Mr. Smith's of Georgetown

Mr. Smith’s of Georgetown has operated at 3205 K Street NW since 1968, making it one of the oldest continuously operating bars in the Georgetown neighborhood and the establishment most associated with the neighborhood’s bar culture over the past half century. The address on K Street, just south of M Street at the canal level, provides the slightly removed position from the main M Street tourist corridor that a neighborhood institution needs to maintain its character across the decades of commercial change that Georgetown’s restaurant landscape has undergone.

The piano bar at Mr. Smith’s is the feature that has defined the establishment’s identity for Georgetown’s regulars since the beginning. The live piano performance in a neighborhood bar provides a different social atmosphere from the DJ-driven bar of the millennial era or the sports bar that has dominated the Georgetown bar landscape in the 2010s and 2020s. The piano bar format, which was a standard element of American cocktail lounges in the mid-twentieth century before declining in popularity, has at Mr. Smith’s been maintained as a Georgetown tradition rather than adapted to the current commercial bar format.

The garden patio at Mr. Smith’s is the second defining physical feature of the establishment. Georgetown’s outdoor dining space is constrained by the Federal-period architecture and the limited sidewalk widths of the commercial streets, which makes a rear patio with genuine greenery a significant amenity. The Mr. Smith’s garden, which has been a summer Georgetown gathering place for generations of Georgetown regulars, is among the more pleasant outdoor bar settings in the neighborhood.

The American bar food menu serves the classic function of sustaining the drinking: burgers, sandwiches, and the substantial bar food that an evening of drinks requires. Hours run from 11:30am daily with late closing on weekends. The Georgetown bar landscape has changed dramatically in the five decades since Mr. Smith’s opened in 1968. The neighborhood has seen bar formats come and go: the disco bar, the sports bar, the craft cocktail bar, the rooftop bar, and the restaurant-bar hybrid have all had their moments of Georgetown dominance. Mr. Smith’s has observed all of these trends from the same K Street address and remained itself throughout: the piano bar with the garden, the regular neighborhood crowd, and the consistent American bar food. The K Street address, which is below M Street at the level of the C and O Canal, gives Mr. Smith’s a position in Georgetown that is slightly removed from the M Street tourist activity. This position, which might seem like a disadvantage relative to the high-foot-traffic M Street addresses, is in fact part of what has allowed Mr. Smith’s to maintain its neighborhood character across five decades: the customer base at K Street is more likely to be a returning Georgetown regular than a first-time visitor navigating the neighborhood. The piano at Mr. Smith’s is not simply entertainment but a social function: it creates the conversational environment of the neighborhood bar where people talk rather than the loud competitive music bar where conversation is impossible. This function has made Mr. Smith’s the Georgetown meeting place that it has been for fifty-plus years. Hours run from 11:30am daily with late closing on weekends.