Thanks to these hotels, it’s politics as usual

Maybe it’s not so astonishing to be reminded that the first famous “smoke-filled room” in American politics was a hotel room. Surely it’s no shock to learn that hotel was in Chicago.

But it was a surprise, and a welcome one, to learn in a recent New York Times story, that the long-languishing Blackstone Hotel, home to that smoky room, lives again.

The Blackstone, which opened on South Michigan Avenue in 1910 and has been closed since the 1990s, is scheduled to reopen in March after a $128-million renovation. As the newspaper reports, it was in 1920, during a deadlocked GOP convention, that a bunch of party big shots gathered with their cigars in a ninth-floor suite to work out a way to nominate Warren G. Harding. When the Associated Press mentioned in passing the air quality in the suite during the discussions, a contemporary cliché was born. The hotel, incidentally, is named for founding president of the Union Stock Yards Timothy B. Blackstone.

We should point out, however, that the Blackstone is only one among many hotels to play key roles in American politics and political slang.

In Washington, D.C., the Willard Hotel -- now called the Willard Intercontinental Washington -- at Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th St. NW, is the birthplace of the term “lobbyist.” Many historians trace the word back to President Grant, who liked to smoke and drink at the hotel during his term and noted the growing number of downstairs hangers-on with business to pitch.

In Dixville Notch, high in the hinterlands of New Hampshire, the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel has since 1960 been among the first precinct to report returns in that state’s closely watched primary elections.

Why? Because it’s where voters -- this year, there were just 17 of them -- gather in the ballroom to cast their ballots at midnight. Should you find your way to the Balsams, a grand old place that goes back to the 1860s, the hotel staffers will show you its polling room and various historical bric-a-brac. The 2008 Dixville Notch primary winners? McCain and Obama.

In Los Angeles, the Ambassador Hotel -- yes, that one that was just recently demolished -- was site of the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968.

And, returning to Washington, D.C. -- Virginia Avenue in the NW quadrant, to be more specific -- there’s a certain hulking modernist lodging and 1972 crime scene that demands mentioned.

Yes, the Watergate Hotel, part of the complex that was scene of the botched burglary attempt by then-President Nixon’s re-election henchmen. It closed last year for renovation, and is supposed to reopen in 2009.