The Willard Inter-Continental

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The Willard Inter-Continental
Washington, DC

By The Editors of HistoricTraveler.com

President Bill Clinton attended a reception here while waiting for his inauguration. Abraham Lincoln stayed here, several days, while waiting for his inauguration. Many other U.S. Presidents and Presidents-elect have hung their hats at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. As have hundreds of the world’s most influential business and political leaders, and the savviest newsmen. Because they all understand. In the nation’s capital, at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, in sight of the White House lawn, the Willard is the place to stay and rank’s as the United States’ most historic hotel, bar none.

Today it’s called the Willard Inter-Continental, a 12-story building with 341 first class luxury guest rooms and 38 suites. Its multi-room Presidential Suite affords visiting foreign heads of state Secret Service protection (its command post is down the hall) as well as every conceivable amenity. Its Crystal Room is the site of any number of upscale functions each year. Its dining room, the Willard Room, offers all meals, is the meeting spot of choice for many of the nation’s decision makers and (because it attracts the powerful and influential) prohibits the taking of photographs there while patrons are dining. Its Round Robin Bar, famous in political and news lore, figured prominently in army politics during the Civil War and is immortalized in a Walt Whitman poem. Its lobby, so legend goes, even reconfigured our current system of government. There, President Ulysses S. Grant enjoyed sitting at the end of a long day engaging friends in conversation. Individuals looking for political favors learned to seek him out there, the first “lobbyists.”

In 1850, the brothers Henry and Edwin Willard bought the old City Hotel at the corner of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, numbered songstress Jenny Lind and President-elect Franklin Pierce among their early guests, attracted a following, and through the 1850s cobbled together several more buildings on the block turning their hotel into something like a complex. In 1860, Japan’s first ambassadors registered as guests. In 1861, the hotel hosted the national Peace Convention — attended by the likes of ex-President Tyler — where last-ditch efforts were made to avert a U.S. civil war. Abraham Lincoln checked in at the Willard for several days prior to his inauguration, meeting with future cabinet members and political associates and trying to communicate with remaining members of the Buchanan Administration about the worsening Secession Crisis.

These were auspicious beginings for the Willard Brothers’ enterprise, and they knew it, preserving souvenirs. To this day, a copy of the Lincoln family’s bill is posted in a historic gallery near the hotel’s rear entrance, revealing to all the world that while the teetotaling Lincoln never put a glass to his lips, he was certainly willing to buy — whiskey, champagne, etc.

During the Civil War, every commander of the Union’s Army of the Potomac had occasion to put up at the Willard. Lieutenant General Grant, at war’s end commander of all Union armies, stayed there four times. Julia Ward Howe wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the Willard. And, to the embarassment of many, throughout the conflict the Round Robin Bar had to be cleaned out regularly by commanders looking for officers derelict in their duty, or just plain derelict.

The old Willard complex was demolished in 1900 and a new uniform building put up the following year. It continued to attract the nation’s most influential players. Calvin Coolidge, for instance, made the Willard his home while the widow of President Warren Harding packed and saw to her late husband’s final arrangements. In 1925 the building was expanded and in 1927 the National Committee on Historic Sites affixed a bronze plaque to it “attesting to its role in the life of the capital.” The “life of the capital” turned physically dreary, however, in the years following World War II. Downtown Washington suffered economically. The Willard changed hands but not its luck and in 1968, without advance warning to the public, let the last guests check out and locked the doors, management said, for good. Across the street in the National Press Club, several notable TV and print correspondents heard what was happening and galloped through the doors of the Round Robin for a few last drinks. Once they were pursuaded to leave and the door closed behind them, that appeared to end the hotel’s contribution to life in D.C.

In the history of the Willard, its comeback is probably more phenomenal than any deal or treaty struck in its bar or dining room. Abandoned for 15 years, a home to derelicts, then stray animals, with plants, trees and grass sprouting up in its famed lobby, it was resurrected. Picked up by the Inter-Continental Hotels corporation in 1983, it reopened in 1986 and resumed its former ways. Among the first to notice were the folks from the National Press Club; they were invited back and rebaptised the Round Robin Bar. This proved to be a solid PR move; the Willard’s reopening was mentioned on the evening TV news broadcasts of all three major networks. History lovers checking in to the Willard today should take the time to look around. They’ll note the lobby ceiling features the seal of each state in the Union; the public areas are all redone in the beaux-arts style popular in turn-of-the-century grand hotels; and “Peacock Alley” — a long brightly lit hallway bisecting the hotel front to back, once a place where mothers brought eligible daughters to be seen by potential beaux — is as physically attractive as ever. In recent years it was featured in the remake of the Garson Kanin classic movie comedy “Born Yesterday.”

The Willard Inter-Continental
1401 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20004-1010 (202) 628-9100