Existing comment:
Fire Next Door to Willard's Hotel, Washington DC -- Ellsworth's New York Fire Zouaves Extinguishing the Flames
Alfred R. Waud, published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, reproduced from 1861 print
The Willard Hotel
The Williard Hotel occupied the northwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street, a block east of the White House. "Willard's had become the great meeting place of Washington," wrote one knowledgeable source. "Much of the business of Government was said to be done in its passages and its bar." It is where the Lincolns stayed prior to the inauguration of 1861, and later that year Julia Ward Howe would write the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic in her bedroom there.
In the spring of 1861, the hotel barely escaped burning when a fire next door was put out by volunteers of the New York Fire Zouaves, commanded by Elmer Ellsworth. |