Art installation at a Starbucks: as unique as the tragedy it commemorates. Yet also typical.

I can’t claim I relish gruesome subjects, but when they’re as salacious as last month’s Exorcist steps, it was hard to resist.  (And, I’ll admit, I needed an easy topic right before Halloween as I scrambled to meet my quota of articles before an extended trip overseas.)  Most of the time, though, when I approach the macabre, it’s only because I’ve stumbled upon it—which is precisely the case with this atypical Starbucks art installation:

It’s not so much that an interior art installation of this scale is weird, or that art at Starbucks is unusual.  It’s the fact that something of this scale can occupy nearly twenty square feet of a wall, and it took me two years to notice it.  But I finally did notice it, because it is unlike anything else one might see at the world’s largest coffee chain.  Starbucks (recently tweely rebranded “The Starbucks Coffee Company”) has long intimated a commitment to dominating its portfolio through company-owned stores.  The only licensed stores are those operating within other businesses or institutions—e.g., supermarkets, toll plazas, bookstores, airports, hotels—but over 80% of the company’s revenue comes through corporate driven entities; not franchises.  Accompanying this ethos is an adherence to original design principles with each location, which corporate leadership required during the chain’s meteoric 1990s rise, after fearing the locations were getting too sterile and predictable.  While the company adheres to several different design tracks, each location includes features that endow it with regional or local customization: artwork, preservation of old architectural features, historic interpretative language, et cetera.  The combination of the aforementioned features helps ensure that no two Starbucks locations look identical.  A twelve-foot-tall Starbucks art installation isn’t exactly a standard feature either, but massive murals aren’t unheard of.  So how did this one earn its adornment?

The high ceilings certainly help.  This is a two-story Starbucks, and though not huge, it’s probably in the top quartile for size.  The second floor features a small indoor loft space (seats about twelve) and an outdoor patio (seats about twenty) in addition to space for twenty-five more on the first floor.  The high ceilings permit the placement of an unusually large, vertically oriented painting.  But this Starbucks art installation does not follow the usual model: it does not show a map of coffee growing regions, nor some reference to history of the area, nor does it reflect an attempt to salvage the building’s original architectural features.  So what is the story here?

The art installation at this Starbucks is a sort of cenotaph: as the Wisconsin Avenue Starbucks in the Georgetown/Burleith neighborhood in Washington DC, it hosted a grisly crime on July 6, 1997.  Shortly after closure, a gunman entered the store, seeking access to the contents of the safe.  The young manager refused, and, in retaliation the aspiring robber shot the manager and her two male employees on the floor of the freezer; an assistant manager discovered the bodies the next morning.  No money was missing from the safe.  The case went unsolved and almost cold for over two years, until its coverage on America’s Most Wanted helped lead tips from acquaintances of the killer, who bragged about his crimes.  Carl Derek Cooper eventually confessed to the Starbucks murders and the killing of another security guard; through a plea deal he dodged the death penalty and instead faced a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.  As the photo above indicates, the plaque underneath this art installation explains the memorial.

It took a long while for me to catch on.  Unbeknownst to me until numerous visits to this two-story Starbucks at 1810 Wisconsin Avenue NW, it was the site of what remains the worst criminal act ever to have taken place at a Starbucks in the United States.  Thanks to my eventual awareness through the art installation, I finally achieved discovery.  To the best of my understanding, no similarly violent act has taken place at Starbucks locations in the US since 1997.  (Canada isn’t so fortunate, nor are other scattered Starbucks across the globe.)

As is often the case when inexplicable crimes transpire in a workplace, the scene of the crime must undergo a sort of sociological exorcism, quite a contrast from the demonic exorcism that this neighborhood claimed back in 1973.  Georgetown and its quieter, adjacent, mostly residential neighborhood Burleith are not typically the scene of violent crime in a city that has more than its share.  The Wisconsin Avenue Starbucks closed for several months and underwent a complete renovation after the tragedy, opening in February of the next year before police had cracked the case.  Harrowing though the event may have been, locals agreed that repurposing and reopening was the best solution; to close permanently was almost like acknowledging the criminal’s victory.

Today, aside from the unusual floor plan, it looks like a typical Starbucks.

But “typical Starbucks” is a bit of a misnomer: though all brands achieve unity through the iconic green “Mermaid” logo (except for the brown, bare-chested Seattle original), the flow and layout of Starbucks locations are, as a matter of corporate policy, quite different.  The company has shown no preference for old, repurposed buildings versus new construction; it is comfortable with both.  But historic structures are less likely to follow the same patterns of egress as modern structures defined by building codes.  This Wisconsin Avenue location with the two-story art installation reveals an unusual series of features.  The fact that Starbucks corporate decided to occupy both floors is in itself unusual; the acquisitions team could have easily repurposed just the first floor and left the upper level to office or residential use.  But the building’s footprint is small enough that, with the loft architecture reducing some of upper-level floor space, the gross leasable area is only slightly larger than a typical one-story Starbucks.  The outdoor “deck” seating, available about eight months of the year, is unusual for a second floor.

Also unusual is the dedicated off-street parking in an otherwise urban neighborhood where such space comes at a premium.

It’s not a huge lot, but it gives this slightly bigger-than-average Starbucks leverage when most of the adjacent businesses must depend upon on-street (often metered) parking.  Starbucks has dedicated parking in a neighborhood where surface parking lots are rare and come at a premium.  But the years immediately before this Wisconsin Avenue location opened in 1994, it apparently hosted a boutique used car dealership; the high-incomes and heavy student presence made it particularly suitable for the coffee empire’s expansion.

Amenities though they may be, these building features are not necessarily sine qua nons when it comes to this massive coffee company’s growth and outreach strategy.  After all, this location has been around a very, very long time: Starbucks held a quarter-century memorial event in 2022.  And while it feels today like Starbucks is as much a part of the American restaurant landscape as McDonald’s and Subway, back in 1997 it was not ubiquitous; its IPO was just five years prior to the tragedy.  It embarked on an international expansion campaign before it had permeated smaller US markets.  Only in a few top-tier cities (like Washington DC) was it already a brand as familiar as the best-known burger chains; in smaller cities it was still a bit of a novelty.  (Even so, Starbucks only claimed ten locations in DC city limits back then.)  And, as the company currently confronts sharp slowdowns in business and the inevitable retraction, it’s a testament to this Georgetown location’s resiliency and desirability that it has persevered all these years even among the lingering references to the tragedy—a tragedy for which I suspect I was in the majority for being blithely unaware until I finally scrutinized that art installation.

The thirty-year corporate policy encouraging original design fosters an unusual dynamic within this Wisconsin Avenue location, particularly relating to the art installation.  It’s big yet still manages to be subtle; visitors only notice it if they are actively surveying their surroundings in this location.  But the visual language of Starbucks interiors does not cue them to survey; unconsciously, patrons expect each Starbucks to look different, much the way they expect Panera Bread to look more or less the same.  The lack of systemization among locations means that the most opulent sculptures and murals don’t always stand out.  Even an enormous reclining mermaid in Miami might go undetected because, anomalous of an art installation though it may be, it doesn’t deviate from the norm because Starbucks offers no norm.  Thus, the commemoration of three lives lost serves as a visual footnote within this location; it’s big and distinctive but doesn’t stand out.  One might argue it’s disrespectful to their memories to relegate them to a corner, but would it necessarily be better if customers faced a funeral home when they stepped inside?  Would baristas want to work at a Starbucks that reminded them of a triple homicide every minute of the day?

Ultimately, the designers (and redesigners) of this location found a tasteful middle ground, where abstract art clearly signals three cherished lives, without encouraging any specters to linger in the loft.  I’m glad Starbucks pursued this approach…and hope the company never has to do it again.