The June 18 Arts & Style article “Carla Perlo shares the secrets of her success” described Brookland Pint as a “stylish eatery that was unimaginable in that part of town in 1986,” when Perlo started Dance Place.

In May 1980, six years before Perlo started her dance center and decades before Brookland Pint was envisioned, stylish eatery Colonel Brooks’ Tavern opened to serve a varied and vibrant community. For 32 years, Colonel Brooks’ was the quintessential neighborhood restaurant. It fostered community, employing locals and welcoming people of all races, faiths and walks of life, dancers included.

Colonel Brooks’ had a real sense of place. Residents of the middle-class neighborhood (such as me at the time), small-business owners and their staffs, professors, administrators and students from Catholic University and then-Trinity College mingled with employees of Washington Hospital Center, the VA Medical Center, and Providence and Children’s hospitals. Schoolteachers, postal workers and other public servants dined with people from the Archdiocese, Basilica and Franciscan Monastery. Tuesday, when the Federal Jazz Commission played, was the second-busiest day of the week, after Friday. Annual auctions to benefit Miriam’s Kitchen funded many thousands of breakfasts for homeless people in the District. I worked at the tavern for just six years, and it still has my heart.

Cathy Carr, Silver Spring