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The Watergate Hotel is a luxury hotel in Washington, DC best known for being the site of the robbery that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It is located at 2650 Virginia Avenue Northwest in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood overlooking the Potomac River, adjacent to the Kennedy Center and the embassy of Saudi Arabia.
The hotel features 250 guest rooms and 144 suites. It is part of a mixed use complex opened in 1967. Besides the hotel, there are three residential buildings with some 600 units; past occupants of the Watergate have included Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bob and Elizabeth Dole, Monica Lewinsky, and Paul O'Neill. Current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now lives in the Watergate Complex. The site also includes two office buildings and a small retail center which offers a Safeway supermarket in the basement level and several upscale shops and restaurants at street level.
The Watergate was developed by the Italian firm Societa Generale Immobiliare, which purchased the plot of land on the defunct Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in the early 1960s. The last lock, which diverted water from the Potomac River into the Tidal Basin at flood tide, was known as the "water gate."
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