Hay-Adams, the Obamas' Home Away From Home

By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 1, 2009

After Saturday, the Obamas of Hyde Park, the future first family of America, become vagabonds. Fresh from their Hawaii vacation, having grabbed the winter coats from their home, they alight in Washington and move into the first of two spots of temporary housing.

As a two-week crash pad, the Hay-Adams hotel is pretty splendid. The family will be ensconced there so that the girls, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, can start at their new school, Sidwell Friends, on Monday. They move into Blair House on Jan. 15, and into the White House on Jan. 20, after Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of these United States.

When the Obamas pull up to the modest driveway in front of the Italian Renaissance-style hotel at 16th and H streets NW, they may be delighted to see it is still decorated for Christmas, with a towering tree decorated in maroon and gold standing in the lobby. Each of the hotel's 145 rooms comes with Italian bed linens, but at check-in, guests can request that the goose down pillows be swapped with hypoallergenic ones. (Potentially a good option, Mr. President-elect, considering Malia's allergies?)

Ah, the suite life! The Obamas will be staying in a suite, one imagines -- what else could you do with two daughters? -- and would have their choice of 21. The discreet staff of the Hay-Adams is completely tightlipped about all its guests, especially these newest ones. There is, indeed, a Presidential Suite, but it has just 1.5 baths, while the Federal Suite has two full baths, a balcony and a view of the White House, which is approximately 200 paces away. The Federal Suite runs $6,000 per night on weeknights, the Presidential runs $5,000; regular rooms are $795 to $995, depending on the view. (The cost, whatever it eventually comes to, will be covered from private transition funds, we are told.)

The view is the big sell here, so let's take a stroll around the neighborhood. Down the block you have the AFL-CIO; around the corner there's a parking garage. Across the manicured walkways and past the statuary of Lafayette Square, with its devoted protesters and pigeons, sits the White House, alongside the ornate Eisenhower Executive Office Building. And speaking of the White House, the view of much of that is blocked by inaugural scaffolding, risers and two-by-fours. Hundreds of extra dollars for this? (Big names have been known to get rate reductions, though: Sharon Stone paid $310 for a room when she visited in 1995; the going rate at the time was $550.)

Let's say the Obamas arrive at their suite -- feeling peckish, perhaps? They might head straight for the mini-bar, which is stocked with all of the usual mini-bar things: Kit Kats, M&M Minis, Nantucket Nectars orange juice, Bacardi rum. Plus, a little something to mark the occasion: a very special 2009 Inauguration chocolate bar, wrapped in blue paper and tucked inside the fridge of every room in the hotel.

Perhaps, at this point, some members of the family might realize they have forgotten something. A hairbrush or, oh, perhaps an Hermès scarf. No matter! During the month of January, the Hay-Adams is opening up a Neiman Marcus outlet in one of the suites.

Perhaps, after that shopping excursion, the girls would be ready for dinner. They could order pancakes or hamburgers from the children's menu. Their parents could order free-range chicken salads. (Sorry, Mr. President-elect. None of the salads on this menu are made with arugula. There is one floor where smoking is permitted, however.)

Then the family could kick back and listen to a range of CDs provided by the hotel -- current selection in each room includes Diana Krall, Jack Johnson, Michael Buble and the Dixie Chicks -- before heading off to bed. Sasha and Malia might be on rollaways; none of the suites' floor plans show more than one bedroom.

After envisioning this perfectly presidential evening, one might wonder how the Obamas came to be staying here at all. They had originally asked President Bush permission to move directly into Blair House, where several recent presidents-elect have stayed, to accommodate Sasha and Malia's school schedules. But the Obamas were told it was booked until the 15th (no word on what dignitaries are occupying Blair's 14 guest bedrooms), so off to the Hay-Adams they went.

The hotel has its own dignified history, anyway.

It's named after the original owners of the property, John Hay, an assistant to Abraham Lincoln, and Henry Adams, a descendant of John Adams. In 1884 Hay and Adams built homes on adjoining lots and, along with their wives and another friend, named themselves the Five of Hearts and decided to form a literary salon. The Hay and Adams residences were soon frequented by luminaries such as Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.

When the houses were torn down in 1926 to be replaced with an apartment house, Time magazine remembered the salon as a place "where Roosevelt at 43 could not be taken seriously."

Two years later, the Hay-Adams House opened, advertising itself as "an apartment hotel of unmistakable distinction . . . the ultimate in living comfort and privacy."

Through the next few decades, the hotel continued its reputation as a society destination, the type of place mentioned on the Capital Society Events page of The Post. This page is where the fashionable set publicized when they would keep calling hours, who would be visiting them, and from where.

Charles Lindbergh stayed at the hotel, as did another famous pilot:

"Mr. and Mrs. Porter H. Adams have as their guest at the Hay-Adams House Miss Amelia Earhart, who was presented to President Coolidge Friday," read an announcement from Nov. 5, 1928.

The restaurant and bar, too, became watering holes for famous faces. "Ted Kennedy sauntered into the bar at the Hay-Adams Hotel after work," reads a 1981 news article.

And it's a family place, for the most part, not like some of the other hotels in spitting distance of the White House. (When you request a crib for your room, staff will decorate it for the baby's gender). No high-priced call girl incidents like at the Mayflower. No toe-sucking dominatrix incidents like at the Jefferson.

But, being in Washington, the hotel has seen at least one scandalous period.

"Sometime in the distant future when the words 'Iran' and 'contra' are the stuff of national nostalgia," reads a 1987 news article, "the first stop on the scandal tour will be the Hay-Adams Hotel." Seems that the hotel unwittingly hosted four meetings at which illegal contributions were "cadged from sympathetic altruists."

Some 20 years later, this scandal tour has yet to appear in any city guide we've seen, and one can't help but think that 20 years into the future, the Hay-Adams will be remembered not for the Iran-contra affair, but as the place where Sasha Obama once did something like eat an '09 inaugural chocolate bar -- or three -- and jump on a goose down bed.

Staff writer Richard Leiby contributed to this report.