The Washington Marriott Wardman Park is a hotel located at 2600 Woodley Road NW, in the Woodley Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.. The hotel is on Connecticut Avenue and is adjacent to the Woodley Park station of the Washington Metro. It is two blocks from the Omni Shoreham Hotel. In addition to its 1,152 guest rooms, the hotel contains 195,000 square feet (18,100Â m2) of total event space and 95,000 square feet (8,800Â m2) of exhibit space.
The hotel is operated pursuant to a franchise agreement with Marriott International.
The hotel's Wardman Tower wing was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 31, 1984.
History
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Built between 1917 and 1918 by local developer Harry Wardman, the Wardman Park Hotel was an eight-story, red brick structure modeled on The Homestead resort in Virginia. The hotel was the largest in the city, with 1200 rooms and 625 baths. It was nicknamed Wardman's Folly, due to its location far outside the developed area of Washington.
It opened on November 23, 1918, just days after the Armistice with Germany ending World War I. No elaborate opening festivities were held, however, as "large gatherings were prohibited because of the deadly influenza outbreak" that was then sweeping the globe. The hotel was quickly occupied due to the housing shortage caused by Washington's growth during World War I.
In 1928, the hotel was expanded with an eight-story, 350-room residential-hotel annex, designed by architect Mihran Mesrobian. That building is today the only surviving portion of the original Wardman Park, known as the Wardman Tower and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Wardman was forced to sell the hotel in 1931, due to the Great Depression, to Washington Properties.
Before the United States' entry into World War II, a British spy named Cynthia operated out of the premises as she spied on the Vichy French Embassy. At night, she would visit her lover, an embassy employee whom she had compromised, and steal top-secret documents, transporting them back to the hotel and photographing them in a lab she had set up in her room.
The hotel contained a full service drug store/pharmacy; the pharmacist was known as Doc Wardman. There was also a U.S. Post Office and in the basement one could shop at a butcher, grocery store, and dry cleaner. Despite World War II, one could always get meat, butter, and other rationed goods in the basement.
In the late 1940s, the Olympic sized hotel pool was utilized by the 5th Marine Reserves who were taught how to swim with their clothes on. Images of Army Special Forces soldiers rappelling down the side of the Sheraton Park Hotel have also been located, taken during a training exercise on October 3, 1962.
The first televised broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press took place in 1947 in the Wardman Tower, where host Lawrence Spivak was a resident. Other shows broadcast from the hotel include The Camel News Caravan, The Today Show (Frank Blair segments), and The Arthur Murray Dance Program.
In 1953, Washington Properties sold the hotel to Sheraton Hotels. Renamed the Sheraton-Park Hotel, the largely residential hotel was gradually converted to house mainly overnight guests. Substantial additions were made to the property, transforming it into a full-scale convention hotel, including large new ballrooms and the 1964 addition known as the Motor Inn and later known as the Park Tower.
By the late 1970s, it was decided that the 1918 main building was outdated and unable to be modernized. Construction began in 1977 on a modern replacement hotel, immediately adjacent on the property. When it opened in 1980, as the Sheraton Washington Hotel, the original building closed and was demolished.
In 1998, following a protracted lawsuit against Sheraton by the hotel's then owners, John Hancock Insurance and the Sumitomo Corporation, Marriott International took over management of the property, renaming the hotel the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. In 1998, Thayer Lodging Group of Annapolis, Maryland purchased the hotel for $227 million and spent another $100 million on renovations. In 2005, the hotel was sold to JBG Smith and CIM Group for $300 million.
On November 20, 2008, while giving a speech at the hotel to the Federalist Society, United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed. He lost consciousness but was talking when he was led away to George Washington University Hospital.
Conversion of a portion of the hotel to condominiums
In 2015, JBG renovated floors 3-8 of the Wardman Tower into 32 luxury condominiums. The first and second floors remain part of the hotel. The condos are separate from the hotel and do not share an entrance or connecting interior passageways. The shape of the structureâ€"a circular core structure with four equidistant projecting wingsâ€"led the architects, ACG Architects and interior designer, Deborah Berke Partners, to create an entry hall, narrow long gallery (off of which is a toilet as well as a guest bedroom with full bath), and wide gallery (off of which is a guest bedroom and a master bedroom, each with full bath) which led to the kitchen, living room, and dining room at the end of each wing. Six two-bedroom, three-bath, 2,600-square-foot (240 m2) condominiums are on the first four floors, while the two upper floors have four four-bedroom, four-bath, 4,800-square-foot (450 m2) condominiums each. A four-bedroom, four-bath, 4,800-square-foot (450 m2) penthouse condominium occupies the roof, and has access to a private terrace. The building also includes a rooftop deck with outdoor kitchen for use by all residents, a fitness center, a library/lounge, private garden, private storage units, two entertainment rooms, a catering kitchen, and 64 parking spaces.
The project was financed by a $54 million investment from North America Sekisui House LLC (NASH), the North American division of the largest homebuilding corporation in Japan, in February 2014. One of the condominium units sold for $8.4 million.
Residents
The Wardman Tower building has been home to a number of politicians and other public figures, including two U.S. presidents:
- President Lyndon B. Johnson for about 45 days as Vice-President
- Vice President Spiro Agnew
- Vice President Charles Curtis
- Actress Marlene Dietrich
- Senator Bob Dole
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Former airline Trans World Airlines (TWA) President Jack Frye and wife, Helen
- U.S. Attorney Paul M. Gagnon
- Senator Barry Goldwater
- Secretary of State Cordell Hull
- President Herbert Hoover
- Socialite Perle Mesta
- Senator Chuck Robb
- Chief Justice Frederick M. Vinson
- Vice President Henry Wallace
- Chief Justice Earl Warren
° Senator Milton Young
- Senator Prescott Bush
- Senator Prentiss M. Brown
- David Eisenhower and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, during the summer of 1970
- Former Peruvian Ambassador to the United States Mr. and Mrs. Celso Pastor de la Torre
- President of the British Cartographic Society Dr Alexander Kent, during the summer of 2017
Vice President Thomas R. Marshall lived for a short time in the Wardman Park Hotel that was destroyed in 1980.
Events
As one of the largest event spaces in Washington DC, the Marriott Wardman Park hosts many annual events including:
- Conservative Political Action Conference
- International Telecommunications Week (ITW) trade show and idea summit
- American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) annual meeting
- Anime USA, an anime convention
The Hotel is included in the rotation of cities in which the American Contract Bridge League holds North American Bridge Championship tournaments.
The annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board was held at the Marriott Wardman Park for nearly 60 years, although it was moved to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in 2015.
Cvent ranking
In March 2017, Cvent, an event management company, ranked the Marriott Wardman Park 87th in its annual list of the top U.S. hotels for meetings.
References
External links
- Washington Marriott Wardman Park official website
- Wardman Tower official website