Elite Traveler Winter 2021

EXPLORE TOP HOTELS The Hay-Adams WASHINGTON, DC

guests with a penchant for eavesdropping and people-watching will nevertheless enjoy feeling themselves part of an unfolding political drama as they tipple a martini alongside some of Washington’s biggest newsmakers. Built as a plush residential hotel in 1927, and meant to echo the grand mansions along the park, the Hay-Adams quickly evolved as the number-one place to stay to be as close to the White House as possible. Preeminent guests include past and present presidents, Nobel Peace Prize and Pulitzer winners, and luminaries. Featured in numerous productions, the Hay-Adams appears in favorites such as House of Cards and Veep . Today’s guests can choose from 145 rooms and 21 suites with views of the White House, St John’s Church or Lafayette Park. Suite from $1,129. Contact Tristan Mahaffey, director of reservations, tmahaffey@hayadams.com, +1 800 424 5054, hayadams.com

Many believe that the walls of old buildings hoard bygone conversations within, and that if we’d only listen, those walls would have stories to tell. At the stately Hay-Adams, which overlooks The White House and Lafayette Park, those conversations surely have been legendary. Occupying the site of the Victorian-era, Romanesque domiciles designed by renowned architect Henry Hobson Richardson for Washington insiders John Hay and Henry Adams, the hotel (and its walls) may draw some of its gravitas from the illustrious salons held in those homes long before the Hay-Adams was built. As the purlieu of philosophers, artists, writers and scientists (such as Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry James), these spirited salons left a legacy for colloquy and confabulation that remains today. Though the hotel’s discreet, subterranean cocktail bar (aptly dubbed Off the Record) has earned the slogan ‘Washington’s best place to be seen and not heard,’