Under Samaritani’s direction, SGI had expanded into the rest of Europe and now looked to North America. “We once considered Italy’s boundaries as our frontiers,” he said. “Now we consider the whole Western world as our country.” There were plans for a $25 million shopping mall on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, a $100 million office complex in Montreal and a $300 million housing project ten miles outside Mexico City. Geographical diversification served another purpose: Assets and revenues from abroad reduced the financial risks to the company from Italy’s perennially unstable domestic political climate.
After earning his engineering degree from the University of Milan, Giuseppe Cecchi went to work at SGI’s Milan office. He had a strong jaw, light brown hair and the physique of a wrestler. While working in the project-planning department of SGI’s headquarters in Rome, Cecchi learned about the company’s prospective New York office and volunteered for a position there. He listed his qualifications: He was young, single, and he had “a little knowledge of English.” He was also the son of Antonio Cecchi, a senior executive at SGI. Samaritani signed off on the transfer and Giuseppe Cecchi set off for New York and reported to the office of Nicolas Salgo and Company.
Tall and distinguished, with a deep voice and prominent eyebrows, Nicolas Salgo was fluent in four languages—German, French, English and his native Hungarian. He was born in Budapest and lived in Geneva during World War II, working in various Swiss-run trading and investment firms. After the war, Salgo, married with two children, moved to New York and became a U.S. citizen in 1953. He managed U.S. investments, including a real estate portfolio, for a prominent Swiss family and went toe-to-toe with William Zeckendorf, head of Webb & Knapp and a legendary figure in New York real estate, over a deal. Zeckendorf was impressed and hired Salgo, sending him to Rome to manage Webb & Knapp’s involvement in the EUR district, an industrial park south of the city. The lead developer on that massive project was SGI.
Shortly after Salgo returned to New York to start his own investment firm, Samaritani attempted to recruit him to lead SGI’s expansion into the American market. But Salgo wasn’t interested in working for someone else. He made a counterproposal: Within six months, he promised to bring SGI three potential development projects to consider. “You will have the liberty to refuse one, two, or all three,” he told Samaritani. “If you refuse, you don’t owe me a nickel. If you accept any one of these proposals, you don’t owe me a commission—because I want to be your partner.” Salgo also promised to help see any development through to completion. “But I will never be on your payroll. I will always be independent.” Samaritani accepted.
Salgo let brokers and former colleagues know he was on the hunt for large-scale projects that could be built in or near urban centers, with a mix of offices, residences and other amenities. Within a few weeks, a friend called him from American Securities Corp. They did not have the funds to proceed with the Potomac Plaza Center, which had yet to win approval from federal and local agencies. Their option on the Washington Gas Light Company site was expiring in six months and they were ready to sell. When Salgo first saw the gas company site, he thought it looked “simply awful.” Warehouses and other industrial structures had been demolished, leaving behind cracked foundations barely visible among the weeds. Homes in the area were selling for as little as $2,000. The noise of rush-hour traffic rose from a busy street just a few hundred feet away. “No one wanted to live there,” he recalled later. Yet despite its flaws, the site was a rare opportunity to have a major footprint in America’s capital city. Salgo presented three possible sites to SGI, two near New York City and the Washington Gas Light Company land in Foggy Bottom. Giuseppe Cecchi was keenly aware the local real estate community considered the site to be inferior. But it was on a river—and people were always attracted to live or work with a view of a river, he knew—and it was close to downtown and to the White House. Cecchi believed the locals were wrong.
On February 1, 1960, at the SGI board meeting in Rome, Chairman Gualdi announced the “Potomac deal.” Two plots of land, “centrally located” at Virginia Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue, had been purchased at a total cost of $3.75 million. There were two separate contracts, including an outright purchase of one parcel from the Washington Gas Light Company and the purchase of an option from American Securities Corp. Salgo became a partner, with an 8 percent share, in a new subsidiary of SGI, to be named Island Vista, Inc., the sponsor of the as-yet-unnamed development.
Cecchi hoped to avoid the bureaucratic gridlock that had stalled the Potomac Plaza Center. He met informally with William E. Finley, known as Bill, the new executive director of the National Capital Planning Commission, to introduce himself and the project. Finley listened to Cecchi’s tentative plans and recommended the design “harmonize” with plans for the National Cultural Center.
On September 4, 1958, while vacationing in Newport, Rhode Island, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had signed legislation to authorize a National Cultural Center, and the following June, the center’s first board of trustees selected Edward Durell Stone to design the building. An Arkansas native, Stone had worked as a junior architect on Rockefeller Center with Harrison & Abramovitz—the same firm that designed Potomac Plaza Center—and went on to launch his own firm, winning a series of important commissions, including the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, India, and the U.S. pavilion at the 1958 international exposition in Brussels. In September 1959, Stone unveiled his plan for the National Cultural Center—a curved, concrete-and-glass structure, resembling a large clamshell, facing the Potomac. The center’s executive committee endorsed the design unanimously and commended Stone and his team “for their exceptionally fine work.” The Washington Post called it “little short of breath-taking.” The estimated construction cost—up to $60 million—shocked Representative Frank Thompson, Jr., of New Jersey, an original sponsor of the bill to create the National Cultural Center. He called Stone’s vision “beautiful but grandiose.”
Cecchi forwarded images of Stone’s dramatic design to the offices of Luigi Moretti, SGI’s top consulting architect, in Rome. In his early fifties, Luigi Moretti was at the top of his game, a member of Rome’s arts and business elite. He entered restaurants like a Renaissance prince and rode through town seated next to his chauffeur in a two-toned, black-and-white Chevrolet convertible with red upholstery. A former athlete, he was now overweight and diabetic. He had a bearlike presence, a powerful gaze and a legendary temper. But he also had a poetic and passionate soul, and sometimes displayed a sad, melancholic expression. He was fundamentally an introvert, his nephew would later recall.
Moretti was the illegitimate son of Luigi Rolland, a Belgian architect, and Maria Giuseppina Moretti. After graduating from Italy’s Royal School of Architecture in 1929, Moretti, like many of his peers, found work designing buildings for the Fascists. He designed the headquarters of a Fascist youth organization and joined the team of architects working on the Foro Mussolini, a massive sports complex north of the Vatican. According to a Mussolini biographer, the dictator and the young architect often met early in the morning hours and walked the site, contemplating “the rapport between man and the city and between the city and the countryside.” At Foro Mussolini, Moretti designed the public square extending from the Il Duce Obelisk to the main stadium, the headquarters of the national fencing academy and the interior of Mussolini’s private gymnasium before World War II intervened and work on the site was halted.
After the Fascist government collapsed in July 1943, Mussolini fled north with his mistress. Moretti, like hundreds of other Fascist sympathizers, followed Mussolini across the border and joined him in exile. After Mussolini’s execution in April 1945, Moretti was arrested and sent to San Vittore Prison in Milan, where he met and befriended another inmate, Count Adolfo Fossataro. Upon their release from prison—under a general postwar amnesty—the two men formed a business partnership to design and develop buildings in Rome. Moretti soon thereafter struck out on his own and established St
udio Moretti in the vast Palazzo Colonna, property of one of Rome’s most prominent families, with deep ties to the Vatican. Moretti’s studio spanned three apartments: one for his personal office and administrative staff, a second for draftsmen and other support staff, and a third “design development office” for projects commissioned by the Vatican, including a cathedral to commemorate the Second Vatican Council. He founded Spazio magazine in 1950, devoted to a “Festival of Arts and Architecture,” and published seven issues with the assistance of another survivor of the Fascist era, Felicia Abruzzese. Moretti was “the talent,” an associate later recalled, but Abruzzese was “the connection”—to top officials in the Vatican and senior executives of SGI.
Moretti rejected boxy buildings with right angles, which he considered “extreme modernism.” He drew inspiration from the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí, who had transformed sections of Barcelona with his sweeping designs, and the Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto. Moretti considered the circle a Renaissance shape; the oval, baroque; and the “free unstructured shape,” modern. He preferred to work in “the Roman way,” a junior architect later recalled, which meant an “endless number of drawings, changes of ideas, going away for a long vacation, come back and start all over again.” Moretti began each project with free sketches, which he then translated into paintings, through which he was able to express his “feeling for the site.”
When SGI’s new U.S. project arrived at his studio, Moretti had yet to visit Washington. For source material, he had only Edward Durell Stone’s “clamshell” design for the National Cultural Center, with which the new project was expected to “harmonize,” as well as maps and photographs of the site. After careful study of these materials, Moretti concluded the site was a “transition zone” between the natural environment of the Potomac River and Rock Creek Park, and the “man-made” city designed by Charles L’Enfant, whom he admired. Moretti told associates he saw himself as another European architect leaving his mark on America’s capital. He recognized the new project from SGI as more than a typical commission. It was an opportunity to create an international symbol of Italian genius and creativity.
Moretti’s first sketches for the new SGI development show three curved buildings parallel to the Potomac, rising behind a small cluster of waterfront villas inspired by the noble houses of Pompeii. In subsequent sketches, the buildings were reshaped, curving around three separate open spaces facing the water. Moretti obsessed over the buildings’ facades, likening them to walls surrounding gardens. The facades, he said, would make the buildings “sing.” As his studio assistants translated these freehand sketches into architectural drawings, Moretti insisted every line be inspired by “comme un police arrabiata”—in English, “the action of an angry thumb.” He vetoed any translations that were too mechanical or stiff.
Back in Washington, in the Connecticut Avenue offices of Island Vista, Cecchi and Salgo searched for an American architect who could translate Moretti’s drawings into workable plans. A local developer put them in touch with Milton Fischer, an architect with the firm of Corning, Moore, Elmore and Fischer. Cecchi shared Moretti’s design concepts for the “Foggy Bottom Development” with Fischer, who reacted to them in a detailed memo. Fischer carefully limited his comments to technical issues. Regarding floor-to-ceiling heights, Fischer noted eight feet was “considered satisfactory” and met local building code requirements, but nine feet, the typical ceiling height for “older apartments in town,” was appropriate for an “ultra-luxury apartment.” Fischer recommended setting the ceiling heights for typical units at eight feet six inches. He offered no comments about Moretti’s overall design.
Antonio Cecchi visited the United States to check in on his son Giuseppe—who was now known as Joe to his American colleagues—and review progress on SGI’s new project. The elder Cecchi met personally with Milton Fischer and reported back to Aldo Samaritani with his impressions. The American architect, Cecchi wrote, was “professional” and appeared to have an “in-depth understanding of the laws, regulations, and best practices in the construction field” and “in-depth knowledge of the local market,” but was artistically “mediocre” and not particularly “assiduous when it comes to exercising his skills.” In other words, Fischer was perfect for the job. “It seems to me,” Cecchi concluded, “that he would be particularly suited for collaborating with Architect Moretti.”
THREE MONTHS INTO HIS NEW ADMINISTRATION, President John F. Kennedy appointed Elizabeth Ulman Rowe to the National Capital Planning Commission. Rowe, known as Libby to her friends and family, was born in Maryland but considered herself a third-generation Washingtonian. She attended Madeira School in Virginia before heading off to Bryn Mawr, on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia, a region she later recalled “as conservative and as Republican as any section of the country.” She found politically like-minded friends while volunteering for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign and, after graduating in 1935, returned to Washington and took a job with the United Mine Workers. Nearly all her coworkers were men, either retired miners or the sons of working miners. Her duties included writing articles for the United Mine Workers Journal, including the “Women’s Page,” which featured recipes, fashion tips (she modeled a “charming daytime frock of heavy silk” in the January 1936 issue) and profiles of notable women.
During the 1936 presidential campaign, Libby wrote speeches for Roosevelt supporters to deliver in mining communities. She also met a bright, handsome young lawyer with the Securities and Exchange Commission, James Rowe. Jim and Libby married in 1937, International Women’s Year. Although the United Mine Workers was progressive on organizing black miners, it was less supportive of women in the workplace and did not employ married women. After Libby Ulman became Mrs. James Rowe, she was terminated.
Jim and Libby befriended a young couple from Texas, Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, and it was Johnson, Libby later said, who “made me into a planner.” In 1955, then–Senate Majority Leader Johnson arranged for Libby to take one of the two Senate appointments on the D.C. Auditorium Committee, tasked with finding a home for the National Cultural Center. “You’re my oldest Washington friend,” Johnson told her. “I need a real Washingtonian on that committee, and you’re gonna do it.”
Rowe worked closely with Jacqueline Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign and helped manage the inaugural parade. When Kennedy’s staff asked Rowe where she would like to serve in the new administration, she suggested the National Capital Planning Commission. As a member of the Auditorium Committee, she had seen firsthand the planning commission’s power to affect the physical layout of the federal city: Its refusal to support relocating a segment of the proposed Inner Loop freeway, for example, had helped doom the initial location for the National Cultural Center. The planning commission also appealed to her because the work was part-time, and she was raising three children: Betsy, Jimmy and Clarissa.
On May 18, 1961, Elizabeth Rowe was sworn in as a member of the planning commission, replacing Claude W. Owen. “We should have had a lady on the Commission a long time ago,” Owen said. Her colleagues welcomed Rowe with a standing ovation and an orchid plant. Another Kennedy appointee soon joined her on the planning commission: Walter C. Louchheim, Jr., a Harvard philosophy graduate and a banker. He seemed to be from another time, a character from a Henry James novel, perhaps. He was a fastidious dresser. He read history, poetry and philosophy, but drew the line at novels. Although he never learned to play a musical instrument, he could whistle all the themes from Beethoven’s quartets.
At the June meeting of the commission, Dr. Archibald M. Woodruff, a land economist and dean of the School of Government, Business, and International Affairs at George Washington University, became the commission’s chairman, and Rowe was elevated to vice chairman.
The same day, Giuseppe Cecchi sent a memorandum to Rome, summarizing a recent meeting with representatives of the National Cultural Center. Cecchi, Milton Fischer and Royce W
ard, an executive who had joined Island Vista after working on the Potomac Plaza Center, presented the “general trajectory” of their project to Jarold A. Kieffer, the center’s executive director. Kieffer said he was “very concerned” about the “form and height” of any buildings near the center and was “definitely negative” when told that one of the buildings would be on the border of the parcel, “nearly at the front door” of the center. Fischer reassured Kieffer the final design for the development would be “harmonious” and would “conform with the Cultural Center’s architectural forms.”
The subject line of Cecchi’s memorandum of June 8, 1961—“WATERGATE—CULTURAL CENTER”—is the earliest use of the word “Watergate” in the surviving files of SGI at the Central State Archives in Rome.
LIKE THE EVENTS THAT TOOK PLACE AT THE WATERGATE on the evening of June 16, 1972, and the early-morning hours of June 17, 1972, the origin of the Watergate name remains in dispute.
Warren Adler, who would go on to become a major novelist, playwright and screenwriter, managed his own public relations firm in Washington. The new owners of the Washington Gas Light Company site asked him to come up with a name for their project. He recommended Watergate, drawing inspiration from the nearby Water Gate Inn, which had opened its doors in August 1942, serving Dutch-inspired dishes, such as pork tenderloin and red cabbage, to the thousands of new federal employees flooding into Washington in support of the war effort, and from the floating concert shell known as the “Potomac Watergate” or “Watergate Barge,” the home of the summer music series of the National Symphony Orchestra since 1935.
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