'Everything Must Go!' at the Watergate Hotel

Shoppers wait to pay for furniture in the Watergate Hotel lobby. (Newsline photo by Carrie Dindino)

Audio Clips: Don Hayes, president of National Content Liquidators, talks about the scarcity of items marked with "Watergate." Hayes on the Watergate Hotel sale procedures. Sale Hours : Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sundays noon to 5 p.m. The sale runs for 30 days beginning Sept. 6. Background Link: Newsline Special Report: Watergate Revisited

By Carrie Dindino
Maryland Newsline
Friday, Sept. 7, 2007; audio added Sept. 11, 2007

WASHINGTON - By mid-afternoon, sold signs were plastered on chandeliers, lights and tables. Gawkers and bargain hunters had waited for hours in a line that snaked down Virginia Avenue for a shot at taking a piece of the Watergate Hotel home with them.

“My friend wanted to come, and I think it was because of the Watergate” history, said Nancy Matteson of Oakton, Va. “And I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t know what I need,’ but we found things, and I think I actually have good use for it all.”

The hotel, famous for its connection to the Watergate burglary which eventually led to former President Nixon’s resignation, is in the first phase of a complete renovation scheduled to be completed in 2009. 

More than 600 people emptied the rooms on Thursday in the first day of its “Everything Must Go!” sale.

“We walked every floor. It was fun, and it was also beautiful to look at the views from some of the rooms,” said Matteson. She left the sale with a lamp, two serving trays, a luggage rack and her favorite piece, she said: a table that cost her $275.

Nancy Matteson with a table and other items she bought at the Watergate Hotel sale. (Newsline photo by Carrie Dindino)

Matteson said she enjoyed the nostalgia.

But others were there just for the bargains.

“Ninety percent [of people] are here for furniture. I don’t think they are here because it is the Watergate,” said Don Hayes, president of National Content Liquidators, the company hired by Monument Reality to take charge of the sale.

In 1972 the Watergate Hotel housed a team of burglars in rooms 214 and 314. They were arrested while attempting to bug phones in the Democratic National Committee headquarters located next door in the Watergate office complex. 

The burglary eventually led to Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.

Hayes thinks it will take close to 30 days to completely empty the hotel.  By then, he hopes to have sold all the toilets, carpets and even doors,  he said--some 50,000 items in all.

Not everyone found the bargain they were looking for, though.

“I wanted drapes for my new home, but they were too expensive,” said Arinze Enechukwu of Takoma Park, Md. Adding to his fustration, Enechukwu said he had to wait more than two hours in the boutique line to purchase glasses and silverware he had picked out.

This chandelier was marked as sold on the first day of the Watergate Hotel sale. (Newsline photo by Carrie Dindino)

“By the time I got upstairs to look for stuff, it was all gone,” he said.

Furniture and linens had to be purchased in the lobby, while items such as china and televisions had to be payed for in the “boutique” area.  The long check-out lines in both areas had people slumping against walls and sitting on the floor.

Despite the long lines, people seemed more than willing to dart from room to room, grabbing mirrors off the walls and blankets from the beds. 

Sales manager John Feldhaus described the scene with a line stolen from the NCL president:  “Don likes to say when we leave, the only thing left will be an echo.”

Carrie Dindino can be reached at computertech-online@jmail.umd.edu.

Copyright © 2007 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism

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