After nearly two decades of serving cocktail connoisseurs in Wicker Park, The Violet Hour bar is permanently closing its doors.
Located at 1520 N. Damen Ave., the James Beard-winning establishment made the announcement Friday on its Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Several weeks ago, the bar closed temporarily due to unexpected damage to the building, according to a statement attributed to owners and partners at One Off Hospitality Group.
“Despite extensive efforts and negotiations, we were regretfully unable to reach a resolution with our landlord,” the leadership team stated.
Toby Maloney, Jason Cott, Donnie Madia, Peter Garfield and Terry Alexander opened the bar in 2007. It helped bolster the growth of Chicago’s craft cocktail scene, and won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar Program in 2015.
Maloney reflected on the bar’s origin in Nicole Schnitzler’s “Chicago Cocktails” recipe book, released in February.
“When we opened, we were trying to bring with us a new way of seeing cocktails,” Maloney said. “If you’re going out with a bunch of your friends for dancing and shots — and I love both — it’s not the time to visit places like … The Violet Hour. These are places you would come to on a third date, if your parents are visiting from out of town, or if you want to sit down with a friend you haven’t talked with in a long while. You sit down, you look at a menu. It’s more of a restaurant experience than a bar experience.”
The Violet Hour’s impact was evident among the hundreds of customers who left comments on the bar’s Instagram page on Friday.
“Y’all started the cocktail revolution in Chicago,” @megmugg wrote. “Thank you for all the good drinks turning me into a cocktail snob!”
“What a wild run it’s been for this incredible institution,” @sjberto wrote. “It will be missed forever in the Chicago scene it helped to shape and define. Congrats to all who made this bar so successful and profound over the years.”
The Violet Hour’s owners thanked its patrons and hinted that there may be a new life for the beloved institution.
“From the artists who painted our ever-changing facade to the bartenders who opened their own award-winning bars, we’re proud of the role we played in sparking a cultural shift in how this city drinks and gathers,” the owners said in the social media statement. “This is not the end of The Violet Hour as a brand, and yet it is the end of this chapter. You may see us again somewhere down the line.”