Most bars with vintage photo booths in Chicago are dives, and that is not a criticism; that is the format. The Ace Lounge in River North is not one of them. It is a champagne and cocktail room on North Wells with sleek lines, low light, and glassware you notice. So when The Ace Lounge joined the short list of bars with photo booths in Chicago through our venue placement program, we built one that belonged to a room like this rather than the one it might have inherited.
This is the story of that booth, through our venue placement program.
If you run a room like this and want one too, contact us.
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A cocktail bar with a photo booth in River North
The Ace Lounge sits at 613 North Wells Street, on the stretch of River North where the restaurants get quieter, and the lounges get more considered. The interior reads modern rather than nostalgic. Polished, poured, backlit. The house pour is champagne, and the guests are dressed for it.
That is the design problem in one sentence, and it is the reason bars with photo booths in Chicago tend to be dives. A vintage photo booth is a piece of furniture with a strong opinion about a decade, and that decade is rarely the one an upscale room has. Drop a diner artefact from 1957 into a champagne lounge, and it sits in the corner like a rented costume. The booth had to belong to Ace, not to a memory of a photo booth somewhere else.
The booth is placed against the storefront glass, so the backlit marquee reads from the sidewalk on North Wells after dark. That placement is doing two jobs. It is a working machine inside and a window display outside, and neither job costs the other any floor space.
The custom photo booth we built for Ace Lounge
The booth is our Classic cabinet, specified for a cocktail lounge rather than a bar. Below is what that meant on the shop floor.
The ace-of-spades marquee
The marquee is the whole idea of the piece. A backlit cream panel carrying the ace of spades in the register of a real playing card. The A and V marks in opposing corners for The Ace Lounge, and PHOTOS set inside the spade in a warm sepia serif.
Warm-lit rather than cool-lit, so it reads as lamplight instead of signage. On the outer side panel, The Ace Lounge wordmark is drawn in blush script, the same hand the lounge uses on its own material.
Walnut, brushed copper, and black velvet
Below the marquee, dark walnut wraps the lower half of the cabinet. Walnut belongs to the same tonal family as the room, warm without going costume. The outer frame is brushed copper, which picks up the warm metal already in the fixtures and stays out of the way of the graphic panel.
The curtain is black velvet, full length, on brass rings, with a string of warm marquee bulbs run along the top of the rod inside. Nobody sees those bulbs from outside the booth. They are for the two seconds after the guests pull the curtain closed and realise the booth is nicer inside than they expected.
Maker's marks, and the print slot
Two small marks are the only other things on the exterior. Our MP monogram sits discreetly on the walnut, and the floor plate inside reads MAJESTIC underfoot as you sit down, in a fine grid. A maker's mark belongs where you find it rather than where you cannot avoid it.
The print slot lives in the lower panel to the left of the bench, cut as a double slot for two strips. Guests get one; the wall of the lounge keeps the other. That is the honest brief of a venue placement. The booth is not a favour to the guest, it is a marketing machine for the venue.
Why one graphic did the work
The ace of spades is the obvious idea for this room and it would have been very easy to do badly.
The reason it works is that the panel reads as a real playing card at furniture scale, not a novelty stuck on a cabinet. Proper proportions, proper serif, proper spade. Backlit through the cream face the way an old marquee is lit, so the card glows warm through the storefront rather than shouting through it.
The lounge already uses the same graphic everywhere from the storefront to the menu. Ignoring that would have been the wrong call, and doubling it up would have been worse. One card, done at the size of a real one blown up to the size of a piece of furniture, is enough.
The same treatment carries through to the strip. Every print comes out with the ace mark inline with The Ace Lounge wordmark in the footer, which is the part that leaves River North and ends up on somebody s fridge.
Black and white or colour photo strips
The screen asks one question before the flash. Black and white, or colour.
Black and white is the classic register and it is what makes a strip feel like an object. Colour matters at Ace for a specific reason though, which is that guests dress for the room. A slip dress, a red lip, a champagne coupe held at the right angle. Monochrome flattens all of that. A guest who put effort into the outfit deserves a strip where you can see the outfit. Two strips print for every session.
How we built the Ace Lounge booth (and how we can do more like it)
Every Majestic install runs the same three-step process, whether the room is a champagne lounge in River North or a country bar in Wrigleyville. That is what lets us build for the whole range of bars with photo booths in Chicago, not just one kind of room. Ace ran the same way.
The conversation
It started with a call. We asked about the room, the crowd on a Friday night, and what The Ace Lounge team wanted a booth to feel like when a guest leans in for a photo. The single fact that shaped everything after: the lounge already owns the ace of spades as its house graphic. That saved us from inventing a look for the booth, and pointed straight at the marquee panel that would end up doing the work.
The design
Every Majestic booth is custom. For Ace, that meant a palette pulled from the actual interior finishes rather than a stock deck. Walnut to match the wood in the room, brushed copper to sit with the warm metal in the fixtures, black velvet to disappear into the low light. One round of graphic proofs against the real wall the booth would sit against, then fabrication in-house in Nashville.
The install and everything after
We handled the freight, install, calibration, and sign-off. From that point forward the booth belongs to Ace to use and belongs to us to keep alive. Maintenance is on us. The 24/7 support line is on us. Every guest gets an instant print and a digital copy sent to their inbox, and every one of those emails belongs to the lounge. That is the venue placement program in one page, and we can do it again in any Chicago room where the light is good.
Our other photo booth work in Chicago
Chicago is one of our six hub cities, alongside New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, Austin, and Miami. Ace joins a small but growing list of Chicago bars, restaurants, and boutiques where our booths already live. If you are collecting bars with photo booths in Chicago on a night out, both of the rooms below are worth a walk-through.
- Stolen Saddle (Wrigleyville). A permanent Majestic install through our venue placement program in a country bar, about as far from a champagne lounge as Chicago gets. Same Classic cabinet as the Ace booth, none of the walnut, cream, or copper. Only the specification changed.
- Hublot (Fulton Market). A custom photo booth for the boutique's grand opening through our brand activation program. One word, lit from within, on a warm cream panel, and nothing else. Read that story on our Hublot Our Work page.
- Ace Lounge (River North). The room this page is about. A vintage photo booth built around the ace of spades in an upscale cocktail bar.
Three installs, three very different rooms, one program. That is the whole argument for how Majestic works with bars with photo booths in Chicago. If you run a Chicago venue that fits the pattern, the Chicago photo booth page has the wider picture on rentals and long-term installations across the city.
Want a photo booth in your Chicago bar?
We design and build custom Classic Photobooths for bars, restaurants, and lounges in Chicago, installed through our venue placement program with maintenance handled by us.
The booth is free to install, the maintenance is free, and the walk-up strips are yours to run. Tell us about the room, and let s create unforgettable memories together.
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