is dressed with a chartreuse curtain and another with cream lace. Mayer dislikes shower curtains, so in some of the tiled bathrooms, there aren’t any. “You don’t need them,” she observed. Interestingly, every bedroom has a secretary with books inside—a decorating decision inherited from the inn’s first owner. But that kind of consistency is an exception to Mayer’s decorating rules. It may come as no surprise—or a complete surprise—that House and Home, an interiors magazine published in Dublin, Ireland, chose a small room in the Tabard Inn for inclusion in an article on the 30 most beautiful bedrooms in the world in its May/June 2005 issue. (The only other room chosen in the United States was in the Soho House in New York City.) Scouring estate sales, art galleries and flea markets, Mayer searches for one-of-a-kind items to decorate the Tabard Inn. “We all have that artistic thing that wants to come out,” Mayer said of her decorating. And perhaps that’s why it is the hotel’s art collection that sets it apart from every other lodging establishment in the District. After all, it’s highly improbable that there is another hotel in Washington that has several paintings of the George Washington family in one room, while in the hallway, a nude mannequin dubbed “Martha Pat Bell” poses in a wooden bathtub. In another artistic display, a photo of a smiling President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert hangs on a wall opposite a photo of Marilyn Monroe, laughing and clad in black fishnets. There’s also a Soviet-era painting of three children wearing white masks, chasing each other, as well as a huge painting—previously housed in a Washington club—that depicts a barnyard scene with brilliantly plumed, oversize turkeys in the foreground. Next Page

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