A hospitality case study
Project Brief: Hotel Monteleone
New bar tops for a French Quarter landmark, New Orleans.
Photo: Josh Lloyd Media
The project
Some bars are just bars. The Hotel Monteleone at 214 Royal Street is not one of them. The Carousel Bar has been turning since 1949, and people come from all over the world to take a ride.
When the top from the original fabricator stopped holding up, the Monteleone called us.
01
When the original top failed
I built tops the old way for years. I watched those wooden cores fail. That’s why I started 3 Spark.
So I know what a top that isn’t holding up looks like: wear, stains, open joints. On a landmark bar, the hotel needed somebody to answer the phone, show up with a plan, and get it right.
That’s the part we take personally. Our clients’ problems come first.
02
What we did
We moved fast. Quick answers, a clear plan, and a crew ready to go.
We designed a custom edge profile, just for them. We didn’t pull a stock trim off the shelf. We drew an edge profile for this bar alone, and it isn’t reused on other projects. On a bar people lean on all day, the edge is the part everyone touches. It sets how heavy or light the bar reads, how the light rolls off it, and how it feels under a forearm on the third round.
We redesigned the surface. We use deposition to apply thin coats of material in a controlled manner to build up the surface, which lets us take on complex curves and custom edge profiles. The surface is real zinc, over a waterproof core.
We worked around the hotel’s schedule and delivered on time. A working hotel bar can’t wait on us, so we planned the job around their calendar and hit the date.
03
Why it matters
Smart design plus technical know-how gets you a top that’s made for the bar, instead of a bar forced to fit somebody’s trim. That’s what we do: custom objects, not off-the-shelf trims.
Photo: Josh Lloyd Media
Planning a bar that has to live up to its history?
Or living with a top that isn’t holding up? Reach out to me. Let’s talk about your project.