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Friday, November 23, 2012 Capital NewsC
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disrepair and the urban issues of its neighborhood made it a less desirable address for business and leisure travelers. It closed in 2000 but reopened as a Renaissance property in 2008 with fewer but larger rooms, modern amenities and an emphasis on the business trade and community events.
Pres. slept here
PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO
Gary A. Warner CONTRIBUTOR
“Warren Harding died here” doesn’t quite have the tourist draw of “Washington slept here,” but for the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, the distinction of being the only hotel where a president of the United States drew his last breath is enough to put it into the pantheon of presidential sleep spots. Scores of hotels around the country can lay claim to a little White House luster, having bedded down famous men before, during or after their stints in the White House. Most will tack the term “Presidential Suite” onto the spot and start charging the highest rates in the house. But there are a handful of places around the country that have earned a tighter tie with presidential history. Two gave us political terms we still use—“lobbyist” and “smoke-filled rooms.” Another might have cost one man the presidency and later could have cost a president his life. It’s not surprising that the majority of the places on my short list are big, old, luxurious hotels in a few key cities. Washington, Chicago and New York are on the list. San Francisco has two. Here’s my collection of must-stay presidential hotels, with a list of also-rans.
CONTRIBUTED
WHEN THE GOING gets hot, the hot get going looking for reduced summer rates at the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. In its former glory, it was the hotel of choice for Benjamin Harris, William McKinley, William Taft, Warren G. Harding and other presidents.
THE WILLARD, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The nation’s capital is crammed with hotels containing presidential lore. The Hay-Adams near the White House was built on the site of homes of John Adams’ grandson and Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary. Along with introducing air conditioning to the sweltering summer capital, it was used as a fundraising spot related to the Iran-contra affair during President Ronald Reagan’s term. Barack Obama moved in for two weeks before his inauguration when the Bush administration said the usual guest lodging, Blair House, was unavailable. Until recently, another hotel in town was synonymous with political corruption: the Watergate. It’s now just offices and condominiums. But
for a true slice of American history, nothing can beat the Willard. A couple of doors down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, it has hosted presidents going back to Zachary Taylor. Lincoln snuck into town after his 1860 election (Washington was basically a Southern town and many in the capital were friendly to the secessionist cause) and used the Willard as his pre-inauguration headquarters. Lincoln’s bill is on display in the hotel’s small museum. But its place in the dictionary was cemented by Ulysses S. Grant, the great Civil War general turned notso-great president. Grant had the habit of making irregular strolls to the Willard to enjoy a cigar. Men seeking to influence legislation or gain political appointments would hang
out, hoping they could elbow their way to the president to make their case. The crowd that loitered in the lobby were dubbed “lobbyists.” The term has stuck for advocates of all types who seek to bend laws and regulations by plying the halls of Congress, the offices on K Street, the party circuit and, yes, occasionally a hotel lobby—including the still-sparkling Willard.
THE BLACKSTONE HOTEL, CHICAGO
No smoking is allowed at the hotel on the south end of downtown Chicago, an ironic policy given that it was plumes of cigar, cigarette and pipe smoke that gave the hotel its place in presidential history. Chicago was a frequent choice for political conventions before World War II, hosting 26.
It was often a choice to keep politics away from the East Coast power centers and also to bring in as many people as possible, with its excellent rail connections to anywhere in the country and huge numbers of hotel rooms. With many of the conventions going on at the old Chicago Coliseum, the Blackstone was frequently the center of the wheeling and dealing that went on in the days before political conventions were a just-for-TV advertisement for each political party. The hotel’s pinnacle came during the 1920 Republican Party convention. On the first ballot, the leader was retired Army Gen. Leonard Wood (the major U.S. Army base in Missouri is named for him) with 287.5 votes. Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden was second with 211.5
votes. The convention at the Coliseum remained deadlocked and the action moved to a group of power brokers who gathered behind closed doors at the Blackstone to horsetrade federal jobs and money for votes. On the 10th ballot, Warren Harding—who had received a scant 65 votes on the first ballot—was proclaimed the nominee. Raymond Clapper, a reporter for the United Press wire service, wrote that the victory had not come on the convention floor, but in the “smoke-filled rooms” of the power brokers. Adding to the mystique, the hotel was a favorite of Chicago mobster Al Capone. The term became synonymous with decisions made out of sight by power brokers. By the end of the past century, the Blackstone had fallen into
The hotel was brand new when the 1906 earthquake struck, sending the most famous opera singer of the day, Enrico Caruso, running into Market Street, reportedly in his bedclothes. The terrified Italian tenor, visiting San Francisco as part of an American tour, vowed never to return. He kept his promise. The hotel was gutted by the fire that raged after the earthquake. Three years later it reopened as the city’s premier hotel address. In 1923, it hosted President Warren G. Harding, the handsome Ohio newspaper publisher whom historians rank with Grant as among the worst presidents in our nation’s history. Harding had been ill with flu-like symptoms when he left for a trip to the Northwest, which included playing golf in Vancouver and making speeches in Seattle. He was scheduled to go to Yosemite, but instead, the weak chief executive was taken to San Francisco and installed in room 8064, a high-floor suite overlooking Market Street and Lotta’s Fountain, a gathering place for survivors of the 1906 earthquake. While his wife was reading to him, Harding passed away, most likely from a heart condition—it’s not completely known, because Mrs. Harding would not allow an autopsy. After decline
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