|
The Washington Marriott Wardman Park is a Marriott International hotel located in Washington, D.C., in the United States. The hotel is situated in the Woodley Park neighborhood at 2600 Woodley Road NW and Connecticut Avenue NW, adjacent to the Woodley Park station of the Washington Metro system. It is two blocks from another major hotel, the Omni Shoreham Hotel. The Wardman Park is the largest hotel in the capital, with 1,156 guest rooms, of total event space, and of exhibit space. An important landmark in the city's development, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 31, 1984. ==History== 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.〔http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/84000869.pdf〕 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,〔http://philippine-defenders.lib.wv.us/QuanNews/quan1900s/quan1960s/february_1965_quan.pdf〕 just days after the armistice ending World War I. No elaborate opening festivities were held, however, as all public gatherings had been made illegal while the city was in the grips of the cataclysmic 1918 flu pandemic then sweeping the globe. The hotel was an immediate success 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.〔Thayer Hotel Investors, 1999, www.hotels-online.com/News〕 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, espionage and intrigue enveloped the historic hotel with a beguiling British spy named Cynthia, who operated out of the premises as she spied on the French Vichy Embassy. Cloaked in the darkness of 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 old 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 WWII, one could always get meat, butter, and other rationed goods in the basement. In the late 1940s, the hotel pool (Olympic size) 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''.〔 Washington Properties sold the hotel to Sheraton Hotels in 1953.〔 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 1999, Thayer Hotel Investors of Annapolis, Md., purchased the Marriott Wardman Park. These investors hoped, in 2004, to sell the hotel. In 2005, the hotel was sold to the JGB Companies and the CIM Group.〔(Thayer Lodging Group Sells Washington's Marriott Wardman Park Hotel for a Record $300 Million; Firm also Sells Single Portfolio of Eight Hotels )〕 Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed on November 20, 2008, while giving a speech to the Federalist Society in Washington D.C. at the hotel. He lost consciousness but was talking when he was led away to George Washington University Hospital.〔 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Marriott Wardman Park」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|