The Winecoff Hotel (and fire)
Image by dbking
"Peachtree Burning" Documentary Filmakers Site Regarding the Winecoff Hotel Fire
www.winecoffhotelfire.com.
Dawn Fields: Producer/Director/Editor
Dawn Fields has worked in production, post-production, development and acquisitions for several Los Angeles based production/distribution companies and has aquired many producer, production coordinator, assistant director and editor credits on features, shorts, and documentaries.
Ms. Fields has written, produced and directed her own projects including dramatic shorts, award-winning music videos, feature films, documentaries and regional Lottery commercials. She self-published a trade magazine for filmmakers, teaches filmmaking seminars and has several features and documentaries in various stages of production
See Ms. Field's text below:
The Winecoff Hotel's Origins
Built in 1913 by renowned architect, William Lee Stoddard, the Winecoff Hotel was Atlanta's tallest and most luxurious hotel. Standing fifteen stories tall with an open-air terrace dining room, coffee shop and lounge, the hotel was strategically located in the heart of Atlanta's retail district. According to their stationery, the hotel was advertised as being absolutely fireproof, even though it was designed without fire alarms, fire escapes or a sprinkler system.
The Night of The Fire
On December 7, 1946, the hotel was filled to capacity with over two hundred and eighty guests including shoppers, travelers, World War II soldiers eager to rebuild their lives, and forty of Georgia's most promising high school students who had come to attend a mock legislation. And even though the five year anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day was somberly approaching, Christmas was just around the corner and there was a sense of hope and excitement in the winter air.
Around three o'clock in the morning, the elevator operator, descending from the top floor, noticed the smell of smoke around the fifth floor. Panicked, she stumbled out of the elevator upon reaching the lobby and began screaming, "Fire! Fire!" Unbeknownst to her, the fire had already completely engulfed floors three, four and five. For employees of the hotel and the guests who were awake, realization and reaction would come quickly. But for the guests who were asleep, survival would come at a much higher price. Before dawn, a total of one hundred and nineteen lives would be lost.
The Tragedy of The Hotel's Design
One of the most critical factors contributing to this staggering loss of life was the design of the building itself. Based on "European" design, the hotel was a perfect square with the stairwell and elevator shafts running straight through the middle. Thin wooden doors leading to the stairwells had been left open on several floors as well as many transoms above guest rooms allowing smoke and flames to be pulled upward like a giant chimney. When the only means of egress became impassable, guests were forced to the windows of their rooms, where they were met with precious few choices. Many fashioned sheet ropes, while others doused their rooms and themselves with toilet and bath water. Others simply awaited their fates in hopeless silence.
Firefighting Efforts
By the time fire trucks arrived, many guests were already on the verge of jumping and many lept to their deaths moments before ladders reached their windows. Fear had reached such a fevered pitch that panic-strickened guests became desperate, and nothing short of a human rain shower ensued. Several firefighters fell to their deaths or were injured after being knocked off their ladders by falling bodies. Mothers hurled their babies from windows only to follow them to their deaths.
Rescue efforts were further hindered by the geographic location of the building. The Mortgage Guarantee Building sat opposite the hotel with only about six feet of alley between them. This prevented any kind of rescue from the firetrucks. But perhaps the most unfortunate limitation came from the trucks themselves. Back then, fire trucks were outfitted with ladders that could only reach as high as the seventh floor.
Eighty percent of the fatalities were guests who were staying above the eighth floor and on the back side of the building. It was reported that thirty-six people died from falling or jumping, thirty-two burned and forty-one suffocated from smoke and fumes. Perhaps the most tragic of these victims were the thirty teenage children who lost their lives and the elderly Winecoffs, who had resided in the hotel since its inception.
The Investigation: Accident or Arson?
By the time Mayor Hartsfield arrived at the location, nothing remained but smoldering embers and the smell of burnt flesh. The brick exterior was still intact, but the hollow shell of its inside told a different and tragic story. According to a report filed by the National Board of Underwriters, a partially burned mattress found in a hallway on the third floor gave rise to the conclusion that a careless and possibly intoxicated guest dropped a cigarette onto it, thus starting the fire.
Pressured by public outcry for culpability, and anxious to prove himself as "the mayor who cares", Hartsfield invited fire experts from across the country to conduct their own investigations. Many of these experts were convinced that due to the massive devastation, the intensity of the fire's heat and the speed at which it accelerated, a smoldering mattress could not possibly have been the cause. Several arson theories emerged including an illegal poker game on the third floor that spun out of control. But the press and the public in general were more concerned about why an "absolutely fireproof" hotel lacked fire escapes, a sprinkler system and fire alarms and less concerned with theories of arson. They demanded answers from the hotel's owners and operators.
Families and Survivors File Suit
In 1948, the first of over one hundred and fifty lawsuits came to trial against the Winecoff Hotel Company. The plaintiffs' lawyers hoped to prove that the hotel owner and the hotel operators were negligent in not providing adequate fire safety devices. The defendants' attorneys were charged with proving arson, thereby absolving their clients of liability and relieving their insurance companies of paying the huge claim. In the end, however, no arson theory could be substantiated, and only the hotel operators, not it's owner were found to be liable. Although the plaintiffs were awarded over .5 million in damages, the hotel operators were only insured for 0,000 and most of the families received less than ,000 each.
The Fire's Effect On Fire Safety Codes
Because the building had a brick exterior, the owners were able, under certain insurance provisions, to classify the hotel as "fireproof" even though it was not fitted with fire escapes, fire sprinklers nor an alarm system. Indeed, the exterior did not burn in the fire, but the contents did. The furniture, carpet, hallways, wainscoting and painted walls were highly flammable. Even the stairwells were constructed of wood and became impassible when the fire chose this as its main route of destruction.
Up until the time of the Winecoff fire, no national codes had been required and decisions about fire safety were left to the discretion of local city officials, . Mayor Hartsfield had once argued that Atlanta property owners should be spared the hassle of retrofitting existing buildings in order to bring them up to code due to the enormous expense involved. He reasoned, "Why should we make it safe in Atlanta when Atlantans going to other towns would be in the same danger?" His position was quite popular with the property owners.
As a result of the Winecoff disaster, many fire officials became enraged and cried, "Never again!" It was determined that local officials could not be relied upon to make responsible decisions about fire safety, and national safety codes were established and strictly enforced. The response to this tragedy was so intense that officials in several southern cities ordered all existing buildings be retrofitted and brought up to code within seven days or be shut down. It is a testament to the effectiveness of these newly enforced codes that in this country there has never been a hotel fire since in which so many lost their lives.
The Winecoff After The Fire
In April of 1951, the hotel reopened as the Peachtree on Peachtree Hotel, complete with fire alarms and fire escapes. But competing hotels were cropping up all around Atlanta's retail district and by 1967, with no buyers in sight, the hotel was donated to the Georgia Baptist Convention who used it as housing for the elderly. In 1981, the hotel was sold to a real estate conglomerate and would pass through the hands of no less a dozen more buyers over the next twenty five years. Each had high hopes but no solid deal to resurrect the hotel ever materialized. Today, in 2005, the hotel remains an eyesore and a thorn in the side of a city whose officials would have demolished it decades ago if it did not reside above the city's railway system, preventing it from being imploded. To this day, the building stands as a hollowed-out shell reminding us of the tragedy that occurred there. The curse of the Winecoff Hotel solidly remains and many local merchants claim that the building is haunted, having seen ghosts puttering about on more than on occasion.
The Winecoff Hotel Fire of 1946 held the unenviable honor of being known as the deadliest hotel fire in the world and maintained that title until 1971 when one hundred and sixty-two people lost their lives in a hotel fire in Seoul, South Korea. The Winecoff remains, to this day, the worst hotel fire in American history. The fate of this once glamorous and celebrated hotel is unclear, but one thing is certain, it must never be forgotten.
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Arnold Hardy was a 26-year-old graduate student at Georgia Tech the night he heard the sirens roaring downtown from all directions. It was 1946, and he was living upstairs in a rooming house at West Peachtree and North Avenue, within walking distance of Tech, where he was working in both the research lab and physics department.
Hardy was still up at 4 o'clock on the morning of Dec. 7. After taking his date home in Buckhead, he had waited an hour for a trolley back to town. He had just taken his shoes off when he heard the sirens. An amateur photographer, he hurriedly called the fire department.
"Press photographer. Where's the fire?" he asked
"Winecoff Hotel."
Hardy called a taxi. The cab picked him up and raced toward the corner of Peachtree and Ellis. With his prized Speed Graphic camera and five flashbulbs in his pocket, Hardy sprinted the final blocks.
He was the first photographer there.
The windows of the 15-story Winecoff Hotel were backlit by orange flames. Guests--jumping out of panic or falling from makeshift ropes of bedsheets as they tried to escape the terrible smoke--were landing and dying on Peachtree Street. Amid the pandemonium and a cacophony of sirens, Hardy went to work. He took a shot that spanned the front of the building and the faces of the doomed in the windows--the mutely pleading, hopeless faces.
When he was down to his final flashbulb--one had exploded in the cold night air--Hardy decided to try for a picture of a falling or jumping guest. When his viewfinder found a dark-haired woman falling midair at the third floor, her skirt billowing, he snapped the shutter open for 1/400th of a second.
With his photography completed, Hardy heard a fireman and policeman at a drugstore across the street discussing calling the store owner so they could obtain medical supplies. He told them to break the door open. When they said they wouldn't he kicked it open himself. He was quickly arrested.
As the Red Cross moved into the store to set up a first-aid station and make sandwiches and coffee for the firemen, Hardy was led off to jail. Upon being released on his own recognizance, he headed for the darkroom at the Tech research search lab. He developed his film and struck out for the Associated Press office downtown.
The AP offered him 0 for exclusive rights to his pictures. He said he wanted 0--and got it. His final photograph--the one of the jumping woman--would be reprinted around the world the following day, and be on magazine covers for weeks. The fire had killed 119 people and drawn international coverage as the worst hotel fire in the history of the world. A few months later, Hardy became the first amateur photographer to win the Pulitzer Prize.
The AP gave Hardy a 0 bonus the day after the fire, but he has never received another cent for its frequent use. With the 47th anniversary of the Winecoff fire approaching, Hardy's famous photograph is back in the spotlight. It appears on the cover of The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America 's Deadliest Hotel Fire.
The book reports for the first time that the fire was set by an arsonist. It also identifies the "jumping lady" for the first time. She was Daisy McCumber, a 41-year-old Atlanta secretary who--contrary to countless captions--survived the 11-story jump. She broke both legs, her back, and her pelvis. She underwent seven operations in 10 years and lost a leg, but then worked until retirement. She died last year in Jacksonville Fla., having never admitted even to family that she was the woman in Hardy's photo.
Hardy's Photo:
www.apug.org/forums/blogs/two40/91-week-5-pulitzer-1946-w...
The book also tells the dramatic story of James D. "Jimmy" Cahill, IM '48, who became one of the fire's heroes. Cahill, now retired from an academic career in Charlotte, N.C., had returned from the service and was staying at the hotel while applying to re-enter Georgia Tech. After escaping from the front side of the hotel, he raced around to the back to rescue his mother.
Cahill entered an adjacent building and stretched a board across a 10-foot alley to his mother's sixth-floor room. He crawled across the board and brought his mother to safety. Firemen quickly followed his lead and, with Cahill's help, rescued many guests who had no other escape from the backside of the hotel.
Hardy, a mechanical engineer, retired earlier this year, and sold Hardy Manufacturing Co. of Decatur, builder of medical X-ray equipment to his son. He retired from amateur photography decades earlier, shortly after realizing his photos would always be measured against his Pulitzer Prize winner. Hardy's goal that night had been to capture the futility of the whole scene before him. "It upset me so much that of all those trucks--there there were about 18 in the front of the building--I saw only two nets," he said. "I thought to myself, 'I'd love to take a picture that would just stir up the public to where they would do something about this and equip every truck in the city with a net.'"
Hardy's horrifying photo accomplished much more.
The Winecoff did not have fire escapes, fire doors, or sprinklers, yet had called itself fireproof. Quickly, fire codes changed nationwide. The Winecoff became a watershed event in the history of fire safety. The 119 did not die in vain--their deaths made hotels safer for Americans then and now. And the work Hardy did one night as a 26-year-old graduate student was one of the main reasons.
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Arnold Hardy, Dies at age 85
Arnold Hardy, 85, took Pulitzer-winning photo
By KAY POWELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 12/07/07
Arnold Hardy, the first amateur photographer to win the Pulitzer Prize, was a reluctant celebrity.
His photograph of a woman plunging from a window of the burning Winecoff Hotel on Dec. 7, 1946, is the defining image of the nation's deadliest hotel fire.
Arnold Hardy's photo prompted improvements in fire codes.
Hardy's Pulitzer-winning photo of a woman falling from an upper floor of the hotel. The woman survived and was identified in photos as Daisy McCumber.
For Mr. Hardy, then a 24-year-old Georgia Tech graduate student and lab assistant, the photograph, the publicity and the Pulitzer Prize were bittersweet, said his son Glen Hardy of Decatur.
"He stood on the sidewalk and watched people plummet to their deaths," his son said. "He had almost a post-traumatic response to that.
"It wasn't just a lucky snapshot," his son said. "It was technically a very complicated photograph to take. He had to consider lighting, temperature. He was working hard to get that photograph, to capture a moving object in pitch black darkness. He tweaked his camera to its limits."
Not long after, Mr. Hardy turned down a job from the Associated Press, married and founded a business that designs and manufactures X-ray equipment.
"The only pictures I've taken since then," Mr. Hardy said in a 2000 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, "have been family and vacations."
Mr. Hardy, 85, of Stone Mountain died at Emory University Hospital Wednesday of complications following hip surgery. The funeral is at 2 p.m. today &madah;the anniversary of the fire— at A.S. Turner & Sons.
Mr. Hardy had earned his degree in physics, and photography was his hobby. He bought a 0 Speed Graphic that folded into a box carrying case. To pay for it, he thought he could earn freelance money shooting Tech athletic events.
On that fateful Saturday, he returned to his Midtown rooming house about 3 a.m. after a date. He heard sirens screaming, called the fire department to get the location, grabbed his camera and headed to the Peachtree Street hotel where 280 guests were registered.
He had five flashbulbs, four after one of them burst from the cold. He took three pictures. Then, with his final flash bulb, he trained his lens on the mezzanine where bodies were bouncing on the awning and striking the marquee. He noticed a woman who was trying to climb down a rope and lost her grip, the article said.
Mr. Hardy captured her fall, her dress flying above her head and her white underpants stark against the hotel. He developed his film at Tech, and it was about 6 a.m. when he saw the image of the woman in free fall. He called AP and sold the picture for 0.
Mr. Hardy continued his freelance photography until an industrial fire led him to retire his press card. "I went out there and hung around a while; there wasn't anything worth shooting," he said. "But the next day my picture appeared in the paper with some caption about the Winecoff photographer looking for another prize." Mr. Hardy did not want people to think of him as some kind of ambulance-chaser.
He used the Speed Graphic only for personal photographs until the camera was stolen in the 1970s, his son said. After that, "he would find some old camera at a garage sale for and take it apart and fix it and take a few pictures with it, then get another one."
Mr. Hardy was a perfectionist, and that influenced his career making X-Ray equipment. He spent so much time perfecting his designs and equipment, he had to sell to high-end businesses such as medical equipment suppliers or airlines, said his son, who bought Hardy Manufacturing Co. in Decatur from his father.
"He always was designing or building some piece of medical equipment or a treehouse for me," he said. After retiring in 1987, Mr. Hardy, who enjoyed sailing, designed and began building a mini-houseboat but never launched it.
"One thing he took great pride in," his son said, "is that after his photograph was published worldwide, fire codes were changed all over the country and maybe the world."
Survivors include his wife, Lorraine Hardy; a daughter, Nancy Cooper of Stockbridge; three stepsons, John F. Weber III of Stockbridge, Warren D. Weber of Seattle and Keith D. Weber of Austin, Texas; five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Watergate Complex from TR Bridge
Image by dbking
The Watergate complex is an office-apartment-hotel complex built in 1967 in northwest Washington, D.C., best known for being the site of burglaries that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon
Location
The Watergate complex is a superblock bounded on the north by Virginia Avenue, on the east by New Hampshire Avenue, on the south by F Street, and on the west by the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. It is in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood overlooking the Potomac River, adjacent to the Kennedy Center and the embassy of Saudi Arabia. The nearest Metro station is Foggy Bottom-GWU.
History
The Watergate complex was developed by the Italian firm Società Generale Immobiliare, which purchased the 10 acres which constitute the plot of land on the defunct Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in the early 1960s for 10 million US Dollars. Italian architect Luigi Moretti designed the six buildings on the site: a hotel, two office buildings, three apartment buildings and a retail center.
Individual buildings at the Watergate
The Watergate Hotel is located at 2650 Virginia Avenue NW. It has 250 guest rooms and 146 suites. In 2004, the hotel was purchased by a company planning to turn it into luxury co-ops.
The two Watergate Office Buildings are at 600 New Hampshire Avenue NW and 2600 Virginia Avenue NW.
In 1972, the Democratic National Committee had its headquarters on the sixth floor of the 11-story 2600 Virginia Avenue building. On May 28, 1972, a team of burglars working for Nixon's re-election campaign put wiretaps and took photos in and near the DNC chairman's office. The wiretaps were monitored from Room 723 of the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge hotel across the street at 2601 Virginia Avenue NW. (The hotel is now owned by the George Washington University, although no longer used as a undergraduate dormitory.) During a second burglary on June 17, 1972, to replace a malfunctioning "bug" and collect more information, five burglars were arrested and the Watergate scandal began to unfold.
The Watergate Office Building was sold in 2005 by Trizec Properties to Bentley Forbes, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm run by Fred Wehba, for .5 million. The complex, consisting of the buildings at 2500, 2600, and 2650 Virginia Ave. NW and 600 and 700 New Hampshire Ave. NW, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 21, 2005.
The three Watergate Apartment buildings total some 600 residential units. Past occupants have included Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bob and Elizabeth Dole, Monica Lewinsky, Betty Currie, and Paul O'Neill. Current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now lives in the Watergate.
There is a small (63,000 sq. ft. / 5900 m²) retail center which offers a Safeway supermarket in the basement level and several upscale shops and restaurants at street level.
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Monica Lewinsky moves out of Watergate
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, October 14, 1998)
Monica Lewinsky is moving out of her Watergate residence and apologizing to neighbors for any trouble her newfound media attention may have caused them.
Lewinsky placed a printed note under the doors of fellow residents of the Watergate South this week informing them of her departure.
The location of her new residence, which has not been confirmed, is believed to be away from the Washington area.
The posh downtown condominium complex has several other well-known tenants, including former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole and his wife.
"As I depart 700 New Hampshire, I wanted to apologize for the inconveniences of the past nine months. To those of you who have passed along your kind words, I greatly appreciated your support during this difficult time; and I thank you. I hope you all know how very sorry I am that so much attention was brought to the building," she wrote.
Lewinsky signed the notes "Monica" by hand, her spokeswoman Judy Smith said.
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Watergate: The name that branded more than a building
Washington Business Journal -
June 14, 2002
by Mike Livingston Contributing Writer
Some buildings in Washington earn a place in history by housing future presidents, some by reflecting influential architects and the growth of a world capital, and some just by standing there as governments, industries, even centuries come and go.
The mixed-use complex next to the old canal "water gate" at the mouth of Rock Creek owes its place in history to a little piece of masking tape that sealed, 30 years ago this month, the lock on a door and the fate of a president.
It was Suite 600 of the Watergate Hotel that burglars on the White House payroll entered around 2 a.m. June 17, 1972, to gather information about President Nixon's opponents. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) had leased the suite.
The ensuing scandal led to the imprisonment of top West Wingers and the only presidential resignation -- and it made the name "Watergate" synonymous with political scandal and investigative journalism.
Despite what "Watergate" has come to mean in the popular mind, it remains for many others what its developers intended it to be: a prestigious address for offices, shops, restaurants, residents and hotel guests.
Watergate Towne
The five curving towers of "Watergate Towne" were the city's first major international real estate development -- the vision of Hungarian-born developer Nicholas Salgo and his Italian firm, Societa Generale Immobiliare (SGI), based in Rome and owned in part by the Vatican.
The Italian Count di Carpegna was a project architect on SGI's staff, and the Countess de Rochefort was a sales representative for the Watergate East apartment cooperative. (The countess once commissioned Avignon Frères, the now-defunct French bakery in Adams Morgan, to make a 50-pound cake with 13 layers in the likeness of the 13-story building.)
SGI bought the 10-acre site from Washington Gas for million, thinking it would soon be served by a freeway. The Washington Star, whose archives provided much of the information for this article, noted in 1962 the plans called for "curvilinear buildings designed to conform with the curving Inner Loop Expressway at this point."
When models of the futuristic high-rises were unveiled by 1961, critics and zoning commissioners said the complex would ruin the waterfront and overshadow the performing arts center nearby, which was then on the drawing boards and would later be named after President Kennedy. The National Capital Planning Commission, according to a 1961 report in the Star, questioned "whether the site should be developed at all."
The Star thought so. A May 1962 editorial stated: "It is true that the so-called `curvilinear' design is at variance with most commercial architecture in Washington. But in our opinion the result, which places a premium on public open space and garden-like surroundings, and which proposes a quality of housing that would rank with the finest in the city, would be a distinct asset."
Later that month, the White House urged the developer to accept a 90-foot height limit instead of the planned 130 feet.
Salgo and SGI's chief architect, Gabor Acs, flew to New York City with professor Luigi Moretti of the University of Rome to defend their designs in a special meeting with the federal Commission of Fine Arts, whose approval is required for any construction in the "Monumental Core." In the end, SGI was allowed to build 25 percent of the complex to 13 stories.
Moretti, who had designed the Montreal Stock Exchange and Rome's Olympic Village for the 1960 Games, served as a consulting architect. The Washington architecture firm of Corning, Moore, Elmore & Fisher also worked with the SGI staff architects. The builder was Magazine Bros. Construction.
'White House West'
Work began in August 1963 with the groundbreaking for the headquarters of Riverview Realty, the leasing agent for the 200,000 square feet of office space planned in the complex.
The first tower, Watergate East, was believed to be the first major construction job to make significant use of computers. A forerunner of modern computer-aided drafting (CAD) technology was employed in plans for 8,000 square feet of irregular windows and 2,200 irregular wall panels.
In 1964, Jim Roberts of Magazine Bros. told the Star: "We had to face the fact that there are no continuous straight lines anywhere -- horizontally on the floors or vertically on the facade. Not only were there many different curves on every floor, but no two floors had a facade exactly alike."
Watergate East was dedicated in October 1965.
Earlier that year, the Star told future owners of tower's 238 co-ops that the complex "will feature an elaborate electronic security system" including closed-circuit televisions, two-way radios and a 24-hour security staff. "What all of this means," the paper noted, "is that intruders will have difficulty getting onto the grounds undetected."
Peoples Drug (now CVS) and Safeway opened stores in the courtyard in 1965 that are still there today, along with a bakery, liquor store and other courtyard shops.
Watergate West, the second residential building, was started in June 1967 and completed within two years.
Landscape architect Boris Timchenko planted flowering trees and filled 150 planters. Tiers of fountains in the courtyard provide the sound of waterfalls. Townhouse-style units line the first two floors; top-floor units feature private rooftop terraces and fireplaces.
In June 1969, the Star reported the co-ops were especially popular with high-ranking members of the new administration: "Watergate's two completed apartment buildings have become widely known as a magnet that pulls many Nixon aides home."
With a quarter of the Cabinet -- Attorney General John Mitchell, Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans and Transportation Secretary John Volpe -- living at Watergate, along with dozens of White House staffers including presidential secretary Rose Mary Woods, the complex was nicknamed "Administration Arms" and "White House West."
Showcase for a Scandal
The hotel opened in 1967 and featured an upscale restaurant, the Roman Terrace. The DNC and other office tenants leased space in the hotel as early as April 1967.
The Watergate 600 office tower, specially zoned for nonprofit and professional occupancy, signed its first tenant, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in February 1971, and its first "major" tenant soon afterward: the Manpower Evaluation & Development Institute, which leased the whole eighth floor.
In October 1972, a strip of fashion boutiques and jewelers opened under the name Les Champs. The 13,000 square feet of retail drew tenants such as Gucci, Yves St. Laurent and, according to the Star, "the only boutique in this country which exclusively features Soviet-made goods."
Manager Henry Winston warned Les Champs retailers not to exploit the scandal that had erupted from the DNC break-in; however, by the fall of 1973, the shops drew heavy traffic from curious tourists and scandal buffs. Winston asked five shops to leave within their first year, he told the paper, because "the appearance and type of their merchandise was not up to standards or their volume was too low, and none of them seemed improvable."
Other break-ins, other scandals
The first Watergate break-in was a residential burglary, in 1969, in which jewelry and a papal medal were stolen from an apartment. Ironically, the victim was Woods, the Nixon secretary who would later be accused of erasing 18 and a half minutes of incriminating evidence from one of the president's secret tapes.
In 1973, burglars stole 0 from an office suite leased by the Italian Embassy.
And in 1975, perhaps the nation's most influential jurist below the Supreme Court -- Chief Judge David L. Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit -- and his wife returned from Christmas vacation to find ,000 worth of jewelry missing from their apartment.
For many residents, the real Watergate scandal was the allegedly shoddy construction of the 143-unit Watergate West apartment building. In 1972, residents sued SGI for .5 million, citing water damage in 40 percent of the units, plumbing problems in 22 percent, malfunctioning kitchen appliances in 45 percent, and inadequate air conditioning.
SGI filed a counterclaim of million for "malicious embarrassment" and, after five years of litigation, paid 0,000 in a settlement.
Toward the end of the century, Watergate showed up again in stories about a scandal-ridden presidency: It was the home of Clinton White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
'A delicious irony'
The Watergate's original developer, Salgo, partnered with Chicago-based Continental Illinois Properties to buy SGI's stake for million in 1977. Two years later, the company sold its interest to subsidiaries of the British Coal Board Pension Fund; Salgo kept his own shares until 1986 and then sold to the coal board.
In what The Washington Post called "a delicious irony for the father of the Watergate," in 1989 the Bush administration tapped Salgo, a former diplomat, for a task force to dispose of the U.S. embassy in Moscow because it was infested with electronic bugs.
Several real estate transfers in recent years have resulted in new, multiple owners of the buildings in the Watergate complex. The hotel now bears a Swissotel flag.
The apartments still attract VIP residents, notably Bob and Elizabeth Dole and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
The Watergate's most historically significant office tenant, however, moved out long ago. The DNC, within weeks after the break-in, transferred the bulk of its staff and files to George McGovern's presidential campaign headquarters at 19th and K streets NW. The committee kept a minimal presence in the infamous suite -- which was allegedly bugged again four months later -- until its lease expired in January 1973. The 16,000 square feet of history were leased to the National Academy of Sciences in August 1974.
Mike Livingston is a Washington-based freelance writer.
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Matthew Yokobosky, Chief Designer
Image by Brooklyn Museum
Where are you from?
I grew up in Republic, PA which is about 2 hrs from Pittsburgh. When I lived there, the town had about 2,000 people, so everyone definitely knew each other.
What were you doing before the Brooklyn Museum?
I was the Associate Curator of Film and Video at the Whitney Museum of American Art. That's actually why I first moved to New York- because I got a job there.
In the evenings, I was doing some freelance set and costume design at the La Mama theatre and one of my designs won a Bessie award. So the Whitney asked me if I'd ever thought about doing exhibition design, and I tried it out. One of the first shows that I designed was the Joseph Stella retrospective in 1994 and I continued to design shows like the 1995 Biennial and others, on a freelance basis while I was curating.
Then, I had a career "refocus" and decided to focus on design. You know, film curating is really time consuming (because it's a time-based art). So, when I first started working here, there was an entire year when I just didn't go to the movies! This was after ten years of watching 10 or 12 films a week. I really loved doing it and loved making film series, but the reality is that people end up seeing one or two films from a whole film series...it's not like an art exhibit...people rarely see the big picture.
What do you do here?
As Chief Designer, my biggest responsibilities are one, to design exhibitions; and two, to manage the design department and all of its activities: exhibition design, graphic design, and all print materials.
What exhibition have you enjoyed working on the most?
I always tell people, my favorite exhibition is the one I'm working on now . . . and right now that's Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains. Some exhibitions are easy, and others are more complicated. Where you end up at the end of the design process is one thing, and when the exhibition opens is another. You see it by yourself and it's one perspective because you've been in this cocoon with the curator for so many months. But then you start to look at it completely differently when it opens because often the public has other expectations...
So by the end, I'm never really sure if an exhibition is a favorite because I've enjoyed designing it, or because the public had a positive response to it. It's hard when you put a lot of effort into a show and it's not well attended...it's just hard to know what people will be interested in. You have to be a fortune teller almost.
You spent a lot of time working on Who Shot Rock. What was that like?
Who Shot Rock was exciting because I love music and I enjoy film and pop culture. I love working on shows that bridge the focus of my various careers. Yeah, I have to say, I really loved working on Rock.
When designing exhibitions, it's all about the relationship between you and the curator. I really just love working on different topics. That was really appealing about coming to work at the Brooklyn Museum. I've traveled a lot (I've been to 45 countries) and I started traveling because I wanted to see art in person. I didn't want to only be reading about it. And here, I get to work with different experts in so many different fields. It's not just American art. It's not just 20th century art like at the Whitney.
Tell me more about your travels.
The first year I moved to New York, I went to Paris, Milan and Venice . . . and I've been traveling ever since. I think of traveling as my continuing education. A really well-known artist that I used to hang out with told me that you can either read about things, or you can actually go out and do them. That was really good advice.
One of the most interesting travel experiences I had was a recent trip to Ethiopia. It was really eye-opening because I hadn't ever been to sub-Saharan Africa, and I chose it because they have a lot of cultures that live as they have been for hundreds of years. There was a lot of camping involved...and I have to say, I'm not such a good camper. But at a certain point, I realized if I didn't learn to camp, I wasn't going to get to see certain things. I learned so much about people's creativity there . . . especially with their appearance: hair design, jewelry design... Everyday it was like going to an Ethiopian Fashion Show. Let's call it "Tribal Couture..." Now, that would be a great exhibition.
Do you have a favorite work of art at the Brooklyn Museum?
Oh, that's hard. I like a lot of things, especially after being here so long. There's a Songye figure in the African Art galleries which I love. I look at it all the time.
The Arts of Africa galleries were actually the first galleries that I designed here. I had never worked on anything like that before, so a lot of it was just learning about African history, architecture, and culture. There's just something about those objects.They have this different feeling about them...maybe it's because the art and sculpture is made for completely different reasons than why we make them. But they seem to have this spirit in them and a particular energy...it's almost magical.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was little, I said I was going to be a doctor. My first year in college I was pre-med. I actually still find it interesting...I watch Discovery Health Channel all the time.
But I think the moment when my focus changed was as a pre-med student, I was required to participate in a lot of extra activities, and I worked for the school's crisis hotline. It was really traumatic, and I wasn't sure I wanted to continue doing that kind of work. I was always really good and two things growing up: science and art. So the next year, I called my mom and decided to do art, and eventually, majored in film.
I think if I ended up in medicine, I'd probably be a plastic surgeon or something...brow lifts, and what not. It's the design part of medicine...
What's the design aesthetic of your own apartment?
As far as furniture design, it's all modern. And there's really not much of it. There's also no art on the walls. You know, I look at amazing art all day long, so when I go home I kind of need to clear my eyes.
And finally, what's your commute like?
I live in midtown, so I have a reverse commute. It's great because I always get a seat on the subway, and can drink my coffee and read the paper. Then, I feel ready to go when I get here.
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