Word: willard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...queen of Pennsylvania Avenue again, maybe the nation's most historic private premises, the newly restored Willard Hotel. After 18 empty and derelict years, she will reopen this week, glittering with all her former glory, and more. Developer Oliver Carr poured in $120 million, searched the history books for authenticity, matched the marble in Italy, added an office building and retail complex and retained the building's classic stateliness with bull's-eye windows and mansard roofs -- and the legends of a small, raw country becoming a great republic...
President-elect Franklin Pierce took up residence at the Willard in 1853 and stayed there until the day he marched to the inaugural stand with Millard Fillmore. It was Fillmore who then came back to the hotel and moved into his successor's old quarters. Once, when the water supply in the neighborhood became tainted, Henry Willard sent a couple of barrels of drinking water from his splendid well over to James Buchanan in the White House, just a stroll away...
Washington's grandees, sensing the approach of civil war, had one last fling in 1859, and it was in the Willard. Among the 1,800 guests: Sam Houston, Jefferson Davis, Stephen Douglas, William Seward. They raised glass after sparkling glass of champagne as the night -- and peace -- ebbed. It was claimed that this was the last time North and South met on friendly ground. On the day Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederacy, delegates from 21 of the 34 states gathered quietly in Willard Hall to try to avert disaster. They failed...
Abraham Lincoln sneaked into the Willard one dawn just a year later, his bodyguards having cloaked his movements from Illinois because of rumors of assassination. When the President-elect took his boots off in his second-story suite, he found he had forgotten his slippers. Henry Willard had some, but they were not big enough for Abe. Willard's grandfather, William Bradley, just then visiting, had huge feet and slippers to fit. He sent them over to Lincoln's rooms...
...exchange for taking away loopholes, the Senate committee's bill would reward businesses by lowering the top business-tax rate from 46% to 33%. Said Willard Butcher, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank: "What's different about this tax bill is the very significantly lower rate." For many businesses, that will go a long way toward offsetting the loss of preferences, and for some companies it will bring an overall...