Omni Shoreham Hotel

Eleven acres on the lip of Rock Creek Park, at 2500 Calvert Street NW, hold the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., a brick and limestone block of 834 rooms that opened on 30 October 1930, a year into the Depression, and has hosted an inaugural ball for every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.

History

Harry Bralove, a Washington developer, built the Shoreham with the architect Joseph Abel and took the name from an earlier Shoreham Hotel downtown. The timing was poor and the hotel survived its first years on apartments and long lets, but the position above the park and the size of its ballrooms soon made it the capital's venue of choice. The Blue Room, the supper club off the lobby, booked the big names of the mid-century: Judy Garland, Lena Horne and Marlene Dietrich sang there, and the Washington press corps drank there. The Beatles stayed on the seventh floor on 11 February 1964, the night of their first American concert at the Washington Coliseum, and the hotel cleared the floor around them.

Presidents came for the balls and the association dinners. Bill Clinton played the saxophone at his 1993 inaugural ball here. Suite 870, closed for decades after a housekeeper and an executive's daughter died there in the 1930s, is sold now as the Ghost Suite. Omni Hotels has run the house since the 1980s and keeps the original name on the facade.

Architecture and design

Abel's building is a long, symmetrical range with projecting wings, in buff brick with limestone trim, the restrained Art Deco of 1930 rather than the Beaux-Arts of a generation earlier. The lobby is a double-height hall with a coffered ceiling and marble floors, and the ballrooms open off a wide gallery. Behind the hotel, lawns and the pool terrace drop towards the trees of Rock Creek, so that the back of the building feels like a country house an hour from the city, though the National Zoo is next door.

Rooms and suites

The 834 rooms and suites are large for Washington, many with park views, and are furnished in a traditional style with dark wood and marble bathrooms. Suites run up to the Presidential Suite, which has received the men the name implies. The hotel accepts pets.

Dining

Three dining outlets cover the day, with a restaurant for breakfast and dinner, a lobby bar and a cafe for coffee and quick meals. In summer the pool terrace serves lunch outdoors. The Blue Room survives as an event space rather than a nightclub.

Wellness

A heated outdoor pool, temperature-controlled for most of the year, sits on the terrace behind the hotel with Rock Creek Park beyond the fence. A fitness centre and a spa with treatment rooms complete the offer; the park's trails start at the back gate.

Weddings and events

With 100,000 square feet of meeting space the Shoreham is one of the largest conference hotels in Washington. The Regency Ballroom is the largest room, the one used for inaugural balls and association dinners; the Blue Room and a run of smaller salons take weddings, receptions and breakout sessions. Weddings use the lawns and the park edge for ceremonies and the ballrooms for dinner. Associations and government bodies fill the weekday calendar.

Location

The hotel is in Woodley Park, north of Dupont Circle and the embassies of Massachusetts Avenue. The Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan Metro station on the Red Line is a short walk, three stops from Metro Center. Reagan National Airport is 20 minutes by car; Union Station, for Amtrak, is 15. For a luxury hotel in Washington, D.C. with grounds and ballrooms on this scale, there is no other.