Willard InterContinental Washington
- Architect
- Henry Janeway Hardenbergh
- Year
- 1901
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
The Willard Hotel traces its site to 1816, when Colonel John Tayloe III, builder of the Octagon House, put up six houses leased out as Tennison's Hotel, later renamed several times as it changed hands. By 1847 those structures had fallen into disrepair, and the property was rebuilt into the Beaux-Arts luxury hotel designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, architect of New York's Plaza Hotel and Waldorf-Astoria, opening in 1901 two blocks from the White House. Jointly owned today by Carr Companies and InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, it remains a working luxury hotel and member of Historic Hotels of America.
the building
From Tayloe's houses to a hotel. The site began in 1816 as six small houses built by Colonel John Tayloe III of the Octagon House, leased to Joshua Tennison and known as Tennison's Hotel. Over the next three decades the leaseholders and names changed repeatedly, through Williamson's Mansion Hotel, Fuller's American House, and the City Hotel, before falling into disrepair by 1847.
The Round Robin Bar and Peacock Alley. The hotel today holds the Round Robin Bar and the Peacock Alley run of high-end shops alongside its guest rooms, restaurants, and function rooms, two blocks east of the White House and two blocks west of Metro Center station.
the style
Hardenbergh designed the Willard in the Beaux-Arts style, giving Pennsylvania Avenue a grand hotel facade to match the monumental federal buildings nearby.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, the Willard's architect, also designed New York's Plaza Hotel and Waldorf-Astoria, placing this 1901 Washington hotel among the era's most prominent grand hotel commissions.
significance
The Willard is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites, and is a member of Historic Hotels of America.
nearby
- Hotel Washington
- Chase's Theater and Riggs Building
- National Metropolitan Bank
- Treasury Department
- Westory Building
- Commercial National Bank