Embassy Row Hotel

The Embassy Row Hotel is a hotel owned by Lowe Enterprises located at 2015 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., in the United States. The operator is a Lowe subsidiary, Destination Hotels & Resorts. The hotel, a Modernist structure which opened in 1970, is in the Embassy Row neighborhood of the city, and takes its name from the area. The hotel has had several owners, and is considered a "landmark" in the city.Construction and early receptionThe Embassy Row Hotel was financed and constructed by Dr. Cyrus Katzen, a local dental surgeon who became a mult-millionaire by investing heavily in real estate. Other investors included securities lawyer G. Bradford Cook, former hotel manager Klaus P. Reincke, and three anonymous investors from Nashville, Tennessee.At the time, the 2000 block of Massachusetts Avenue NW consisted of two- and three-story Victorian townhouses and mansions, many of them the homes or former homes of very wealthy and politically prominent people. A zoning exemption allowed the nine-story hotel to be built there.The structure opened on December 15, 1970. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 86-year-old daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt and wife of former Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth, cut the ceremonial ribbon. Accompanying her were Walter Washington, Mayor of the District of Columbia, and Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States and dean of the diplomatic corps. (Roosevelt occupied a mansion next door to the hotel, and lived there until her death.) Sculptor Victor Lamkay contributed sculpture for the lobby,