Opening bids for the Watergate Hotel — yes, that Watergate — are $1 million, but it’s estimated that new owners would need to be $100 million more into renovating the property. It’s been closed since 2007, awaiting a conversion to condos that never happened.
The Washington Post story makes for interesting reading. I’d heard as much as anyone about the “plumbers” and the burglars and the CREEPs who were behind it all. And, as a journalist, I obviously have some affection for Woodward and Bernstein (or Redford and Hoffman) but I’d never really had any sense of the Watergate Hotel as a place — as a physical building. The Post does a pretty good job of that description, even it it seems to be written primarily to evoke nostalgia in people who have actually been there:
“Eighty percent of the rooms have water views, and they’re not great — they’re spectacular.”
…
The Watergate’s residential neighbors recall the beautiful browns and yellows that adorned the interior, the marble floors, the painting of Queen Elizabeth that greeted guests as they entered the elevators, the restaurants with old-fashioned furnishings.
“I miss the light that the Watergate provided,” said Bill Diedrich, a Watergate East resident. “It’s a light that should be re-lit.”
Grant Hamilton
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