Visitors had been drawn to the White Mountains since the early 1800s, first staying in simple taverns and modest hotels reached by horseback and stagecoach, and later in the large summer retreats of the Grand Hotel era after trains made the region generally accessible. Among roughly two dozen fashionable White Mountain grand hotels, the Mount Washington became one of only a few survivors and was one of the last built, the largest, and the grandest of New Hampshire's grand hotels. It was the vision of New Hampshire native Joseph Stickney, who had purchased and expanded the nearby Mt. Pleasant House but wanted something more ambitious on a dramatic 10,000-acre site closer to the mountains. He selected New York architect Charles Ailing Gifford to design an opulent, technically innovative, five-story hotel for 600 guests, and it opened on July 28, 1902, with a staff of 350. The hotel was almost entirely self-sufficient, with its own water, electrical heating, telephone, laundry, sewage systems, print shop, telegraph, and daily newspaper, and guests enjoyed a heated indoor swimming pool, Turkish baths, billiards, bowling, horse trails, a golf course, and orchestral entertainment. In its heyday, the hotel's coach met 50 trains a day and brought in famous guests including Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, and Babe Ruth, while the hotel also catered to automobile owners with a spacious garage and living quarters for chauffeurs. During World War II, it achieved international fame as the site of the July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which planned funding for post-war reconstruction, mapped a new course for the world's monetary system, and sought ways to prevent future global economic depressions, leading to the creation of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
