History
On 4 March 1933, the first inaugural ball of President Franklin D. Roosevelt was held at the hotel. The hotel was outfitted with a special ramp and elevator to accommodate the needs of the new president. Subsequently, the Shoreham has hosted inaugural balls for every subsequent president of the 20th Century. President Bill Clinton played the saxophone at his inaugural ball held at the hotel on 21 January 1993.
Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon had his official residence in the Shoreham Hotel, during the period the government-in-exile of the Commonwealth of the Philippines was established in Washington, D.C. from May, 1942 until his death in August, 1944. The third-floor suite (the Franklin D. Roosevelt suite) he and his family stayed in was fully enclosed, and the glassed-in balcony can still be seen to this day. During that time, the Philippine and American flags flew outside the hotel.
Dr. Chris Lambertsen demonstrated his Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (LARU) MK II, an oxygen rebreather, to individuals who were in the process of forming a maritime unit for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in November 1942 at the Shoreham Hotel.
Over the years, the Shoreham has been the Washington home of many prominent politicians, including Senator Stuart Symington from Missouri. During the late 1940s and early 1950s when he was first Secretary of the Air Force, Symington was known to host President Harry S. Truman for all-night poker games.
On 10 February 1964, the Beatles booked the entire 7th floor of the hotel for one evening while they were in Washington to give a concert at the Washington Coliseum during their first American tour. Later that year in December, Denny Doherty performed his first show with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, as The New Journeymen. With the addition of Cass Elliot, they would go on to be known as The Mamas & The Papas. The Conservative Political Action Conference took place at the Omni from 2006 through 2009.
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I assure you that in our next class we will concern ourselves solely with the history of Egypt, and not with the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies.”
—Griffin Jay, and Reginald LeBorg. Prof. Norman (Frank Reicher)