Willard Hotel
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Willard Hotel
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| Location | 1401-1409 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., U.S. |
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| Coordinates | 38°53′47.22″N 77°1′56.46″W / 38.8964500°N 77.0323500°WCoordinates: 38°53′47.22″N 77°1′56.46″W / 38.8964500°N 77.0323500°W |
| Built | Original six structures: 1816 Unified structure: 1847 Current structure: 1901 |
| Architect |
Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (hotel) Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates and Vlastimil Koubek, annex |
| Architectural style | Beaux-Arts |
| NRHP Reference # | 74002177 |
| Added to NRHP | February 15, 1974 |
The Willard InterContinental Washington is a historic luxury Beaux-Artshotel located at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. Among its facilities are numerous luxurious guest rooms, several restaurants, the famed Round Robin Bar, the Peacock Alley series of luxury shops, and voluminous function rooms. It is two blocks east of the White House, and two blocks west of the Metro Center station of the Washington Metro.
The first structures to be built at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue NW were six small houses constructed by Colonel John Tayloe III in 1816. Tayloe leased the six buildings to Joshua Tennison, who named them Tennison's Hotel. The structures served as a hotel for the next three decades, the leaseholder and name changing several times: Williamson's Mansion Hotel, Fullers American House, and the City Hotel. By 1847, the structures were in disrepair and Tayloe's son, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, was desperate to find a tenant who would maintain the structures and run them profitably.
The Willard Hotel was formally founded by Henry Willard when he leased the six buildings in 1847, combined them into a single structure, and enlarged it into a four-story hotel he renamed the Willard Hotel. Willard purchased the hotel property from Benjamin Tayloe in 1864, but a dispute over the purchase price and the form of payment (paper currency or gold coin) led to a major equity lawsuit which ended up in the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court split the difference in Willard v. Tayloe. 75 U.S. 557 (1869): The purchase price would remain the same, but Willard must pay in gold coin (which had not depreciated in value the way paper currency had).
The present 12-story structure, designed by famed hotel architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, opened in 1901. It suffered a major fire in 1922 which caused $250,000 (equivalent to $3,577,038 as of 2016), in damages. Among those who had to be evacuated from the hotel were Vice President Calvin Coolidge, several U.S. senators, composer John Philip Sousa, motion picture producer Adolph Zukor, newspaper publisher Harry Chandler, and numerous other media, corporate, and political leaders who were present for the annual Gridiron Dinner. For many years the Willard was the only hotel from which one could easily visit all of downtown Washington, and consequently it has housed many dignitaries during its history.
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