A Many-Storied Inn

The staff grew accustomed to their rich and famous clientele, accustomed to their needs.

"People like privacy," says Anane, the food and beverage manager. "We respect privacy. We don't interfere." His passion, he says, is to make people comfortable.

Anane remembers Gladys Knight. She stayed here the night before performing at the White House, he says. "She had a very special soup. She stayed here about four to five days. I was making that soup on a daily basis. A vegetarian soup. It was a thing she must have on a daily basis."

Anane recalls when President Clinton came to speak. "It was his second term. When it came time for him to give his speech, the spotlights went out. I went back to turn them on. Thirty seconds later, they came down again. He looked at me and said, 'Young man, I'm okay. Just leave the spotlights alone.' He continued speaking."

Jose Garcia, a sous-chef who has worked at the hotel for 26 years, remembers Clinton and the lamb chop. "One day, when the Bill Clinton was over here, I had a tray of lamb chops," Garcia says. "I come out with a tray of lamb chops. And Bill Clinton was close to the door. He came to me and took a lamb chop and tapped me on the back" to signal his thanks.

And they continue with the lists of the famous who have walked through this lobby.

Jack Palance gave autographs. Harrison Ford came to the Sky Terrace and bought drinks for everybody. The Rotary Club had weekly lunches here. This was home to the Masons for 50 years.

Then there were the ordinary celebrities who came back year after year, who always wanted to stay in the same room. Who invited the hotel staff into their lives, into their private despair, to sit down and talk a while. Then tipped them when they left.

"Susan Lucci of 'All My Children,' she stayed in one of my rooms," says Anne Speight, housekeeping supervisor, whose mother also worked at the hotel. "Ernest Borgnine. He stayed on the fourth floor, my mom's side. She worked the fourth floor. We had B.B. King. Nell Carter in 802. Phyllis Hyman. This was the last place she was before she passed." Hyman later died of a drug overdose in her New York apartment on June 30, 1995.

Speight pauses.

"I had lunch with her that Monday," Anane adds. "We were just talking about her life. 'How is life being famous?' She said, 'I am like everybody. I wake up. I take it one day at a time.' "

"When she was here, she didn't seem depressed," Speight says. "I was down there peeking in on her concert." She was fabulous, and the next day she walked out of the Hotel Washington. And she was gone. In the hotel industry, the workers become accustomed to people leaving. And now they are leaving, too.

There is a bit of sadness that hangs over the fading beauty. Where will the staff go? Speight, who has worked here 27 years, says, "I raised my children on this one job. I guess I'll just have to look for another job at another hotel."

Soon the renovation will begin and you wonder whether it will wipe away the memories of 90 years. You ride the elevator up to the famous rooftop, maybe one last time. From this roof in this city, once upon a time, you could pretend to be anything you wanted to be.

From this roof, you could watch airplanes land. And look at how the moon sometimes hangs low over the monuments. You could stoke illusions of grandeur as you looked down on people scurrying to and fro, chased by their shadows or pulled by ambition.

If you waited long enough, waited up here even during winter -- when the rooftop was officially closed but the staff let you up because you begged them -- you could stand on the terrace as blasts of cold wind whipped the plastic window coverings that hang from a balcony. The open-aired balcony gives you unfettered access to Washington. They say the new owners plan to enclose this porch behind glass. What a pity, you think. Behind glass, Washington from this rooftop will not look the same.

It is dark now. Evening over Washington. From the rooftop of the Hotel Washington, you see the sun sinking over the White House.