Old Glory

The cocktail bar sisters Britt and Alexis Soler built inside the former boiler room of a steam laundry in Edgehill Village. Look for the gold triangle on a black door in the rear alley.

The plant was White Way Cleaners, the laundry the Elam family founded in 1931. 3 generations of Elams ran it, several hundred employees strong at the peak.

During World War II the federal government asked White Way to join the war effort. The plant ran around the clock, the night shift washing bed linens and uniforms for troops overseas.

Alexis and Britt made their names at No. 308, the East Nashville cocktail bar they opened with Ben Clemons in 2010.

Old Glory opened on March 2, 2016. The alley entry is deliberate: the sisters wanted guests to arrive down the winding staircase, making the descent the grand entrance.

Nashville design studio Powell kept the freestanding smokestack, the coal chute, and the circa-1920 rafters, then added brass stair rails and walnut booths under a ceiling the firm puts at 85 feet.

White Way moved out in 2002; the campus reopened in 2007 as Edgehill Village, the strip the bar sits in. The neighborhood’s 1930s polar bear statues stand at 12th Avenue South and Edgehill Avenue.