The Willard InterContinental Hotel

The Willard InterContinental Hotel. Civil War to Civil Rights.

"This hotel, in fact, may be much more justly called the center of Washington and the Union than either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department...." , Nathaniel Hawthorne, Civil War reporter for The Atlantic Monthly

, At 6:30 AM in late February 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln and his security team headed by Alan Pinkerton slipped into Willard's Hotel (an earlier version of the hotel on this site). Assassination threats dictated this quiet arrival. The Lincoln family stayed for ten days leading to his inauguration on March 4. Willard's was hosting a peace conference at the time, a last-ditch meeting of delegates from 21 states hoping, but failing, to avert civil war., During the war that ensued, Willard's Hotel guest Julia Ward Howe attended a review of troops in nearby Virginia, where she heard a new soldiers' marching son, John Brown's Body. Challenged to come up with better words, the poet awoke the next morning inspired to write "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." Her Battle Hymn of the Republic became the Union anthem., After the war, the Willard's lobby became known as the place where President Ulysses S. Grant enjoyed relaxing after work with brandy and a cigar. Although the term "lobbyist" predated Grant, it became well known as newspapers used it to describe the men who congregated in the lobby waiting to approach the president about their causes., There has been a hotel on this site since 1816. Young Henry Willard became manager in 1847, bought the hotel three years later, and brought his brothers to help him run it. During the Civil War, rooms cost between $2.75 and $4 per night and included lavish meals. A century later, in August 1863, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., finished work on his famous "I Have A Dream" speech in his suite in the Willard., When it was built in 1901, the current Willard InterContinental Hotel was one of Washington's first skyscrapers. The Beaux-Arts structure was designed by Henry Hardenbergh, whose work includes the Plaza hotel and the original Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.