The Presidential connection to the Washington Hilton

I spent a week at the Washington Hilton hotel near Dupont Circle in Washington DC.

Having previously stayed there I have posted a review of the room and the hotel before so today I want to inform you on the Presidential connection to the hotel.

It is situated in Kalorama near Adams Morgan. This neighborhood and others to the west of Dupont Circle are informally known as ‘Embassy row’ as there are many different countries embassies in the area.

https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/dcawhhh-washington-hilton/

The Presidential connection:

As the hotel website says, Presidents have been visiting this hotel since 1965.

The historical plaque below explains the most notorious visit by an American president.

On March 30, 1981 President Reagan had made the 100th visit by a sitting American president to the hotel, and then he was shot while leaving.

As you can also see from the plaque President Reagan recovered and visited the Hilton hotel several more times.

This hotel is also the host of the correspondents dinner where fun is made of the President by a comedian and then the President makes fun of the press and others.

The President’s Walk.

The International Ballroom is the venue for these events. It is an interesting design having been created in the 60’s. With the oval patterns in the ceiling and the oval shape of the room you would almost expect to see Elvis perform there.

The most fascinating aspect of the International Ballroom is the President’s Walk. This is the hallway behind the ballroom that Presidents walk down to enter the ballroom from backstage and it contains photos of every US President, their wives and prominent children. The children are only until President Taft in 1912. From then on it only features Presidents and their wives.

Here is the start of the walk with President George Washington and his wife Martha. Then follows President John Adams and President Thomas Jefferson and so on.

Did you know that there were 14 Presidents between President Washington and President Lincoln ?

The end of the hallway is where Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and President William Taft are featured.

A fascinating daughter is President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She was married to Nicholas Longworth III, the 38th speaker of the house and she had her only child from her affair with Senator William Borah. When she and Longworth got married in 1906 it was the social event of the season.

She always stayed involved in politics (at a time when women were not a prominent part of the process). She voted against her cousin Franklin Roosevelt, she was enamored with the Kennedy family, she developed a friendship with Richard Nixon when he was vice-president, and she was a lifelong member of the Republican Party.

There is a picture of her greeting Queen Elizabeth II at the White House state dinner in 1976 during President Ford’s term. She met 16 sitting US presidents during her life, possibly the person who has met the most serving US presidents in history.

The other walls starts with President Woodrow Wilson and his wife and ends with the sitting president, President Trump. President Grover Cleveland is the only other president besides President Trump to have their picture on the wall twice.

So that is the connection the Washington Hilton has with the presidency of the United States.

Next time you are in the Washington Hilton have a look at the President’s Walk.