Willard InterContinental Washington

thumb|The Willard InterContinental Washington hotel in Washington, D.C. The Willard InterContinental Washington is a historic luxury hotel located two blocks east of the White House. The original Willard’s Hotel was in operation from 1847 to 1900, when it was shut down for extensive renovation. The hotel was reopened in 1901 and sold by the Willard family in 1946. The hotel became unprofitable and was shut down in 1968. Years later, under new ownership, the hotel was restored and renovated. In 1986 the hotel reopened as the Willard InterContinental. Quotes At this time a number of Confederate prisoners, who had been taken in the first day's fight when our army fell back from First Battle of Bull Run Bull Run, were brought to Washington, and on passing Willard's Hotel were set upon by the crowd who usually congregated there, and pelted with stones and other missiles, which seriously wounded a number. In order to prevent the prisoners from being actually torn to pieces a company of U. S. regulars had to be called out to protect them to their quarters, the Old Brick Capitol Old Capitol prison; and during the march to that point the soldiers had repeatedly to threaten to fire upon the mob, who pressed upon them with shouts and obscene revilings. Rose O'Neal Greenhow, My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington London Richard Bentley 1863 https://books.google.com/books?id=NEB3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA25 25 2010 pbk edition 9781453813584 From these various excursions, and a good many others, (including one to Manassas, Virginia Manassas,) we gained a pretty lively idea of what was going on; but, after all, if compelled to pass a rainy day in the hall and parlors of Willard's Hotel, it proved about as profitably spent as if we had floundered through miles of Virginia mud, in quest of interesting matter. This hotel, in fact, may much more justly be called the centre of Washington and the Union than either the Capitol, the White House or the State Department. Everybody may be seen there. It is the meeting-place of the true representatives of the country,—not such as are chosen blindly and amiss by electors who take a folded ballot from the hand of a local politician, and thrust it into the ballot-box unread, but men who gravitate or are attracter hither by real business, or a native impulse to breathe the intensest atmosphere of the nation's life, or a genuine anxiety to see how this life-and-death struggle is going to deal with us. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Chiefly About War-Matters July 1862 Atlantic Monthly X LVII https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/07/chiefly-about-war-matters/306159/ 43–61 (quote from p. 57) External links Category:Hotels in the United States