A new NoMa restaurant celebrates transportation, from drinks named for train travel to multimodal options for getting there.

Inside Union Social, you’ll find a list of all the cities with a Union Station. All images by the author.

Union Social sits at the base of Elevation at Washington Gateway, a new mixed-use development across Florida Avenue NE from the NoMa Metro station. Elevation opened in late 2014 with 400 units on 14 floors, and Union Social opened in October.

The property abuts the Metropolitan Branch Trail and parallels the rail tracks that run toward Union Station, just one Metro stop away.

Union Social’s interior design reflects its transit-oriented environment. A chalkboard names all the cities with a Union Station and a traffic light adorns the wall. A familiar M denotes the men’s restroom, and it’s inverted on the women’s room door. Green and yellow lines snake along the restroom walls.

The drink menu honors transit, too

Union Social did extensive historical research to conceive its cocktail menu, steeped in allusions to trains and their mid-century glory days.

The Redline is a tequila sour with Fresno pink peppercorn and a red line of Angostura bitters atop meringue.

The Third Rail is a gin fizz with both literal and symbolic meaning. It refers to the electrified third rail that carries voltage and powers a train. This being DC, the cocktail also denotes the “third rail of politics” and its implied dangers. The drink gets color from blueberries and bubbles from “charged water,” yesteryear’s name for club soda.

A Third Rail.

The Angel’s Seat is a whiskey smash with Angel’s Envy bourbon, citrus and rosemary garnish. In the rail world, the angel’s seat is raised observation seating in a caboose.

An Angel’s Seat.

The Gandy Dancer is a champagne fizz modeled after the French 75, but made with vodka. Traditionally, a gandy dancer is an early 1900s railroad construction worker who laid tracks manually.

If you order a spirit plus soda or just a soft drink, you’ll get a retro eight-ounce glass bottle. Beer comes only from the tap, like it did during the heyday of train travel in the mid 1900s.

Happy hour at Union Social brings the bygone train-centered lifestyle into modernity. A bustling, cosmopolitan vibe pervades the glassy space. Evoking the train café cars, two bars bookend the rectangular dining room. The dining room is laid out like a standard Amtrak car, with a row of tables on each side and a center passageway. On any given night, a private party might enliven the second bar down at the far end.

Union Social is a marker of NoMa’s rapid expansion

In developing Union Social, owner Reese Gardner set out to recreate the historic role and atmosphere of the train station. “It was the hub where people socialized in the 1940s and ‘50s,” said Gardner. “The best bars and food were at the train station because so many people were passing through or waiting for trains.”

Today, NoMa is considered a textbook example of successful transit-oriented development. Since the NoMa Metro station opened in 2004 as DC’s first infill station, NoMa has seen exponential growth, and national and international officials tour the area to study its development.

Partying in the house that transit built, Union Social patrons prove the development theories true. NoMa resident Rocio Acevedo Medlin has eyewitnessed the neighborhood’s transformation and planted her flag at Union Social, visiting regularly from the day it opened.

“It’s really different from anything else in NoMa,” said Acevedo Medlin, who has frequented the area since 2000. “It’s the kind of place you keep coming back to because it just feels good. You can be inside or out on the sidewalk and you see other people through the glass. It’s not like it’s walled off from the rest of the neighborhood. Everything about it is open and inviting.”

NoMa Business Improvement District President Robin-Eve Jasper puts the new restaurant in context. “Union Social and all of NoMa is an amazing demonstration that a great development plan can truly have extraordinary impact,” said Jasper.

While NoMa’s growth was methodically charted, some elements weren’t in the initial blueprints. Case in point: restaurants, which weren’t on the drawing board.

“The original thought was not mixed use, so there was no forethought to build space for restaurants,” said Jasper. “The Elevation building was the first with a restaurant. Now all upcoming residential buildings will have restaurant space.”