A storefront on Washington Plaza that sat dark for most of two years now holds Danish modern chairs, restored lighting, glassware, artwork and a cooler of zero-proof drinks. The shop is called Vintage Reston, and it opened in the former Chesapeake Chocolates space directly beside Lake Anne Brew House.
We have been regulars at the Brew House for years, so we noticed when the space next door started filling up with furniture. We sat down with owners Melissa and Jason Romano to get the story.
Here is what the shop is, how it came about, and what to know before you walk over.
What Vintage Reston actually is
Melissa Romano describes the concept in three words: sit, sip, shop. Nothing in the room is roped off. You are meant to settle into a Danish modern lounge chair, set a drink on a teak coffee table, and look around at the lamps, barware, art and side tables. Nearly everything you touch is for sale.
That makes it closer to a furnished apartment than a resale floor. The pieces are arranged as a series of lived-in rooms rather than aisles of inventory, which is a deliberate choice by a curator who works as an architect in her day job.
Romano put the philosophy plainly in the shop’s announcement: beautiful things should not be saved for special occasions, they should be used, lived with and loved.
The collection
The heart of the shop is Romano’s own collection, assembled over years and covering furniture, lighting, glassware, barware, artwork and other distinctive pieces. She has personally restored many of them. When we visited, the mix ran from Danish tables and chairs to record players, art and small decorative objects.
Three sources feed the floor:
- Romano’s personal collection of vintage and restored pieces
- Select consigned furniture, home goods and artwork from other sellers
- A small number of original artworks Romano created herself
Because pieces sell and new ones arrive, the inventory turns over continuously. Anyone who has hunted for mid-century furniture in Northern Virginia knows the routine of checking estate sales and online listings week after week. A rotating showroom four steps from a brewery patio changes that rhythm considerably.
The zero-proof side
Vintage Reston also stocks a curated selection of packaged non-alcoholic beverages. Expect craft zero-proof cocktails, non-alcoholic beer, functional and adaptogenic drinks, and nostalgic sodas.
This gives Lake Anne something the plaza has not had: a place to sit down, order a drink and stay a while without alcohol in the picture. Anyone who is pregnant, in training, driving, or simply not drinking that night has a comfortable chair and a real beverage list. Parents can order a soda for a kid and something adaptogenic for themselves. The plaza has restaurants and it has the Brew House. Now it also has a lounge that runs entirely zero-proof.
Why mid-century design belongs at Lake Anne
Lake Anne Village Center was built between 1963 and 1967 as the first village center of Robert E. Simon Jr.’s planned community. The New York firm of Whittlesey and Conklin, later Conklin and Rossant, designed the plaza, the townhouses that ring it, and Heron House rising above the water. The result is a compact, walkable, Brutalist-influenced village that looked radical in a county then dominated by Colonial Revival subdivisions.
Fairfax County designated the village center a historic overlay district, and in 2017 Lake Anne joined the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination cited both the architecture and the social history, including Simon’s commitment to an integrated community before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Romano grew up in Reston and has lived at Lake Anne with her family since 2003. She designed the Brew House taproom herself in a mid-century idiom that matches the plaza around it. Putting a room full of period furnishings in the storefront next door extends the same argument she has been making since 2016, which is that the character of a place should show up in the objects inside its buildings and not only in its facades.
How a permitting delay produced a pop-up
The Romanos opened Lake Anne Brew House in April 2016 in a space they bought in 2015 and renovated largely themselves. Jason handles the brewing, with a shelf of Virginia Craft Brewers Guild medals to show for it. Melissa runs the front of house and designed the room. The couple also operates Nordic-Knot, the soft pretzel bakery whose pretzels turn up at the taproom.
In July 2025 they leased the neighboring storefront at 11426 Washington Plaza West, empty since Chesapeake Chocolates closed at the end of September 2024. The plan was to roughly double taproom seating and give Nordic-Knot more room.
Permitting has taken longer than expected. Rather than leave a prime plaza storefront dark through another season, Romano filled it with the collection she already had. The taproom expansion is still coming. When permits clear, the wall between the two spaces opens and the vintage inventory gives way to bar seating and tap lines.
Melissa and Jason told us the aesthetic will not disappear when that happens. The mid-century feel carries through both rooms once they are joined.
What it signals for Lake Anne
Empty storefronts are the visible problem in any small commercial district, and Lake Anne has fought that battle for years. Fairfax County has treated the area as a commercial revitalization area since 1998, buying the Crescent Apartments, amending the Comprehensive Plan, and working through redevelopment proposals that have started and stalled more than once.
Against that backdrop, a temporary use that fills a storefront with something people will cross the plaza to see does real work. It keeps foot traffic on the west side of Washington Plaza, gives the Brew House a reason to hold the lease through a slow approval process, and gives a second business a low-risk way to test whether Lake Anne can support design retail.
For anyone tracking Lake Anne as a place to buy, this is the kind of detail that rarely shows up in a market report but shapes what living there feels like.
If you own a mid-century home in Reston
Reston has a deep inventory of homes built to suit exactly this furniture. The Washington Plaza cluster townhouses, the Quayside units, Heron House, Hickory Cluster and the contemporary homes scattered through North Point and Hunters Woods all share low ceilings in places, long horizontal lines, and rooms that were drawn with modular furniture in mind.
Owners of those homes usually learn two things quickly. Standard big-box furniture fights the proportions of the rooms. And sourcing the right pieces means either paying dealer prices in Georgetown and Kensington or spending weekends chasing listings.
A rotating vintage floor inside the historic district gives that search a local address. If you own inside the Lake Anne Village Center historic overlay district, remember that exterior changes go through architectural review. Furniture does not, which makes interiors the easiest place to honor the era without a county application.
Planning your visit
Where: 11426 Washington Plaza West, at Lake Anne Plaza, next door to Lake Anne Brew House.
Hours: The shop had not published a fixed schedule as of this writing. Check the Vintage Reston page or the Brew House’s Instagram before you make the trip.
Parking: Use the lot off Washington Plaza North behind the plaza, then take the steps down past the Baptist church. The lot fills on Saturday mornings during market season.
Pair it with the farmers market: The Reston Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon through November 21, 2026, in that same lot. Market first, then the plaza, is the efficient order.
Bring a tape measure. Vintage seating sits lower and deeper than most modern furniture, and a piece that looks compact on the plaza floor may not clear a stairwell in a townhouse. Measure the doorway before you fall in love with the credenza.
The short version
Vintage Reston is a temporary shop, and that is the point. It exists because a permit is pending, and it will close when the taproom expands into the space. Until then, Lake Anne has a room full of restored mid-century furniture, a shelf of zero-proof drinks, and an invitation to sit down in the middle of it.
Sit, sip, shop.
If you are thinking about buying or selling in Reston or Herndon and want to talk through what the Lake Anne area is like day to day, we live and work here and are happy to help.
