PRESIDENTIAL HOTELS 101
Staying Power: Follow the Leaders
TOOLBOX   Resize
 Save/Share +
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
|
Do you have presidential dreams? While only FOPs are invited to the White House for slumber parties, the rest of us can still receive the chief executive treatment at U.S. hotels that have hosted presidents past and present. To celebrate Presidents' Day in patriotic style, get a room at any these six properties, order room service and toast our prezes and their fine taste in overnight accommodations.
-- Ben Chapman
Jefferson Hotel (Richmond)
HISTORY 101: In 1895, cigarette magnate Lewis Ginter built the Beaux-Arts hotel, which boasts such luxe details as a life-size Carrara marble statue of its namesake. The property nearly burned down in 1901, then was expanded in 1907 to include 300 new guest rooms -- and alligators that lived in the Palm Court's marble pool until 1948. After another fire in 1944 and much disrepair, the hotel closed in 1980; it reopened six years later.
PILLOW TALK: Presidential guests have included George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Franklin D. and Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, William Howard Taft, Harry S. Truman and Ronald Reagan.
OTHER FAMOUS SLEEPERS: Frank Sinatra, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Elvis Presley, who finished his breakfast with a scoop of ice cream in a cantaloupe.
INFO: 804-788-8000, http:/
Menger Hotel (San Antonio)
HISTORY 101: German beermaker William Menger opened the stone hotel in 1859 on the site of his brewery and 100 yards from the Alamo. A favorite haunt of cowboys, hunters and soldiers, the property is said to house the ghosts of 32 departed guests.
PILLOW TALK: McKinley, Taft and Dwight D. Eisenhower slept here. Teddy Roosevelt first visited the Menger on an 1892 javelina hunt; he returned in 1898 to recruit barfly cowboys as Rough Riders. Roosevelt's apparition allegedly has been spotted drinking at the bar.
OTHER FAMOUS SLEEPERS: Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, Babe Ruth and Mae West.
INFO: 800-323-7500, http:/
Waldorf-Astoria (New York)
HISTORY 101: The original 19th-century Waldorf-Astoria started out as two hotels built by Astor cousins but was torn down in 1929 for the Empire State Building. The new 42-story art deco property opened on Park Avenue in 1931, at the time the world's tallest and largest hotel. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Hoover (who had delivered a radio broadcast message celebrating its opening) and Gen. Douglas MacArthur lived in suites on different floors of the hotel. The Presidential Suite was redecorated in 1969 to resemble the White House and contains items donated by presidents, such as a JFK rocking chair.
PILLOW TALK: The "White House of New York" has hosted every president since Hoover.
