Location

A major force in the social, political, cultural, and business life of Washington, DC and the nation for more than 150 years, the Willard InterContinental Washington combines heritage and luxury with contemporary comfort and the latest technology.

The classic hotel has been described by author Nathaniel Hawthorne for the Atlantic Monthly as “...much more justly called the center of Washington than either the Capitol, the White House or the State Department...” Walt Whitman immortalized its bar in a poetic appeal to union troops, and Charles Dickens wrote about the hotel during his American travels.

It has also hosted almost every U.S. president since Franklin Pierce, in 1853. It was at the Willard that Julia Ward Howe wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, where President Ulysses S. Grant popularized the term "lobbyist," and where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote his renowned "I Have A Dream" speech.

The Willard continues to reinforce its central position in the nation’s capital, anchoring and supporting the revitalization of the city’s bustling new downtown and epitomizing world-class hospitality as the hotel of choice for heads of state and leaders of the world’s business, cultural, social, and political sectors.