questioned, disputed and negotiated: the architectural style, the bulk, height and density, the obstruction of views, the office-residential mix. Later came lawsuits from residents concerning the quality of the mechanical systems and construction (there were leaks) and, thanks to Attorney General John Mitchell having a Watergate address, a protest following the 1970 Chicago Seven verdict. The first completed building, in May of 1965, was Watergate East, 2500 Virginia Avenue. Its 238 coop apartments began to be occupied that October. Soon after, the retail space filled up, offering, among other amenities, a post office, a bank, a florist, a liquor store, a Safeway and a Peoples Drug. The hotel and its connected office building came next, opening March 30, 1967. On the top floor was a restaurant, the Roman Terrace (Italian, naturalmente). Fatefully, one of the original office tenants was the Democratic National Committee, occupying the entire sixth floor. To run the hotel, Cecchi brought in Gabor Olah de Garab, who escaped to Italy from Soviet-occupied Hungary in 1948. After studying hotel management in Lausanne, Switzerland, and working at Italian luxury hotels, Olah de Garab was the Watergate Hotel’s general manager for 18 years. He later retired to Cecchi’s Leisure World and died in 2014, age 89. All five pieces fell into place early in 1971 when the last building, 600 New Hampshire Ave. NW, containing offices, was completed. In October of the following year, Les Champs, a cluster of more than two dozen luxury boutiques including Gucci and Yves St. Laurent, made its entrance. The scene was set for the downfall of Nixon and his “Republican Bastille,” as the Watergate had become known. Beginning with Republican Party fundraiser Anna Chennault, widow of World War II General Claire Chennault, several Nixon administration officials became Watergate residents, notably Mitchell, Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans, Secretary of Transportation John Volpe, Republi-
can National Committee Chairman Bob Dole, Nixon speechwriter Victor Lasky and Nixon’s personal secretary Rose Mary Woods of tapeerasing fame, whose apartment was burglarized in 1969. The initial break-in by Committee to ReElect the President operatives came on May 28, 1972, when DNC phones were bugged, then monitored from the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge across Virginia Avenue. During a June 17 follow-up break-in, the burglars, who had rented two rooms in the Watergate Hotel, were arrested. In the early 1980s, the complex recovered from its Nixonian notoriety as President Ronald Reagan’s White House West, stomping grounds for “the Group,” an inner circle of Reagan’s California fundraisers and advisors. Among the members were State Department Chief of Protocol Lee Annenberg and her businessman husband Walter, U.S. Information Agency Director Charles Wick and Nancy Reagan’s friend Betsy Bloomindale and her husband Alfred. The Group frequented Jean-Louis, chef Jean-Louis Palladin’s restaurant, which had opened in 1979, bringing the city some serious culinary recognition. When Palladin died of lung cancer in 2001, his New York Times obituary said: “Chefs and food lovers from around the world would take the walk from the Watergate lobby through a corridor lined with wine bottles to Jean-Louis. In the small dining room, where the amber walls exuded warmth and elegance, they would scan the short menu, written each morning by Mr. Palladin himself.” The Washington Post obit, headlined “Jean-Louis Palladin, Watergate Chef, Dies,” mentioned the restaurant’s wine cellar of more than 60,000 bottles and its relatively low profitability of less than $50,000 per year, which led to its closing in 1996. All in all, there are about 600 units in the Watergate’s three residential buildings, East, West and South. Among the famous residents other than those mentioned elsewhere have been Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alan Greenspan,
Top Left: Watergate Hotel owners, Rakel and Jacques Cohen. Paul Morigi, Getty Images. Bottom Left: The Next Whiskey Bar, inspired by the Doors song. Paul Morigi, Getty Images. Top Right: Check-in for the hotel’s June 14 grand opening party: “No need to break in.”Paul Morigi, Getty Images. Bottom Right: Jean-Louis Palladin, the charismatic chef who opened the Watergate Hotel’s Jean-Louis Restaurant, brought Washington, D.C., culinary excellence and verve and transformed the dining scene. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Russell Long, Clare Boothe Luce, Robert McNamara, Paul O’Neill, Condoleezza Rice, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ben Stein, Herbert Stein and John Warner and Elizabeth Taylor. And Monica Lewinsky’s mother, Marcia. Photographer Philip Bermingham, who has lived there since the late 1990s, calls it “either the safest pace in the world or the most dangerous place in the world,” given the presence of, for example, the Doles, Rice, Madeleine Albright and Caspar Weinberger, along with the nearby Saudi Embassy. When Plácido Domingo was artistic director of Washington National Opera, he would joke to Bermingham, “Neighbor, can I give you a ride [to the Kennedy Center] in my limo?”
RETURN OF 1960S GLAMOUR The Watergate Hotel closed Aug. 1, 2007, for a renovation by Monument Realty that — due to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers — never got underway. (Earlier, when the developer sought to convert the hotel to coop apartments, residents in the other buildings were opposed.) After an auction with no takers, a failed bid by Monument to repurchase the hotel and a winning bid that collapsed, all in 2009, Euro Capital Properties made its move the following year. Overseen by architect Bahram Kamali of BBGM and Grunley Construction, the renovation by Euro Capital completely replaced the systems, increased the number of guest rooms
to 336 and reconfigured the public and meeting spaces. Much of the original architecture was preserved, not only for aesthetic purposes, but because the entire complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. The goal of the hotel’s redesign was to return to the pre-Watergate Watergate, so to speak, while also incorporating playful references to the “All the President’s Men” era (the toll-free phone number 844-617-1972, key cards that read “No need to break in,” Nixon’s voice in the bathrooms). The lobby colors are bold, with a lot of red. “This is the color of the ’60s,” says Cohen. “I didn’t want the kitchy ’60s, but very, very elegant.” The scent, too, is red: Red Flower Oakwood, a botanical. And the music (“Show me the way to the next whisky bar…”) is 1960s. The Watergate Hotel’s ambiance is retro, in other words, but also reflective of a new Washington, the Washington with a mixeduse development called CityCenterDC. Cohen feels that D.C. residents are more open now, comfortable with a pampered lifestyle. Thinking back to her college years, she says, “People were embarrassed to go to Tysons Corner.” D.C.’s more sophisticated arts and food scenes seem to go well with an appreciative glance at what might be called Washington’s Swinging Sixties. “We want to bring this hotel back before the scandal,” says Cohen, a millennial who hadn’t been born when Nixon resigned. “I think Washington deserves it. The hotel scene needs to catch up.”
GMG, INC. October 26, 2016
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