A Window at the Historic Hay Adams Hotel
by Cora Wandel
Title
A Window at the Historic Hay Adams Hotel
Artist
Cora Wandel
Medium
Photograph
Description
This is one of several windows near the entrance to the historic Hay-Adams Hotel located "across the street" from the White House in Washington, DC (Lafayette Park is between the executive mansion and the hotel). The Hay-Adams, which is on Lafayette Square, opened in 1928 and was built on the ground where the homes of statesman John Hay and writer Henry Adams once stood (the author's wife "Clover" (Marian Hooper Adams) famously committed suicide in the townhouse they owned on the square, and it is said that her ghost haunts the hotel that now occupies the land on which she died; her spirit is believed to roam the hallways leaving a trail of almonds, the distinct smell of Potassium cyanide, which she used to kill herself). In 2009 for the two weeks before Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African-American President of the United States, he and his family stayed at the hotel. The Hay-Adams has one of the best views of the White House, and if you see a newscast where a political commentator is somewhere high up with a view of the executive mansion low behind them, that vantage point is probably being filmed from the rooftop or one of the higher floors of the hotel, where most major news organizations rent space. Interesting, a popular slogan of the Hay-Adams is that they are "where nothing is overlooked but the White House".
Lafayette Square, which surrounds Lafayette Park, has several historic homes and buildings in addition to the Hay-Adams. These include "Church of the Presidents" (St. John's Episcopal Church), Blair House (the President's official guest residence), Decatur House, one of the oldest homes in the District, and a boarding house in part of the 1800s where several prominent politicians lived while serving in the government, and the home of President James Madison and his wife Dolley, who outlived her husband by a couple decades and lived and died in the famous yellow house on a corner of the square. The Hay-Adams Hotel is part of the Lafayette Square Historic District as well as a member of the Historic Hotels of America.
Uploaded
October 23rd, 2018
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