The History of the Willard Hotel
This Washington, D.C. landmark has seen a lot of American history since 1816.
The Willard Hotel in 2016
Issue #361 American History July 11, 2023
As Jack Smith, the Special Prosecutor for the Department of Justice, continues his investigation into the insurrection on January 6, 2021, he is looking into meetings held by Trump and his associates at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.
The Willard Hotel is located at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, just two blocks from the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Willard Hotel was once made up of six structures in 1816 and then reconfigured into its current structure in 1901. It was renamed "Willard's Hotel" in 1847 by Henry Willard, when he leased the six buildings, combined them into a single structure, and enlarged it into a four-story hotel.
Throughout the years, the Willard Hotel has been a silent observer of many pivotal moments in history.
Almost every president has stayed at or visited the Willard Hotel since its beginning, as well as numerous international guests, celebrities, and other government officials.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in his hotel room at the Willard in 1963, in the days leading up to his August 28 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.[5]
Among the Willard's many other famous guests were P. T. Barnum, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, General Tom Thumb, Samuel Morse, the Duke of Windsor, Harry Houdini, Gypsy Rose Lee, Gloria Swanson, Emily Dickinson, Jenny Lind, Charles Dickens, Bert Bell, and Joe Paterno.
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The Willard Hotel was among the first to embrace the telephone in 1878 and introduced the city to the first moving-picture show.
In February 1861, the hotel was at the heart of a last-ditch attempt to stave off the Civil War when delegates from 21 states met for what was called the Peace Congress. Although their efforts were unsuccessful, the meeting is now commemorated on a plaque on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the hotel.
In the days leading up to the January 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol, a series of rooms and suites in the hotel functioned as an informal "command center" headed by Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani for a White House plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
During a January 5 meeting at the hotel, lawyer John C. Eastman went through his January 4 memo describing his theory that Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify the elector slates from battleground states the following day, and hand Trump a second term instead.
As we continue to watch the unfolding of the cases against those who tried to overturn a free and fair election and destroy our democracy, listen for references to the Willard Hotel as it takes its place in the middle of another historical event.
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