Great City Rich With Capital Ideas for Visitors

Pierre Charles l’Enfant was a French-born architect-artist-engineer whose father had worked on Versailles when George Washington asked him to design our nation’s capital. Just to make sure of attaining the proper level of stateliness and splendor, he borrowed Thomas Jefferson’s maps of major European cities before sitting down to his drawing board.

What grew from his sketches is a city with all the beauty and grandeur one could hope for, its broad and majestic avenues, green malls, reflecting pools and tidal basins set in place with all the care of a Renaissance master’s cartoon for a major work.

The living spirit of a country and its capital is everywhere: parks and plazas almost heroic in size and reach; magnificent memorials honoring our most illustrious leaders and heroes; museums and galleries surely among the world’s finest; architecture of almost Athenian brilliance.

Myopic developers have occasionally made their scars with an unseemly hotel or office building. But from L’Enfant’s blueprint a city has blossomed handsomely on the Potomac, one of which we can all be enormously proud, and none should fail to visit.

Here to there: United, American, TWA, Continental, USAir and Northwest will fly you to Dulles or National airports. Good bus-limo service from either, plan a half-hour from National, 45 minutes from Dulles except during rush hours.

How long/how much? No fewer than five days for a first-timer with across-the-board interests. Lodging prices are on the expensive side except on weekends when many hotels lower rates and toss in extras. Surprisingly good dining at moderate cost, not counting the ritzy or power-lunch places.

A few fast facts: Late spring and fall are best times for a visit, avoiding summer crowds and heat-humidity that will soak your seersucker. Fine bus-Metro system with 75-cent rides, block tickets for less.

Getting settled in: An excellent comfort-location value for this town is Hotel Washington (Pennsylvania Avenue at 15th Street; $96 double), an Italian Renaissance structure that faces the Treasury Building and White House. Hand-carved furniture and ornate decor in huge lobby, bedrooms a mix of styles, rates to jump at year-end.

Harrington (11th and E streets; $58) caters to families and young folks with neat but nothing-fancy rooms, some with five beds, a small and sometimes hectic lobby. Getting a little long in the tooth, but location just off Pennsylvania is near perfect for sights.

Bed ‘n Breakfast Ltd. (Box 12011; (202) 328-3510) has rooms in homes all over town in the $40-$75 double range. These could be great for short budgets or long stays.

Regional food and drink: Cooks in this city advance to chef status or die on how well they prepare Maryland crab cakes, one of life’s absolute delights when prepared with care and devotion. You won’t find a menu without them and other Chesapeake Bay and Eastern Shore delicacies.

The local accent is on American food well-prepared, the likes of shrimp, duck, salmon, trout, superb soft-shell crab, even an American-made blue chevre that we found excellent. Good American and foreign wines everywhere, a local craving for Boston’s Samuel Adams lager.

Moderate-cost dining: Old Ebbitt Grill (675 15th St.) is the sort of place you long for, old-fashioned without being ersatz turn-of-the-century tacky, polished brass, gas lights, marvelous feeling of the old Washington. Practically on White House lawn, fine menu, crab cakes delicious.

The Wayfarers (110 S. Pitt St., Alexandria) is the area’s most ancient tavern, two centuries of serving the best of American and English fare. In a typical Alexandria house of old timbers, lovely green patio out back, excellent seafood and duck, steak and kidney-oyster-mushroom pies, pheasant with wild mushrooms and juniper berries.

Fitch, Fox & Brown (Old Post Office Building) has been at it since two Harvards and a Yalie met and decided to enter the restaurant business in 1905. Bright-eyed blonde Mary La Spada now holds forth for the long-gone trio, making sure that anything that comes out of the kitchen or across the green-marble bar will satisfy. Straightforward menu, springtime colors throughout, a colorful and happy place. Restaurant Hunan in same building is good spot for spicier-than-Szechuan lunches, dinners.

Other good bets are Clyde’s of Georgetown (3236 M St.) or Bullfeathers (Theodore Roosevelt’s watered-down expletive), one at 410 1st St., the other 112 King in Alexandria, solid American menus at all three.

Going first-class: Short of writing a book, how do you possibly convey the historic and cultural impact the Willard Inter-Continental (1401 Pennsylvania Ave.; $180-$255) has had on Washington since opening its doors in 1850?

Guest Julia Ward Howe wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic” on Willard stationery; President-elect Lincoln held staff meetings before the lobby fireplace; Ulysses S. Grant roamed fabled Peacock Alley as general and later President; Henry Clay served the town’s first mint julep in Mark Twain’s favorite Round Robin Bar and the presidential flag flew here for a month while Calvin Coolidge waited for Warren Harding’s widow to vacate the White House.

Today, after being condemned to the wrecking ball but escaping with an 18-year closure, the Willard has been restored into one of the most magnificent hotels one could imagine, again the jewel of Pennsylvania Avenue a block from the White House.

Much of the power-lunch crowd went into mourning when Sans Souci closed, and now dedicated Francophiles head for Le Pavillon, Jean-Louis in Watergate Hotel or Le Lion d’Or, while the city’s best Italian is found at Tiberio’s. But your congressman might very well be twisting arms, or having his twisted, in the ornate luxury of the Willard Room.

On your own: Space doesn’t permit the endless list of Washington’s sights and attractions, but please take time for a walk down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol and you’ll see a goodly number. The Air and Space Museum will take your breath away, while the National Gallery of Art’s Italian section alone drew us back for two visits. The Smithsonian Museum Group now numbers 13 plus a zoo, all exhilarating.

For more information: Contact the Washington Area Convention and Visitors Assn. (1575 Eye St. N.W., Washington 20005; (202) 789-7000) for brochures on city attractions with map and locations, another on accommodations with prices, plus a dining-shopping guide. Ask for the Capital Package.