Now it’s David who helps keep the ship tight — shiny, squeak-free and steaming forward — as chairman of the board of Marriott International. Back in the ’80s, the hotel he worked at was known as the Pooks Hill Marriott. Today, it’s called the Bethesda Marriott, which is not to be confused with the company’s new hotel, the Marriott Bethesda Downtown at Marriott HQ, which — as that long name suggests — sits across from Marriott’s new headquarters.
That’s a lot of “Marriotts,” but, then, a lot of Marriotts have been involved in the company’s success. There’s David Marriott himself. There’s his father,, who in 1927 opened a root beer stand on 14th Street NW. That space was so narrow — eight feet — they had to shoehorn the necessary soda-making equipment inside.On Monday morning, the ribbon was cut on Marriott’s new headquarters at 7750 Wisconsin Ave. in Bethesda. At 785,000 square feet, it’s plenty big enough.
But what David wanted to show me first was just off the lobby: the Cabinet of Curiosities. It’s a wall adorned with relics of the company’s history, from restaurant menus to pie tins, from “Do Not Disturb” hang tags to a bicycle bearing a sign on the saddle: “Follow Me.”That motor hotel opened near the Pentagon in Arlington in 1957. After guests checked in, they would get back in their cars and follow a bicycle-riding bellman to find their room.
What they needed was food. Alice’s facility with language — she’d been a Spanish major in college — allowed her to go to the Mexican Embassy to get recipes for tamales and chili. The food was spicy and served warm, inspiring the new name of their eatery: the Hot Shoppe.I don’t think I ever had a tamale at a Hot Shoppes, but, like many a Washingtonian, I consumed my fair share of Teen Twist ham sandwiches and Might Mo hamburgers.
The views are great from atop the glassy new headquarters, designed by the firm Gensler. David pointed out Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance. We were standing near a notch in the building. Twenty floors below was the reason for the notch: the Tastee Diner building, whose owner had declined to sell.Not to Hot Shoppes?It can seem like our area doesn’t make anything — no factories, no mills — but it did produce Marriott International.