This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in: June 16, 1972. I was nine years old at the time and for the next couple of years, I consumed the news reports and witness testimony of the Watergate scandal like a can of Pringles potato chips: one after another. During the ensuing years, I collected everything I could find related to this greatest of American political scandals. Autographs, buttons, paper items, artwork, and even a piece of the carpet from the floor of the DNC office in the Watergate. During the first decade of the new millennium, I took my family to Washington DC on a few occasions to stay in that famous hotel. We visited rooms 214 and 314 where the burglars stayed on the night of the break-in, once sneaking in while the maid’s back was turned.
The Watergate was still a swanky hotel 30 years after the break-in that made it infamous. The kids lounged around in snow-white bathrobes with the Watergate crest on the pocket and swam in the underground pool housed on the lowest level of the hotel. I can still recall the kids giggling as the oldsters did their water aerobics at the opposite end of the pool while we swam. As time marches on, that scene hits a little closer to home than it did two decades ago. The last time we stayed there, in 2009, the pool was gone, cemented over, and made into a workout room.
The rooms were plush, making it easy to imagine why the rich and powerful stayed there. The bookshelves in the rooms were filled with books. Real books that you could take off the shelf and peruse like you lived there or something. I remember during our last stay, we were informed that Cokie Roberts (another one of my media heroes) had stayed in the room just before us and when we went in, she had left an autographed copy of her book “Ladies of Liberty” on the settee. That same trip, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in a limo right under our balcony. A hotel employee informed us that she lived there and often ate at the restaurant on the lower level. My daughter Jasmine stayed on that balcony eating pizza for an hour just to catch a glimpse of her and to this day she insists she dropped a piece of sausage on Condi’s head. Then, sometime around 2010, everything changed at the Watergate hotel. But first, a little background on the Watergate.
For over a century, the land upon which the complex sits belonged to the Gas Works of the Washington Gas Light Company, which produced “manufactured gas” (a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, and other flammable and nonflammable gases) for heating, cooking, and lighting throughout the city. Gas production ceased at the site in 1947, and the plant was demolished shortly thereafter. During the 1950s, the World Bank considered building its international headquarters there and on the adjacent site now occupied by the Kennedy Center, but never acted upon it. In 1960, the property was purchased by the project’s developer, Rome-based Società Generale Immobiliare (SGI) for $10 million, which built the complex.
It is important to note that the Watergate is more than a hotel, it is a complex of six buildings covering a total of 10 acres just north of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and an easy walk to the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol Mall. The complex of buildings includes The Watergate West cooperative apartments, rhe Watergate 600 office building, the Watergate Hotel, the Watergate East cooperative apartments, the Watergate South cooperative apartments, and the Watergate Office Building, where the Watergate burglary happened. Located in the Foggy Bottom district on the edge of the Potomac River, the Watergate hotel is a short 30-minute walk to the White House and the Lincoln Memorial. And in Washington DC, just like New York City, EVERYBODY walks. The nation’s capital has often been described as the fittest city in the country, so a 30-minute walk ‘tis but a mere stroll to a citizen of the District.
The Washington Gas Light Company sold the development rights for the location in a deal that stipulated that the new structure would be supplied exclusively by the company. Luigi Moretti of the University of Rome was the chief architect. The complex was the first mixed-use development in the District of Columbia and was intended to help define the area as a business and residential rather than an industrial district. The site became known as the Watergate Complex and was fully completed in 1971. According to the Historic Washington website, “The Watergate complex was intended to be a “city within a city”, and provide so many amenities that residents would not need to leave. Among these was a 24-hour receptionist, room service provided by the Watergate Hotel, health club, restaurants, shopping mall, medical and dental offices, grocery, pharmacy, post office, and liquor store. At the time, it was also the largest renewal effort in the District of Columbia undertaken solely with private funds. Because of the curves in the structure, the Watergate complex was one of the first major construction projects in the U.S. in which computers played a significant role in the design work.”
Problems with the building’s construction became apparent shortly after its 1966 occupancy. By 1968, the roof was leaking which prompted the District press to dub the building the “Potomac Titanic.” Problems continued to plague the complex throughout the seventies but the Watergate Complex managed to maintain its exclusivity into the early 1990s. Far from shunning their infamous reputation, some merchants capitalized on it. One of the stores within the complex was an art gallery that specialized in charcoal caricatures of Watergate-themed scenes. Most often the large framed images depicted Richard Nixon, usually wrapped in a coil of audio tape, posed arms crossed while standing in front of the White House surrounded by the now familiar figures from the scandal: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Hunt, Dean, Mitchell, Liddy and others. The artist was savvy enough to add a “hook” to his work in the form of a caption reading “Painted at the Watergate” on every piece.
Although the Watergate changed hands several times from the late 1970s to the 2000s, little redevelopment of the site has occurred in the years since the Watergate was first built. The complex still includes three luxury apartment buildings, the hotel/office building, and two office buildings. As a result, a trip to the Watergate feels a little like traveling back to the 70s scandal era. The Watergate complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 21, 2005, meaning that the exterior cannot legally be changed. The inside is a different story though. Only one staircase remains from the original hotel. The luxury rooms and suites start from $300 a night and the Kingbird restaurant (reportedly Condoleezza Rice’s favorite) is upscale and under the guidance of a swanky French executive chef. The clientele remains as prestigious as ever, too.
The Watergate Hotel of the 2020s hasn’t backed away from its past either. The hotel’s blog reports that Woodward and Bernstein (as well as the police officers who caught the Watergate burglars) are at the hotel regularly to give talks to special guests or at commercial events. Room 214, used by Liddy and Hunt on the night of the break-in, has been reimagined as “The Scandal Room,” a museum/shrine to the scandal and cover-up. The hotel runs fantastic tours of the room, and you can stay in it for $1,200 per night. All the hotel’s key cards are adorned with the slogan “no need to break in,” the room stationary is headed with “stolen from the Watergate,” and if you’re put on hold you’ll hear the voice of former President Richard M. Nixon rather than any soothing instrumental jazz. The number to ring to hear that voice? (844) 617-1972 – the date of the Watergate break-in.
And what happened to the Howard Johnson hotel across Virginia Avenue from the Watergate, the perch from which the hapless Alfred C. Baldwin III was tasked with lookout duty? Originally built in 1962, rooms 419 and 723 were booked by the burglar crew to monitor the Watergate hotel break-in ten years later. After the hotel’s closure in 1999, George Washington University purchased the site for graduate student housing. Now the old hotel building is used as a dormitory for some 200 GW students. No evidence remains to harken back to its Watergate connection.
Sometime around 2010, the Watergate became nearly impossible to book an overnight stay in. Web presence was nonexistent in the form of a static “under construction” banner and calls to the provided phone number went unanswered. The hotel had come full circle to those Nixon/Reagan years of exclusivity. Oh sure, today, if you have the money, you can stay there. But you’d better start saving now. If you have a desire to travel to the Watergate on the 50th anniversary and spend the night where history happened, it will set you back anywhere from $399 to $ 599 per night. I’d suggest you pay your tab in sequentially numbered one hundred dollar bills, just for old time’s sake.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
