Washington – The Watergate Hotel has long been more of a famous name than a five-star palace.
Oh, but what a name. What a mystique. What a history.
The hotel’s owner hopes a bit of that luster draws shoppers to an “Everything Must Go!” sale of beds, couches, sinks and toilets from rooms graced by the likes of Liberace and Katharine Hepburn, not to mention four of the burglars who made Watergate famous.
Former President Nixon’s henchmen did not commit their crime at the hotel, which the owner has closed for a major face-lift that will result in $2,000-a-night suites.
The burglars only slept there, in Rooms 214 and 314, and shoppers can stand where the bad guys stood and consider whether to buy a nice but perfectly ordinary wooden desk for $85 or a lingerie chest for $245 or an armoire for $625.
Still, Don Hayes, the sale’s manager, predicted that thousands of people will show up. If the bargains don’t draw them, they’ll come “because it’s the Watergate,” Hayes promised.
His customers will find more than 20,000 items: silverware, wine glasses, Jacuzzis, 25-inch color TVs, cabinets, vanity mirrors, tea cups, meat slicers, a baby grand piano, 13 Greek-style columns and a trove of books that includes “Kingdoms in Conflict,” the musings of one-time Nixon aide and ex-con Charles Colson ($3).
Michael Darby, a principal of Monument Realty, which bought the hotel in 2004, said an antique specialist he hired found “nothing that has any connection to the Watergate of that era, from the early 1970s.”
Nevertheless, it’s a chance to take something home from a singular place.
“It’s the whole aura,” Darby said. “It always feels like something important happened here, that important people were here.”
The Watergate Hotel, which opened in 1967, is across from the Kennedy Center and overlooks the Potomac River. It is part of a complex of six buildings that includes the offices that were the site of the June 17, 1972, burglary that led to Nixon’s resignation.
The hotel drew a steady parade of luminaries, from Andy Warhol to John Wayne to Ronald Reagan, who celebrated his 70th birthday there.
