Park Hyatt Washington facts for kids
| Park Hyatt Washington | |
Quick facts for kids  |
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| Hotel facts and statistics | |
|---|---|
| Location | United States |
| Coordinates | 38°54′22″N 77°03′04″W / 38.906054°N 77.05108°W |
| Address | |
| Opening date | August 15, 1986 |
| Developer | Boston Properties |
| Architect | David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill |
| Management | Hyatt Hotels Corporation |
| Owner | Westmont Hospitality Group and Thomas Tan |
| No. of restaurants | 1 |
| No. of rooms | 216 rooms (inclusive of suites) |
| of which suites | 28 |
| No. of floors | 9 |
The Park Hyatt Washington is a luxury hotel located at 1201 24th Street NW in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. The operator is Hyatt Hotels Corporation, which since the hotel's opening has branded the structure one of its luxury Park Hyatt properties. The hotel, a Postmodernist structure that opened in 1986, hosts the Blue Duck Tavern, a restaurant that consistently ranks as one of the city's best.
About the hotel
Construction
By the 1960s, Washington, D.C.'s West End neighborhood was a decaying area of Victorian townhouses and abandoned light industrial sites. In 1974, the city significantly revised its zoning regulations. Among the changes made, the city treated hotels the same as residential housing, which spurred a hotel construction boom.
In spring 1984, Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of real estate development company Boston Properties, purchased the D.C.-based newsmagazine U.S. News & World Report. The deal included the magazine's real estate portfolio in Washington's West End. In June, Boston Properties and U.S. News jointly signed an agreement to acquire 250,000 square feet (23,000 m2) of space on the northwest corner of 24th and M Streets NW. One of the projects they announced for this tract was a hotel. The hotel's architect was David Childs, the head of the Washington, D.C., office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Boston Properties entered into an agreement to have the Hyatt Hotels Corporation manage the hotel, and to brand it as a luxury Park Hyatt. Ground for the hotel was broken on October 31, 1984. The hotel was initially planned to have 233 rooms, which included 123 deluxe guest rooms, 98 suites, a fitness center, swimming pool, and spa with hot tub and sauna. The hotel was constructed as part of a $200 million construction project that encompassed most of the city block. Omni Construction was the builder.
As completed, the Park Hyatt had 233 rooms, a presidential suite, an outdoor café, a caviar bar, and a restaurant. The hotel also featured the Rendez-Vous, a beauty salon operated by stylist Yves Graux. Four types of marble were used throughout the hotel, and the public areas featured 13th-century Buddhist sculptures as well as artwork by David Hockney, Gene Davis, Sam Gilliam, Howard Mehring, Kenneth Noland, Paul Reed, and Frank Stella. Each guest room bathroom featured a television, while the hotel's presidential suite had a working fireplace and baby grand piano.
Construction of the hotel helped complete a rapid transformation of the neighborhood that began in 1983. For a time, the intersection of 24th and M Streets NW was known as "Hotel Corner", because three new hotels existed here: The Grand Hotel on the southeast corner (originally known as The Regent, finished in October 1984), The Westin Georgetown on the northwest corner (finished in January 1986), and the Park Hyatt on the northeast corner.
Notable events
The Park Hyatt Washington has been the site of a wide range of historic events during its history, and hosted a number of notable people over the years. In February 1987, yacht racing captain Dennis Conner, who skippered the yacht Stars & Stripes 87 to win the America's Cup from the Royal Perth Yacht Club in Australia, stayed at the Park Hyatt before he and his team were welcomed back to the United States by President Ronald Reagan in a White House ceremony. Three months later, in April 1987, the National Football League and the National Football League Players Association met at the Park Hyatt in an attempt to reach agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement. These talks failed, and a one-month strike occurred in the fall.
In August 1990, just two weeks after the outbreak of the Gulf War, the Park Hyatt hosted Kuwait's foreign minister, Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, and Kuwait's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Abulhassan. The Park Hyatt had to turn down Jordan's King Hussein, who was making an unscheduled visit to Washington, because it would have been diplomatically inappropriate.
The Park Hyatt Washington was also the scene of negotiations over the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. In the agreement, 46 states settled lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related healthcare costs. In exchange, the four major tobacco companies to pay $206 billion over 25 years to the states to cover tobacco-related healthcare costs, end certain tobacco marketing practices, fund a new anti-smoking advocacy group (the American Legacy Foundation), and dissolve various tobacco industry research groups. The critical portion of the agreement, which resolved differences over punitive damages, was resolved at the Park Hyatt Washington in June 1997.
The Park Hyatt Washington played a role in the Lewinsky scandal. President Bill Clinton's personal attorney, Vernon Jordan, held his first press conference regarding the scandal at the hotel on January 22, 1998. The Park Hyatt was also where John S. Reed, head of Citicorp, and Sanford I. Weill, head of Travelers Group, met in April 1998 to first discuss the eventual merger of the two financial giants, and where the 14th Dalai Lama stayed during his visit to Washington, D.C., in October 2009.
Images for kids
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Breakfast from the Blue Duck Tavern
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