Qualla: Mayflower Hotel

Mayflower Hotel: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Asiir at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 2.5. On June 19, 1942, German saboteur George John Dasch checked into Room 351 at the Mayflower Hotel and called the FBI. Two days earlier, a Nazi submarine had landed him on a Long Island beach with three other agents - Operation Pastorius, an effort to disrupt American war production through coordinated sabotage. Dasch had encountered a Coast Guardsman almost immediately on the beach, given him a bribe to go away, and decided the mission was finished. He took a train to Washington, walked into the Mayflower, and informed his comrades he was turning them all in. The hotel where one of the most cinematic counter-espionage acts of the Second World War unfolded had been, by then, less than twenty years old. It had also already hosted every presidential inaugural ball from Calvin Coolidge forward. The list of consequential nights at the Mayflower was already long. It would only grow.

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Image: The original uploader was Asiir at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Mayflower Hotel: Allan Walker's Convent

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Almonroth, CC BY-SA 3.0. The block on DeSales Street between 17th and Connecticut Avenue had been the site of the Convent of the Visitation - a religious order that had owned the land since buying it for $50,000 in 1867. The nuns sold to developer Allan E. Walker in 1922. Walker, who had already built th...

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Image: Almonroth | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mayflower Hotel: Calvin Coolidge's Ball

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Almonroth, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Mayflower opened in February 1925, two weeks before Calvin Coolidge's second inauguration. The hotel hosted the inaugural ball that March 4. It would host the inaugural ball at every presidential inauguration through Ronald Reagan's in January 1981 - the last inaugural ball i...

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Image: Almonroth | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mayflower Hotel: The GI Bill in Room 570

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Almonroth, CC BY-SA 3.0. Eighteen months after Dasch's defection in Room 351, a committee of the American Legion gathered in Room 570 from December 15 to 31, 1943. Their task was to draft legislation that would help returning servicemembers - many of whom had been the same age as the average Marine on Gu...

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Image: Almonroth | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mayflower Hotel: Hoover's Cottage Cheese

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 4.0. From 1952 until his death in 1972, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover lunched at the Mayflower's Rib Room nearly every day. His companion was Clyde Tolson, the FBI's associate director. Hoover's order never varied: chicken soup, followed by a salad of iceberg lettuce, grapefruit, and c...

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Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mayflower Hotel: Eliot Spitzer's Alias

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the night of February 13, 2008, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer checked into Room 871 under the name George Fox. He was reportedly paying $1,000 an hour for an escort from a service called Emperors Club VIP. The New York Times broke the story on March 10. Spitzer resigned the ...

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