Grand Hyatt Washington is a hotel in Washington, D.C. , in the United States. The 897-room hotel, located at 1000 H Street NW, serves both tourist and business travel. From the time the hotel opened until 2003, it was directly across from the Washington Convention Center and served as a "convention headquarters" hotel for many conventions. The convention center closed and was demolished in 2004. CityCenterDC , a major office, residential, and retail complex, now occupies the site.
21-726: Quadrangle Development broke ground for the Grand Hyatt Hotel on February 21, 1985. The site was directly across the street from the Washington Convention Center. The structure was designed by RTKL Associates , an architectural firm based in Annapolis, Maryland . The hotel featured a vast atrium over the lobby that ran to the roof. The inspiration for the atrium was a similar structure designed by John C. Portman Jr. and built in Atlanta , Georgia , in
42-431: A 27,000 US gallons (100,000 L) lagoon. The hotel had five below-ground floors, with the lagoon on the first below-ground level. Banquet space, ballrooms, and meeting rooms existed on the second to fifth below-ground levels. The lobby occupied the first floor. Slightly raised platforms and bridges connected various parts of the lobby to one another, with stairs and escalators , placed at diagonals to H Street NW, led to
63-483: A 7,000-square-foot (650 m) water feature (lagoon and waterfall) had been added to the atrium . As constructed, the hotel had 907 rooms and was the city's third-largest hotel. The hotel cost $ 140 million to build, which included a $ 1 million, 13-story skylit atrium above the lobby. The water feature in the lobby consisted of a waterfall which began 35 feet (11 m) above the lobby and ended 75 feet (23 m) below it. The waterfall helped fill and circulate water in
84-412: A brutal box; we see the architects conscientiously hitting a lot of the right urban design keys without creating a wholly pleasant, let alone a memorable, melody." Quadrangle Development put the now 888-room Grand Hyatt Hotel up for sale, and in 2011 Host Hotels & Resorts agreed to place a $ 15 million deposit on the building to prevent another bid from being entertained. Host, however, withdrew from
105-691: The American Institute of Architects . Rogers and Taliaferro's reputation grew when, in 1954, internationally renowned architect Pietro Belluschi selected the firm as his associate architect for the design of the Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore . The project received an AIA Award of Merit and, in 1986, a special 25-Year Award from the AIA's Baltimore Chapter. In 1956, Lamb was made a partner in
126-404: The 1960s. The ground floor of the atrium was designed to feature a waterfall and fish lagoon, designed by engineer Howard Fields. At the time of the groundbreaking, planners expected the hotel to have 950 rooms and cost $ 130 million to construct. By June, the hotel's room count had dropped to 910, and by July the cost had soared to $ 150 million. By December 1986, the room count had fallen to 907, and
147-432: The below-ground levels. The structure had double-loaded corridors, which meant that guest rooms either faced inward at the atrium or outward at the city. All inward-facing rooms had balconies overlooking the atrium. The north walls of the atrium were decorated with Mediterranean-style pilasters , with a Mediterranean-style arcade formed by segmental arches on the first and second floor. A similar design motif existed on
168-502: The building featured entrances to the hotel lobby bar and to a delicatessen -like restaurant, which helped to alleviate the monotony of the vast expanses of wall. A mansard roof topped the structure. The roofline was punctuated with dormers , each topped by a pediment , which helped to mask the HVAC and mechanical equipment on the roof. In addition to its regular guest rooms, the hotel had two special types of rooms. The hotel's top floor
189-604: The company owned 77 upscale hotels containing approximately 42,000 rooms in the United States , Brazil , and Canada . In 1927, John Willard Marriott and his wife Alice opened a root beer stand in Washington, D.C. that they named “The Hot Shoppe,” which later became a public company. In 1957, Hot Shoppes, Inc. expanded into the lodging business with the opening of its first hotel in Arlington, Virginia, and in 1967,
210-623: The company was renamed Marriott Corporation. In 1897, the Van Noy Brothers of Kansas City, Missouri , formed Van Noy Railway News and Hotel Company to operate news stands along the Missouri Pacific and other regional railroads. The company later expanded to various hospitality services, including hotels. After several name and business changes it became the Host International Company in 1968. It
231-416: The east and west sides of the atrium, which were stepped back from the first below-ground level. Campanile -like towers, which served as structural supports for the lobby elevators , were set against the south wall. Two gift shops graced the lobby. The exterior of the hotel featured rhythmic metal-framed windows with spandrels . The base of the building was clad in rusticated stone panels. The corners of
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#1732786799419252-438: The firm purchased Beijing-based AHS International, a practice that specialized in healthcare and medical-facility architecture. In 2011, Building Design ranked RTKL’s retail sector first in the world, its planning services third, and its urban design services fifth. Host Hotels %26 Resorts Host Hotels & Resorts, Inc. is an American real estate investment trust that invests in hotels. As of December 31, 2023,
273-474: The firm, which changed its name to Rogers, Taliaferro and Lamb. The addition of urban design specialist George Kostritsky in 1961 completed the foursome, and the “Rogers, Taliaferro, Kostritsky and Lamb” name was condensed to “RTKL”. In that same year RTKL was commissioned to design the public spaces for the Charles Center , which contributed to Baltimore’s urban renewal movement. Largely because of
294-507: The initials of its initial members, Rogers, Taliaferro, Kostritsky, and Lamb. The firm was founded by Archibald C. Rogers in his grandmother’s basement in Annapolis, Maryland . Francis T. Taliaferro joined shortly afterwards. In 1949, the pair hired Charles E. Lamb, whose design for the Anne Arundel County Girl Scouts Teepee Lodge gained the firm national attention by winning an award from
315-714: The negotiations on December 18, losing its deposit. However, Host reversed itself in 2012 and on July 22 announced it had agreed to buy the Grand Hyatt Hotel for $ 400 million. The sale was the largest hotel sale to date in the history of the District of Columbia. Host rebranded the hotel as the Grand Hyatt Washington . In March 2017, Cvent , an event management company, ranked the Grand Hyatt Washington 51st in its annual list of
336-507: The public spaces of the hotel, including two Cubist sculptural pieces by Guy Dill. Benjamin Forgey, the architectural critic for The Washington Post , called the Hyatt's architectural design grand, but not great. Although aesthetically pleasing, he called it "a cold, passionless design." Elements of the structure were clichéd but also efficient, he concluded. "[T]his building is better than
357-418: The success of this involvement, the firm was commissioned to develop downtown plans for Cincinnati , Ohio, Hartford, Connecticut , and Charlotte, North Carolina , among other U.S. cities. The firm continued to expand in the next decades, opening offices across the company and overseas. RTKL also grew through acquisitions. In 2000, RTKL acquired Dallas -based FDS International, a health practice ranked among
378-620: The top U.S. hotels for meetings. RTKL Associates RTKL was a global architecture , planning and design firm. The firm was founded in 1946 by Archibald C. Rogers and Francis T. Taliaferro in Rogers’ grandmother’s basement in Annapolis and grew to be one of the largest architectural firms in the world prior to its acquisition by Arcadis NV in 2007. In October 2015, RTKL was formally merged with another Arcadis subsidiary, Seattle-based Callison, to form CallisonRTKL headquartered in Baltimore . The firm's name, RTKL, originated from
399-629: The top ten in the country. Later RTKL bought the Miami -based Howard Snoweiss Design Group, a design company, with an eye towards expanding its business in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2007, RTKL became a wholly owned subsidiary of Arcadis NV , an international company that delivers consulting, design, engineering, urban planning, architectural and project management services for infrastructure, environment and buildings. In August 2010,
420-495: Was acquired by Marriott Corporation in 1982. In 1993, Marriott Corporation divided its business into two companies: Marriott International, Inc., which took over management and franchising, and Host Marriott Corporation. Host Marriott managed lodging and travel concessions at airports and along turnpikes and interstate highways. The concession businesses were further spun off as Host Marriott Services, or HMSHost . After divesting its non-hotel business and reorganizing it as
441-523: Was called the Regency Club, and each of these rooms (aimed at business travelers) came with special amenities. The hotel also had three presidential suites. Each presidential had a hot tubm, sauna, wet bar , and other amenities. The firm of Hirsh-Bedner oversaw the interior decoration scheme. The public spaces featured marble floors, while the meeting and banquet levels had white maple walls. A large number of original artworks were placed throughout
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