Overeager memento hunters even swiped the number off one door.
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Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, where former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s had a $4,300 visit with a hooker imported from New York, is experiencing a run on souvenirs, according to the Washington Post. Buyers have been stocking up on the terry-cloth bathrobes, provided in each room, which are sold in the gift shop for $69.99 each. One buyer bought several dozen Mayflower coffee mugs. Another bought two cases of Mayflower mints. Watch for them on E-Bay.
Not every memorabilia-hunter has been kind enough to shop in the designated outlet, though. Manager Joseph Cardone told the Post that someone pulled the plaque off the door of room 871 on the hotel’s Club Floor, where Spitzer stayed under the name of George Fox.
Actually the hotel, one of the swankier hostelries in Washington, has had its share of famous visitors—and perhaps even scandal. Judith Exner, reputed mistress of President John F. Kennedy, stayed there during his term, and there’s speculation the president even slept with her there.
Monica Lewinsky was interviewed at the Mayflower - in the $5,000-a-night Presidential Suite - by House prosecutors making the case for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. She had been photographed embracing Clinton, her mouth open in a wide smile, at a 1996 campaign event there.
A girlfriend of former Washington Mayor Marion Barry testified at his 1990 trial that she spent three days at the Mayflower smoking crack with him. The jury convicted him of only one count of cocaine possession related to another incident.
More sedately, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt lived at the hotel with his family before moving into the White House. He worked on his first inaugural address at the hotel, the famous “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speech.
His successor, Harry Truman, lived there during the first three months after Roosevelt’s death.
FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover lunched there daily for more than 20 years, often accompanied by his constant companion on and off the job, Clyde Tolson. The menu: chicken soup, toast, salad, cottage cheese and grapefruit.
Calvin Coolidge was supposed to attend an inaugural ball there in 1925, shortly after the hotel’s opening, but he missed it because of the sudden death of his son from blood poisoning, In fact, each year on Jan. 20, the date of the ball, strange things are reported at the hotel, from flickering lights to mysteriously moving elevators.
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