Ninety-Five years ago, Warren G Harding avoided having to deal with several scandals plaguing his administration by conveniently passing away.
- President: Warren G Harding
- Location: San Francisco, California
- Operated By: Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ Luxury Collection. Starwood is a subsidiary of Marriott.
- When Visited: May 1, 2016
- Who with: My brother, Doug
- Presidential Significance: Warren G Harding died here on 8/2/1923
- Pre-Visit Reading: The Teapot Dome Scandal by Laton McCartney
Anyone who has listened to me ramble about presidential history knows that Warren G Harding is a personal favorite of mine. He’s not my favorite in the sense that I think he was a good president. Because he wasn’t. He was a bad president. And that’s part of his charm. While he wasn’t the worst president (I mean, he wasn’t Franklin Pierce bad), that’s probably only because he only served a little over half a term, during an easy time in our nation’s history. Had he been faced with a national crisis, things could have been different, but as it was, his shenanigans were entertaining and relatively harmless.
The first president elected once women could vote, Harding was also the first president to visit Alaska (not yet a state). It was during this trip, his “Voyage of Understanding” that took him throughout the western United States and part of Canada, that Harding checked into the Palace Hotel on July 29, 1923. As shown on the official itinerary for the trip, harding was originally only going to make a day trip to San Francisco on the 31st, but after he took ill in Seattle on the 27th, the remaining stops on his voyage were cancelled and the party headed to the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where Harding would spend the last few days of his life.
Harding’s health seemed to improve, but around 7:30 PM on August 2, while his wife Florence, was reading him a flattering Saturday Evening Post article about himself (this was before presidents could just tune into Fox and Friends to be praised), Harding suddenly collapsed and died. There has always been a little shadiness around his death, due to conflicts with the competent physicians arranged for by the government and the other, homeopathic physician who was present (a personal friend of the Hardings), and the fact that Florence refused an autopsy. But in the end the general consensus as of now is that Harding most likely died from cardiac issues.
Incidentally, Harding was not the only president at the Palace Hotel that night. Herbert Hoover, then the Secretary of Commerce, was traveling with the President, and was one of the first government officials present when Harding passed. Eight years later, then President Hoover presided at the dedication of the Harding Memorial, Warren and Florence Harding’s tomb, in Marion, Ohio.
My visit to the Palace Hotel was much less eventful. A couple of years ago on a family trip to San Francisco and Yosemite National Park, my brother and I stopped by the hotel for a few minutes. And then we left. Alive.
This is an unofficial presidential history site. It’s not run by any historical organization, nor does it advertise itself as Harding’s death place. In fact, visiting the hotel, you wouldn’t even know that he died here if you didn’t already know that. I expected at least a plaque or something, but no. We did find a sign on the outside of the building noting that it is part of the Historic Hotels of America, an independent group that works to preserve historic hotels, but it’s not even on the National Register of Historic Places or anything. A presidential deserves more. Even Harding.
We walked around a little, but there wasn’t much to see. It was a really nice hotel. What would have been really nice would be to have visited the suite where Harding died, Back in 1923, it was Suite 8064, the Presidential Suite. The hotel has been refurbished since then, and the suite number is now 888. I suggested to my family that we stay there, but for some reason they did not immediate jump on paying $2900/night just to exist in the same space where Warren G Harding took his last breath. I swear I’m adopted.
That’s basically it. Here is a copy of the article that ran in the New York Times immediately after Harding died. The Times ultimately did not run an article about my and my brother’s visit, although I hear they were considering it.