Mayflower Hotel

This article is about the hotel in Washington, D.C. There are other historic hotels by the name of Mayflower, including the Mayflower Hotel on the Park in New York City (closed and demolished in 2004^[1]), the Mayflower Hotel in Beirut, and the Mayflower Park Hotel in Seattle.

Mayflower Hotel
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel
Location	1127 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.
Coordinates	38°54′15.85″N 77°2′23.29″W / 38.9044028°N 77.0398028°W / 38.9044028; -77.0398028Coordinates: 38°54′15.85″N 77°2′23.29″W / 38.9044028°N 77.0398028°W / 38.9044028; -77.0398028
Built	1925
Architect	Warren & Wetmore; Robert F. Beresford
Architectural style	Beaux Arts
Governing body	Private
NRHP Reference #	83003527[2]
Added to NRHP	November 14, 1983

The Mayflower Renaissance Washington DC Hotel,^[3] known locally as simply The Mayflower, is a historic hotel in downtown Washington, DC located on Connecticut Avenue NW, two blocks north of Farragut Square (one block north of the Farragut North Metro station). It is the largest luxury hotel in the U.S. capital and the longest continuously operating hotel in the Washington D.C. area, and a rival of the nearby Willard InterContinental and Hay-Adams Hotels. The Mayflower is known as Washington, D.C.’s “Second Best Address” (second to the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.), a reference attributed to President Harry Truman during his stay at the hotel during White House renovations.^[4]

The Mayflower Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.^[5]

History

Front Entrance to Mayflower Hotel

The Mayflower was built by Allen E. Walker, the land developer behind Brookland and other residential neighborhoods of Washington. Nicknamed the "Grande Dame of Washington", at its opening on February 18, 1925, the hotel was said to contain more gold trim than any other building except the Library of Congress. The original interior design included four over life-sized portraits of the first four presidents by painter and muralist Louis Grell of Chicago.

After World War II, it was sold to Hilton Hotels. Hilton, in turn, sold the hotel in 1956 to Hotel Corporation of America, to settle an anti-trust suit. HCA sold the hotel to local investors, May-Wash Associates, in 1966. They brought in Western International Hotels to manage the hotel. In 1973, the hotel served as the temporary Chinese Embassy for a time while their new embassy building was being renovated following the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China.

In December 1981, the hotel was acquired by Stouffer Corp to be a flagship of their expanding Stouffer Hotels division^[6] and renamed the Stouffer Mayflower Hotel.^[7] It remained open while it was completely renovated and restored between 1981-1984, at a cost of $65 million.^[8] The renovation uncovered many historic decorative elements, including a skylight in the main lobby which had been covered up due to blackout regulations during World War II. Stouffer Hotels was bought by Renaissance Hotels in 1993 and the hotel became the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel.

Political Events

Shortly after opening, the Mayflower hosted a ball for the presidential inauguration of Calvin Coolidge. Although Coolidge himself never arrived, the hotel has been the location of a ball every Inauguration Day since. Franklin D. Roosevelt worked on his famous "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" inaugural address while a guest. His successor Harry S. Truman declared his intention to seek a full term in 1948 at a dinner at the Mayflower, and resided there for the first 90 days of that term while the White House was undergoing renovations. The Mayflower's lounge, Town & Country, has long been a social center for Washington's elite. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was said to lunch there daily with Clyde Tolson for over twenty years. In 1975, the Mayflower was the site of former Peace Corps and Office of Economic Opportunity director Sargent Shriver's formal announcement that he would run for President of the United States.

The hotel came into the spotlight several times in relation to political-sex scandals. President Kennedy's supposed mistress Judith Campbell Exner was established in the hotel and supposedly sneaked into the White House when his wife was away. Monica Lewinsky was staying there when her affair with Bill Clinton was in the news.^[9] The Mayflower was also the location where Lewinsky had been photographed with President Clinton at a campaign event not long before the 1996 election; this photograph would become an iconic component of the media coverage of the scandal.^[10]

On March 10, 2008, The New York Times reported that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had on the evening of February 13 patronized a high class prostitution service called Emperors Club VIP^[11] and met for over two hours with a $1,000-an-hour call girl in room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel, where Spitzer registered under the pseudonym George Fox, but with his own Fifth Avenue Manhattan address.^[12][13] The resulting scandal caused him to announce his resignation on March 12, 2008.

The Mayflower appeared in the news once again as the location of a meeting at which Hillary Clinton introduced Barack Obama to about 300 of her leading contributors on June 26, 2008.^[14]

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Renaissance Mayflower Hotel.

• Renaissance Mayflower Hotel web site
• National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places travel itinerary: Mayflower Hotel
• Mayflower Hotel Maid Finds Woman Near Death; Husband Shoots Self Through Heart
• SAH Archipedia Building Entry on Mayflower Hotel, with 2 photos