I have several times looked at the various taverns, hotels and boardinghouses that ringed the Capitol in the early days of Washington DC. A number of names reoccur frequently, and one of those who seems to have operated each of the three main hotel buildings at one time or another was Robert Long.
On March 4, 1809, James Madison was inaugurated as the fourth President of the United States. By now, Washington DC was beginning to get the hang of inaugurations, and the ceremony included cannon salutes, troops of militia, and ten thousand well-wishers who watched Madison and company proceed into the House of Representatives for the actual swearing-in.
What made the day particularly special was the party that followed in the evening: The first inaugural ball. It was held in Robert Long’s Hotel, and featured music and dancing, as well as the opportunity for the beautiful young ladies of DC to show off their newest frocks. The new capital city had grown enormously since the first inauguration eight years earlier, and there was no longer the need to go up to Philadelphia – or further afield – to find a proper dress to wear to such an occasion.
The ball was an enormous success – more on that later – but there is one distressing aspect to it: It’s unclear where it was held. Sure, all the old records state ‘Long’s Hotel,’ but that does not actually answer the question. Robert Long, along with Pontius Stelle, William Tunnicliff and B. H. Tomlinson, was one of the important tavern-owners in the early days of Washington D.C. He owned various hotels from ca. 1809 until his last one burned was burned down by the British in 1814. Unfortunately, records of the time are less than exact, and in spite of Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan’s valiant attempt to nail down exact dates in his 1903 paper “Hotels of Washington Prior to 1814,” there is no way of saying exactly which of two locations Long was currently using. During 1809, Long ran both the old Stelle’s Hotel on the north side of the Capitol, as well as another in Carroll Row, to the west of the Capitol (also previously run by the indefatigable Pontius Stelle)
Most likely, the famous ball was held in the Carroll Row building; it was a few years newer than the other, and generally regarded as one of the nicest buildings in the area – short of the Capitol.
Undated picture of Carroll Row, from Bryan’s book on early Hotels in DC. (Google Books)
As to the ball, it was an enormous success. So successful that, at some point in the evening, the windows were smashed out to allow the revelers access to fresh air. Along with the new president and – of course – his wife, the most talked-about guest was none other than the outgoing president, Thomas Jefferson. Although Jefferson stayed only two hours, while the party went on well after midnight, his presence and demeanor were noted with satisfaction – and compared favorably with John Adams’s behavior eight years earlier.
Long’s Hotel, in spite of this massive success, did not remain open for long. Long himself moved over to the building on the SE corner of A and 1st NE in 1812, and was operating this when it was burned by the British. He then disappears from the annals of the city – nobody with the name Long remains in the 1822 City Directory – and thus from our story.