From Nixon to Lewinsky, Watergate Residents Dish on a Scandalous Past
From Nixon to Lewinsky, Watergate Residents Dish on a Scandalous Past
Alston Thompson for The Wall Street Journal
For $1.33 million, you can buy your place in Watergate history.
That’s the asking price of the four-bedroom residence in Washington, D.C., where then-Attorney General John Mitchell lived when planning the infamous Watergate break-in of 1972. The apartment, located in one of the Watergate’s three residential towers, measures 3,150 square feet and includes a private elevator entrance. Missing, however, is the blue telephone in the master bathroom where Martha Mitchell reportedly made calls to the media to defend her husband. The phone was removed and replaced with a light switch.
Watergate will forever be notorious as the site of the Democratic National Committee break-in. (The event spawned the “gate” suffix attached to scandals, such as “Bridgegate” and “Deflategate.”) But the buildings that make up the Watergate complex have a long list of A-list residents influential in politics, public policy, the arts and business. Current owners include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,former Sens. Bob and Elizabeth Dole, and Jacqueline Mars, heiress to the Mars candy fortune. Tenor Plácido Domingo once lived there, as did Clare Boothe Luce, the author, politician and diplomat. While she was secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice owned two apartments at the Watergate, using one as her gym and guesthouse.
Currently, seven of the complex’s 610 residences are for sale, ranging from $350,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $4 million for a penthouse. The apartments are co-ops, which means that residents buy into a corporation that owns the buildings. Amenities include swimming pools, 5 acres of lushly landscaped gardens, and views of the river and monuments.
“What we really love about living at the Watergate is that it’s very dog-friendly,” says Mrs. Dole, who also served in two presidential administrations. The Doles’ two miniature schnauzers, Leader and Blazer, enjoy their spacious outdoor terrace, where the couple also entertains neighbors, most recently in July when Mr. Dole turned 93.
Stephen Voss for The Wall Street Journal
The Doles were in neighboring buildings at the Watergate when they fell in love in the early 1970s and have spent their 41 years of married life in their townhouse apartment. “Luckily I was out of the loop on Watergate,” Mr. Dole says, referring to the scandal. He says that once a Kansas City reporter called him to ask if he had any evidence of the burglaries hidden in his apartment. “That’s how bad it got,” he quips.
They were, however, sucked into the “Monicagate” scandal of 1998, when the news emerged that their next-door neighbor, Monica Lewinsky, had a sexual relationship with then-president Bill Clinton. Mr. Dole recalls walking out of the building one day to find the grounds teeming with journalists staking out Ms. Lewinsky. “I brought them doughnuts,” Mr. Dole says.
Mrs. Dole remembers Ms. Lewinsky as a polite neighbor, noting that when the former White House intern moved out of her mother’s apartment at the Watergate, she wrote notes to all her neighbors on blue stationery apologizing for any inconvenience she may have caused. “I thought that was very nice,” Mrs. Dole says.
Making the most of the opportunity, the Doles bought the Lewinsky apartment and combined it with their own to create more space. “See all that back there?” Mr. Dole says, pointing toward the kitchen and dining room. “That’s all ‘Monicaland.’”
Stephen Voss for The Wall Street Journal
At one point, the Watergate was a de facto bastion of the Nixon administration. Herbert Stein, one of the president’s economic advisers, and his wife, Mildred, bought their unit in 1971. After Herbert Stein’s death in 1999, his son, Ben, inherited the apartment and has preserved it as a shrine to the Nixon era. The psychedelic wallpaper is a backdrop to Nixon memorabilia, as well as Herbert Stein’s unpublished memoirs.
Ben Stein, who is 71 years old, currently owns a second apartment in the Watergate for personal use. As a speechwriter in the Nixon and Ford administrations, Mr. Stein recalls watching the presidential scandal unfold with his father. “We did not think of it as a scandal, but as a media lynch mob,” he says, recalling countless conversations with his father about the possibility that President Nixon might have to leave office before the end of his term. “We often talked about that with great sorrow.”
Another time capsule can be found in 96-year-old Anna Chennault’s Watergate penthouse, which she purchased in 1965. Here, she is surrounded by Chinese antiques and numerous photographs of her encounters with diplomats and politicians. Ms. Chennault eats her meals while facing an easel that holds a large painting of her late husband, Gen. Claire Lee Chennault, who in World War II commanded American volunteers in air operations in China.
Stephen Voss for The Wall Street Journal
Active in the Republican party, Ms. Chennault says one of her closest friends in the building was John Mitchell, who was Nixon’s presidential-campaign manager in 1968. “I was a good friend to him, and he was a good friend to me,” she says. Transcripts later revealed that President Lyndon Johnson believed Mr. Mitchell liaised through Ms. Chennault with the South Vietnamese government during the Vietnam War. In her 1980 book “The Education of Anna,” Ms. Chennault maintains that Nixon asked her to contact South Vietnamese President Thieu regarding the postponement of the Vietnamese peace agreement. (President Nixon denied those claims.)
For buyers, the market at the Watergate is tighter than usual, says Gigi Winston, whose father, Henry Winston, was the first president of the Watergate complex and managed the development for 20 years. So far this year, 27 units have sold, according to Winston Real Estate, which remains a family-owned company. The priciest was a three-bedroom, 3½-bath apartment that sold for $2.25 million in June.
Currently for sale is a 2,000-square-foot apartment in Watergate South. Priced at $1.685 million, the one-bedroom, two-bath unit has views of the Potomac River and the Kennedy Center.
The seller is Reginald Van Lee, a retired executive vice president at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.
“I’ll miss being so close to the Kennedy Center,” says Mr. Van Lee, who has served on the board of trustees for the Center for the Performing Arts, and frequently entertains at his home before going to see the ballet.
Alston Thompson for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Van Lee, who is 58, is planning to spend more time at his second and third homes in New York City and Houston. His husband, Corey McCathern, founded a fried-chicken restaurant called Corey’s Soul Chicken in Milan, where the two plan to spend more time. “Italians love soul food,” Mr. Van Lee says.
Another current seller is Karen Johnson Rove, a political consultant, who in 2012 married author and Republican strategist Karl Rove. She bought her one-bedroom unit in Watergate South in 2005—but says she found herself in Washington only rarely once George W. Bush’s administration left. After her wedding, she and Mr. Rove made Austin, Texas, their home base. (Mr. Rove is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion pages.) Their Watergate apartment is listed for $750,000.
Ms. Rove says she will find it difficult to leave. “We have fond memories of the Watergate, with fantastic Christmas parties, and know a lot of people in the building.”
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