The District Board of Zoning Adjustment, under the terms of the original permit granted to the Watergate by the zoning commission in 1964, was empowered to “review” plans for the final building. At the board’s June 16 meeting, Becker testified that Kennedy Center trustees had unanimously agreed to oppose the final Watergate building unless it was reduced by five floors.
Lichtenberg said the Kennedy Center was relying on outdated plans. The final building, he assured the board, would be built to a height of 140 feet above the waterline, a mere 5 feet above the roof of the Kennedy Center. The elimination of five floors would cost developers in excess of $5 million.
“My client has tried . . . to be a cooperative and interested direct neighbor of the center,” Lichtenberg wrote the Board of Zoning Adjustment. “We expect to continue to do everything possible within reasonable limits to cooperate with the Center, but we expect in return fair and equitable consideration based on all the facts involved.”
THAT WEEKEND, THE MODEL APARTMENT IN WATERGATE EAST opened to the public. Admission was fifty cents per person, with the proceeds donated to local charities. The apartment was designed by Duke Arturo Pini di San Miniato, a friend of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (he designed their suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York), who was completing his term as president of the National Society of Interior Designers. He became an interior designer, he told the Washington Star, “via the route of restoring palazzos in his native Italy where he inherited the family title of duke.”
His biography was somewhat less authentic than the antiques he placed in the model apartment.
According to a report in the New York Times, Pini di San Miniato was a former antiques dealer from Bologna who married a Canadian heiress and acquired his title in 1964 by purchasing it from the tiny Republic of San Marino, a “micro-state” completely surrounded by Italy, located about an hour south of Venice on the Adriatic Sea. The Times story infuriated Pini di San Miniato, who hired an attorney and demanded a retraction. “I’m the only American citizen who legally has the right to call himself duke,” he insisted. An internal Times investigation could not find his title listed in World Nobility and Peerage, the Almanach de Gotha or the 1964 edition of the Enciclopedia Araldico-Cavalleresca. The rumor in Italy, according to the Times’s internal investigation, was that Pini di San Miniato arrived in the United States after World War II, “told everyone he was titled” and then proceeded to purchase the title from “an elderly, childless Italian.”
“He’s definitely not a Duke,” said Princess Elvina Pallavicini.
“He would have made it without the title,” added Princess Domitilla del Drago. “I wonder why he bothers. It’s amusing.” The Times eventually concluded Pini di San Miniato could call himself a duke, because the title had in fact been conferred by the Republic of San Marino, without claiming any noble lineage.
Pini di San Miniato’s design for the model “contemporary home” at the 1964 New York World’s Fair was praised by Better Homes & Gardens magazine for its “restrained but vibrant tone,” but there was nothing restrained about his design in Watergate East. The apartment was furnished “in a Classic Continental style,” the Washington Post reported, with French and Italian furnishings suggesting “Oriental Opulence and Italian Grandeur.”
The Post’s Von Eckardt inspected the model apartment. His verdict: “Well, it’s different.”
“If the bare and square uniformity of modern apartment house slabs bothers you,” he wrote, “be happy in the knowledge that the architects have provided here as much sculptural dressing as Baldassare Longhena, master of Baroque palazzos, ever dreamed of.” He described the model apartment as a “miniature replica of a 17th century Parisian palace” with “wedding cake icing on the dining room ceiling, a miniature hall of mirrors, more mirrors around a somewhat bothersome structural column in the living room, a non-structural Romeo and Juliet colonnade in the master bedroom, valences, scallops and all kinds of Louis This and That bric-a-brac.” He called the layout “rambling” and “complex” and complained he couldn’t “find a right angle anywhere.” The apartment, he conceded, had ample closet space and “splendid” views.
The Milwaukee Journal described the apartment’s eight-foot ceilings as a “necessity” after “zoning controversies” forced the building to be “squeezed down,” forcing air-conditioning units, originally planned between floors, to be set under windows—taking eighteen inches off the width of the room. The Watergate’s low ceilings, Pini di San Miniato acknowledged, presented some challenges—which he addressed by carefully selecting furniture and adopting “gimmicks of one sort or another in every room.” He placed a triple-arched colonnade in the master bedroom, for example, to “give an effect of height” and also form “a pleasant lounging area.”
On the evening of October 25, 1965, the grand opening of the Watergate was held for fifteen hundred invited guests. Aldo Samaritani and Luigi Moretti flew in from Rome. Nicolas Salgo came down from New York. Other guests came from Mexico, where SGI was planning a community outside Mexico City, and from Montreal, where the company was erecting the tallest concrete-and-steel skyscraper in Canada, designed by Luigi Moretti and Pier Luigi Nervi.
“From the inception of our task to build Watergate,” Samaritani wrote in the dedication program, “we were conscious of the extraordinary opportunity we possessed, and the responsibility that we had accepted.” He called Washington “the most important city of our age” and said his goal was to do more than simply “develop” the site but to give Washingtonians a “distinctive and valuable addition to their city . . . consistent with the beauty and spirit” of the nation’s capital.
Samaritani thanked “the many District of Columbia officials whose assistance and cooperation have been invaluable in our work.” He pointedly left out any mention of either the Commission of Fine Arts or the National Capital Planning Commission.
Clara Graff, whose husband, Bill, worked as an architect on the Watergate project for SGI, noticed Luigi Moretti hanging to the side of the room during the festivities. Moretti, “like many architects,” was an introvert, she recalled later, and was self-conscious about his limited English. Clara sat with him during dinner and kept him company the entire evening.
The first Watergate East apartment was sold to Admiral Paul Dudley, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. The first residents to move into Watergate East were Mr. and Mrs. Louis Ratner—he founded the Louis Creative Hairdressers chain—who moved into their penthouse the morning of October 16. Admiral and Mrs. Dudley moved into their unit later the same day.
George Arnstein had recently accepted a job with the National Education Association and found the commute from Arlington, Virginia, to downtown Washington “a bit tedious.” Life in Virginia, moreover, was not a match for the progressive politics of George and his wife, Sherry: The state still had a poll tax and their African-American friends could not join them for weekend swims in their local public pool. The Arnsteins stretched their finances and purchased a Watergate apartment off of a floor plan they saw at the sales center. They originally planned to move in over Thanksgiving weekend, but delayed a month because the building, Sherry thought, looked “unfinished.” When they asked to see their assigned parking space, the sales associate replied awkwardly the building did not yet have an occupancy permit for the garage, but would provide valet parking in the interim. The Arnsteins celebrated the holidays with a party in their new apartment and gave guests a “punch list” to write down anything that needed to be fixed.
Margaret and Ralph Berlin moved into the Watergate from Bethesda, Maryland. He was the carpet buyer for Kann’s, the first Washington department store to have black mannequins in its window displays. When Margaret first saw their apartment, which had no formal dining room, she asked her husband, “Where do we eat?” To make friends with their new neighbors, Margaret and Ralph organized weekly potluck dinners in their hallway. Ralph vacuumed the hall
after each gathering.
Forrest Mars, Sr., an heir to the Mars candy fortune, and his wife, Audrey, bought a penthouse, merging a duplex with an adjacent apartment to form an urban mansion. They employed a full-time gardener for their terrace, with sweeping views of downtown Washington, the Potomac River and Georgetown. Forrest lived mostly in Nevada. According to a family biographer, he and Audrey were not companions “in any sense of the word.”
Lillian and John E. Cannaday, Jr.—the New York Times listed his occupation as “investing in the stock market”—bought a penthouse and hired a decorator to pull the apartment together while they went on a world cruise. When they returned in December, “the paintings were hung, and the drapes were in place. All they had to do was to unpack their trunks and suitcases and enjoy their new home.”
Congressional aide Robert McCord and his wife combined two penthouses. They installed a fountain in their entry, setting it low “so it wouldn’t make a splash.”
Another penthouse owner, Arthur Hill, paired a Van Gogh painting with a Spanish rug “bought on sale at Bloomingdale’s.”
New owners received a “welcome” letter from the Watergate, which read in part: “You have purchased the ultimate in luxury living—a purchase that can only grow and increase in living comfort as well as monetary value.
“Your future happiness is assured here. Nothing will be spared in keeping you surrounded with the same beauty and atmosphere that made you originally decide upon Watergate East.”
All new residents also received a copy of the building’s “Rules and Regulations,” with forty-seven specific policies, including:
Mops, cloths and brooms shall not be dusted or shaken from apartment windows, balconies or in the halls or stairways.
The dictates of good taste and propriety in the matter of dress will be observed in the public areas of Watergate East.
Pets are permitted as long as they behave.
Barbecuing and cooking on the balconies is prohibited.
All persons using the pool from their individual apartments when in bathing attire, will wear robe and slippers, exit and enter pool area as directed by resident manager.
Anna Chennault sketched the layout for her new penthouse herself, designating spaces for two bedrooms, a maid’s quarters, three bathrooms (plus a powder room), a study and a large combination living and dining room. An elevator connected the first floor of the duplex to a rooftop garden. As construction was wrapping up, she asked Vlastimil Koubek, a prominent Washington architect, to inspect the unit. He reported back to her on December 20, 1965, listing a number of “deficiencies and/or possible problems” including:
Low ceiling heights;
A “heatilator” in the living room, which should be replaced with a conventional fireplace;
“Unfortunate” architectural features, including columns blocking windows;
“Makeshift” placement of a rectangular heating/cooling unit against the curved wall in the foyer;
A continuous crack along the top of the plaster walls; and
Placement of the dryer exhaust in the kitchen, which could cause “lint flying all over the roof when you have guests enjoying a roof garden party.”
Chennault presented the list to the Watergate sales team. She persuaded them to knock $75,000 off the purchase price of her penthouse, bringing it down to $250,000.
Walter Pforzheimer bought the last one-bedroom apartment in the initial offering of Watergate East. A Yale Law School graduate, he was practicing law in New York when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day, he joined the army’s Senior Air Intelligence Staff and served under Colonel Lewis Powell, chief of operational intelligence and later a Supreme Court Justice. In what would later become known as the Yale Library Project, Pforzheimer distributed funds to various informants throughout Europe, under the pretext of buying books for Yale’s libraries. After the war, he moved to Washington and helped write the legislation creating the Central Intelligence Agency.
A lifelong bachelor, Pforzheimer was the son and nephew of noted book collectors. His father’s Molière collection was the finest outside of France and his uncle Carl owned a Gutenberg Bible. Bill McCarthy, a rare book dealer from New York and a Yale classmate, reached out to Pforzheimer one day to offer him an original intelligence report from the American Revolution, regarding fortifications in Brooklyn. Pforzheimer bought it for $35. As he was leaving, McCarthy said he had something else that might be of interest. Walter took a seat and McCarthy brought out a folder, with a handwritten letter, dated July 26, 1777, addressed to Colonel Elias Dayton. The letter read, “The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged” and signed “G. Washington.”
“I knew right away that this was my make or break point, my right of passage,” Walter recalled years later. “If I bought this, I would be a real collector in the field of intelligence service. If I walked away, I would not be a serious collector.” He paid in the “middle four figures” for the letter, which created something of a “cash flow problem.” He kept the purchase secret from his father for nearly five years, fearing a negative reaction; when his father, near death, saw the letter, he congratulated his son on the purchase.
Pforzheimer persuaded Allen Dulles, the first civilian CIA director, to establish within the spy agency a library, which became the Historical Intelligence Collection. Pforzheimer became its first curator in 1956. The collection was in part a resource for checking what was public and what remained secret, to be used whenever former CIA personnel wrote memoirs and submitted them, as required under federal law, for review to ensure they contained no classified material. Pforzheimer also used the collection to help the CIA rebut any fabricated claims about the history of U.S. intelligence gathering abroad, a common Soviet disinformation tactic during the Cold War.
Pforzheimer often purchased two copies of any book that caught his eye—one for the CIA, one for his personal library. By the time he moved into Watergate East, his personal collection included three thousand volumes. He stored his most valuable items on the upper floor of his duplex, behind a locked steel gate. He received visitors for cocktails and cigars in his first-floor “sitting room,” which also held his collection of Washington Redskins memorabilia. As his collection grew, he needed more room. Since neither apartment on either side of him was for sale, he bought a studio apartment on the fourth floor, where he slept and dressed—and stored hundreds more books, periodicals and newspaper clippings.
SGI EXECUTIVES IN ROME ORDERED A REPORT FROM WASHINGTON on the extent of changes being made for new owners in Watergate East. The report showed customization had gotten out of hand. Three out of four bathrooms in Watergate East had been changed. Nine bidets had been added, but another thirteen had been removed. Five apartments had eliminated service entrances. Nearly three-quarters of apartments had changed their kitchens. “The more the client is prepared to spend,” the Watergate’s local team reported, “the more exacting he is.” Only 13 percent of the efficiency apartments had been revised at the request of the owners, but 100 percent of penthouse owners had demanded changes.
Until there were enough residents to form a cooperative association, the Watergate development team had run the building. It was now time to turn over the reins to the owners. On April 18, 1966, in the auditorium of the Peoples Life Insurance building across the street from Watergate East, the developers called a meeting to organize the association.
Riverview Realty announced a slate of nominees for election to the board of directors of the new association. They included Joel Barlow, a partner at the Covington & Burling law firm and owner of a penthouse; Charlotte Smith Alford, a freelance illustrator and artist; Elizabeth Guhring, a prominent divorce lawyer; Walter Rosenberry, a paper and forest products executive; John Kern, a tax judge and a former mayor of Indianapolis; Charles Simpson, another tax judge; William Smith, a U.S. Army officer; Robert McCord, a congressional aide; William Simon, a Washington lawyer and former general
counsel to the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee; and Harold A. Kertz, a lawyer and vice chairman of the District of Columbia Public Service Commission. The nominees were approved by a vote of the owners.
In a “Report from Management,” the developers thanked residents for their “patience and understanding” and expressed a shared goal of reaching a “normal” level of operations and an end to ongoing construction. The developers also announced they were hiring additional engineers and “porters” at no charge to the residents, in order to address “increased maintenance problems.” They promised the lobby would be completed “in the near future”; the outdoor fountains would shortly resume operation; the swimming pool would be ready before summer; and the air-conditioning would be turned on no later than May 1.
Back in Rome, Samaritani reported to the SGI board that 206 of 240 apartments in Watergate East had been sold; 34 apartments and 54 garage spaces, some of which were being rented out, remained available for purchase. The external walls and balconies of the Watergate Hotel and Watergate Office Building were finished. Progress on the fourth building, Watergate West, was going ahead “with alacrity.”
The Watergate Shopping Mall opened on October 27, 1966, with a tasting of Italian wines sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Trade. Over a thousand guests at the gala opening toured the new Peoples Drug Store and the Watergate Safeway store, serenaded by strolling musicians playing “popular tunes.”
JOHN BAILEY, CHAIRMAN OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, learned from his landlord that the rent on their K Street offices was going to be hiked significantly. “We need to find another space,” Bailey told his administrative assistant, R. Spencer Oliver, who began reaching out to real estate agents. One day, Oliver’s phone rang. It was Giuseppe Cecchi.
“I understand you’re looking for office space,” said Cecchi. “Come to the Watergate.”
Oliver was reluctant. At the time, taxi rates in Washington were determined by the number of zones crossed per ride. The Watergate was two taxi zones away. “That’s pretty far from the center of town,” he said. “I don’t know.” Cecchi pressed Oliver to come over and take a tour.
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