When entering Allegory, you must first walk through the Progressive Library, a free-to-all collection of literature focused on topics of race, gender, climate, art, architecture, and advocacy. The books are curated by non-profit organization Teaching for Change, a group that is also featured in Allegory’s new menu, Banned in DC. 

The library roof is covered in an art piece designed by local DC artist JD Deardourff, who took posters from the DC punk and hardcore music scenes and created a collage paying homage to a little talked-about part of DC history.

Once you pass through the Progressive Library into Allegory, you are met with multiple breathtaking murals that span the entire bar. The murals were painted by Eric Thor Sandberg, another local DC artist. The story depicts a surreal, bordering on ghoulish re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland. The allegory, the deeper hidden political meaning, is that Alice represents Ruby Bridges, a civil rights icon who was one of the first black girls to desegregate an all-white school in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1961. 

We follow Alice and Ruby's story down their respective rabbit holes. Alice travels through the looking-glass as a young seven-year-old into Wonderland, greeted by a cast of scary, strange, and dreamlike characters. Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old black girl, travels into her own version of Wonderland, an all-white school, where she too is greeted by frightening figures in the form of mobs, protestors, and overt racism. Their two stories intertwine throughout the mural culminating in the slaying of the Jabberwocky. 

Walking into Allegory was designed to be transportive: as if passing through your own looking glass into another world.