Long regarded as a center of Washington life, the hotel at this site figured in major national moments from the Civil War era onward. At 6:30 a.m. in late February 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln and his security team led by Alan Pinkerton quietly entered what was then Willard's Hotel because of assassination threats, and the Lincoln family stayed there for ten days before the inauguration on March 4th. At the same time, Willard's hosted an unsuccessful peace conference, a last-ditch effort by delegates from 21 states to avert war. During the war, guest Julia Ward Howe was awakened by Union troops marching past and singing, and she then wrote the words of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which became the Union anthem. Later, President Ulysses S. Grant helped popularize the word "lobbyist" here, as men gathered in the lobby to approach him about their causes while he relaxed with a brandy and cigar. A hotel has stood on this site since 1816; Henry Willard became manager in 1847 and bought it with his brother in 1850. During the Civil War, rooms cost between $2.75 and $4 per night and included lavish meals. In August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. finished work on his "I Have a Dream" speech in his suite here. The current hotel, built in 1901, was one of Washington's first skyscrapers, a Beaux Arts building designed by Henry Hardenbergh, whose other work included New York's Plaza Hotel and the original Waldorf-Astoria.
