A 12 panel full color fold out brochure with photos, guest information, meeting room information, area map , list of other Sheraton's and more. Sheraton Park Hotel Brochure Connecticut Ave Washington DC 1960's


. Built between 1917 and 1918 by local developer Harry Wardman and designed by local architect Frank Russell White, the Wardman Park Hotel was an eight-story, red brick structure modeled on The Homestead resort in Virginia.[4] The hotel was the largest in the city, with 1,200 rooms and 625 baths. It was nicknamed Wardman's Folly, due to its location far outside the developed area of Washington.[4] It opened on November 23, 1918,[5] just days after the Armistice with Germany ending World War I. No elaborate opening festivities were held since public gatherings were illegal during the 1918 flu pandemic. The hotel was hugely successful due to the housing shortage caused by the growth of Washington, D.C. during World War I.[4] In 1928, the hotel was expanded with an eight-story, 350-room residential-hotel annex designed by architect Mihran Mesrobian. That building, now converted into condominiums, is the only surviving portion of the original Wardman Park, known as the Wardman Tower, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Wardman was forced to sell the hotel in 1931 due to the Great Depression, and the hotel was acquired by Washington Properties.[4] Before the United States' entry into World War II, a British spy named Cynthia operated out of the premises as she spied on the Vichy French Embassy. At night, she would visit her lover, an embassy employee whom she had compromised, and steal secret documents, transporting them back to the hotel and photographing them in a lab she had set up in her room.[6] The hotel contained a full service drug store/pharmacy; the pharmacist was known as Doc Wardman. There was also a U.S. Post Office and shops in the basement, including a butcher, grocery store, and dry cleaner that was stocked even during World War II. In the late 1940s, the Olympic-size swimming pool was used by the 5th Marine Reserves, who were taught how to swim with their clothes on. The first televised broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press took place in 1947 in the Wardman Tower, where host Lawrence Spivak was a resident. Other shows broadcast from the hotel include The Camel News Caravan, The Today Show (Frank Blair segments), and The Arthur Murray Dance Program.[7] In 1953, Washington Properties sold the hotel to Sheraton Hotels.[4] Renamed the Sheraton-Park Hotel, the hotel shifted its focus from longer term residents to overnight guests.[4] Substantial additions were made to the property, including large new ballrooms and the 1964 addition known as the Motor Inn and later known as the Park Tower. In August 1962, Army Special Forces soldiers trained by rappelling down the side of the hotel. New main building of the hotel, completed in 1980. In the late 1970s, construction began on a modern replacement hotel immediately adjacent on the property. It opened in 1980 as the Sheraton Washington Hotel as which time the original building was razed.[4] In 1998, following a protracted lawsuit against Sheraton by the hotel's then owners, John Hancock Insurance and the Sumitomo Corporation, Marriott International took over management of the property, renaming the hotel the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. In 1998, Thayer Lodging Group of Annapolis, Maryland, purchased the hotel for $227 million and spent another $100 million on renovations.[8]