Post Mortem: Ambassador Hotel
THE RITZ IT WASN’T, but for nearly fifty years the Ambassador had something no other Washington hotel could offer: an almost Olympic-size indoor swimming pool. It attracted the likes of Jack Kennedy, who sometimes swam there in his Senate days, and Florence Chadwick, who trained there for her record-breaking swims across the English Channel.
When the Ambassador opened in 1929, its indoor pool — along with a sauna and steam bath, handball courts, and exercise rooms — put it in a class by itself. Many people attributed the innovations to the razor-sharp business acumen of Washington developer Morris Cafritz, who had parlayed a $1,400 loan in 1904 into the largest personal fortune in the city’s history. As it happened, though, Cafritz had the health club facilities installed so that he would have a convenient place to exercise.
While Cafritz’s real estate empire was still booming at the time of his death in 1964, the Ambassador was not. It changed hands several times in the 1970s, but none of the new owners was able to make the hotel profitable. Finally, in 1978, the Ambassador’s innards were auctioned off at a demolition sale, as was its trademark streetside sign: a neon bathing beauty diving downward along the building’s façade.
This article originally appeared in the July 1987 issue of Regardie’s.
Bill Hogan