Willard Battle Hymn

In two separate incarnations, half a century apart, the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., played rich roles in the nation's history. Before his first in auguration, Abraham Lincoln brought his family to stay at the original Willard, which opened in 1847 within two blocks of the White House. Julia Ward Howe wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic at the hotel. President Ulysses S. Grant had a special chair in the lobby, where he used to sit and smoke for hours while scandal crackled around his administration.

The second Willard, built on the same site in 1901, was just as successful. Washington's society strolled through its "Peacock Alley"--the 85-ft. lobby corridor of green and bronze with cream-colored columns. When Alice Roosevelt, Teddy's saucy daughter, wanted to smoke in the dining room, the waiters obligingly shielded her table with screens.

But the Willard more recently fell on hard times and was an empty hulk last week when a court ruled that the structure could be converted into an office building. The decision roused the Willard's persistent advocates to try once again to find a way to save the landmark, of which Poet Carl Sandburg observed that in the 1860s "Willard's Hotel could more justly be called the center of Washington and the nation than either the Capitol or the White House, or the State Department."

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