WASHINGTON, D.C. - Members of National Trust Historic Hotels of America are notable not only for their links to local, national and international history, remarkable architecture, artistic treasures and antique collections. They are also legendary for the dignitaries and celebrities that have graced their hallways, their connections to the world of literature and athletics and even for the unique job opportunities they offer. Here are some examples:

The Famous

• Since its opening in 1925, the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Mass., has been host to many well-known luminaries but it was the classic television sitcom Bewitched that brought the hotel its most notoriety. For several weeks in 1970 the cast and crew took up residence at the hotel while filming a two-part episode in Salem called "Salem Saga." In honor of the visit, the hotel's restaurant developed a special menu called, "when witches get together" featuring such delicacies as eye of newt ambrosia, green ghoulish stew and evil-eye purple onion.
• Zsa Zsa Gabor married Conrad Hilton in the largest suite on the fifth floor of La Fonda in Santa Fe, N.M., in 1942. She spent the second of her nine honeymoons at the hotel. Ironically, thirty years later Elizabeth Taylor stayed in the same suite. Elizabeth Taylor's first husband was Nicholas Conrad Hilton, Conrad's son (married May 6, 1950; divorced January 29, 1951). Stepmother and stepdaughter have stayed in the same suite.
• During the World War II years, women with black eyes were all the rage at the Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, Calif. The Del was the Hollywood hangout for actresses recovering from facelift surgery.
• President Bill Clinton stayed at The Driskill in Austin, Texas, in May 1999. The hotel was in the midst of a renovation and had just restored the lobby -- including a custom-made marble floor. The Secret Service requested that the presidential limo be pulled through the main doors and into the lobby. The hotel declined this request fearing damage to the marble floor but offered to tent the main entry portico. A few weeks later, Hillary Clinton stayed at the hotel. Upon arrival, she informed the hotel's manager that she was happy that he had refused to have the president's limo driven in the glorious lobby.
• While attending a cocktail party at La Valencia in La Jolla, California, actress Joan Crawford was observed from behind by a group of snooty female La Jollans. They expressed surprise, in what they thought were whispers, at the size of her rear end. At the end of the evening, Crawford approached their table, turned around and lifted up her dress and asked, "Is it as big as you thought it was?"
• In the early 1940s at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, patrons paying $1 cover charge could see skater Dorothy Lewis present her nightly Ice Revue in the hotel's ballroom. The show's program hailed the revue as "the finest spectacle of its kind in the world! It is a half hour artistic revue of grace, skill, speed and beautiful artists presented by a company of famous skating stars."

• Truman Capote always claimed that he was born in the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans. Actually, Lilly Mae, his mother, rented a suite in the hotel and waited for Truman's arrival. She took a taxi from the hotel to a local hospital for Truman's actual birth.
• Stephen King is said to have found inspiration for The Shining from The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo.
• Concord's Colonial Inn in Concord, Mass., was the residence of author Henry David Thoreau.
• Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice features the Park Central Hotel in South Beach as home of the lead character, Vampire Lestat. The best selling book unfolds in the Art Deco District of South Beach. Anne Rice stayed in room 608 while writing the book.

• The Hotel Monaco in Washington, D.C., is housed in the original General Post Office Building and was the site of the first telegraph transmission and where the concepts of zip codes, home delivery and the Pony Express were conceived.
• The Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee was among the first hotels in the country to run entirely on electricity, using its own electric generators. Additionally, the hotel was one of the earliest hotels to have individual thermostat controls in each sleeping room.
• Hotel Lombardy in Washington, D.C., retains its old-world charm by housing the city's only manually- operated hotel elevator.
• The Williamsburg Inn in Williamsburg, Va., was John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s 1937 vision to make a hotel as a comfortable Virginia estate for discriminating guests. Not surprisingly, the inn was the first hotel in America to have air-conditioning.

• The 1889 Grand Opening Gala for the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colo., was attended by nabobs from New York, beef barons from Chicago and even a few marquises from Europe. Rooms sold for $3-4 per night.
• It comes as no surprise that the average rainfall at the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley, Calif., is 1.8 inches per year. The hotel's golf course is the world's lowest at 214 feet below sea level.
• The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Fla., houses one of the largest pools in the country. It measures approximately 22,000 square feet and holds more than 600,000 gallons of water - a perfect setting for the elaborate Esther Williams aqua shows that drew thousands of spectators in the 1930s.
• The Fairmount in San Antonio entered in the "Guinness World Records" book in 1985 when the 3.2 million pound hotel was moved intact to its current location.

• The lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, Colo., was home to a meeting in 1959 between Bob Howsam and Lamar Hunt where the details for the purchase of a football franchise were hammered out. With a simple handshake and a $25,000 check, the NFL's Denver Broncos were born.
• Two of the world's best-known economic development agencies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), were created in 1944 at the Bretton Woods International Monetary Conference at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, N.H. More than 700 delegates from 44 countries attended the meeting. Following 22 days of negotiations, in what is now known as the "Gold Room," the plans for the World Bank and IMF were drawn up, the international gold standard was set at $35 an ounce and the U.S. dollar was selected as the backbone of monetary exchange.
• The Homestead in Hot Springs, Va shared early moments in the creation of the United Nations. In 1943, the fledgling organization met at the Homestead to discuss issues related to improving the standard of living for people throughout the world. Delegates from 44 nations were present as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations was created in the hills of western Virginia.
• In June 1945, The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco played host to the United Nations Conference on International Organization as delegates arrived to draft a charter for the organization. They played host to the U.S. Secretary of State, Edward Stettinus, who used the hotel's Garden Room to work on the draft of the charter, which was approved by the delegates at the San Francisco Opera House.
• In 1895, the parlor of the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y., hosted the first Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, called by Mohonk founder Albert Smiley, whose Quaker background led him to seeking peaceful solutions to conflict. The annual meetings lasted until 1916 and are credited with being the precursor to the Hague Conference movement and the establishment of organizations such as the World Peace Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

• When the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., opened in 1925, it was one of the country's largest hotels with 1,000 guest rooms. At its opening, The Mayflower contained more gold leaf in its trimmings and decorations than any building in the country except for the Library of Congress.
• The exterior of The Henley Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., has more than 120 gargoyles. Two of the gargoyles have the faces of the hotel's architect and his wife.
• Known today as the Ashland Springs Hotel in Ashland, Ore., the nine-story hotel was the tallest building between Portland and San Francisco when it was built in 1925.
• The Crowne Plaza Quaker Square in Akron, Ohio, was originally 36 mills and grain silos which were the beginning of the Quaker Oats Company. As a result the hotel offers perfectly round rooms.

• Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Del., boasts some of the most artistic and elegant public spaces in the United States. In addition, the hotel is decorated with more than 600 original paintings by more than 200 artists, primarily from the Brandywine River School, including works by three generations of the famed Wyeth family.
• The Mission Inn in Riverside, Calif., a museum unto itself, was built between 1876 and 1931 by voracious collector Frank A. Miller. Following numerous tours abroad, Miller incorporated his extensive acquisitions into the inn's decor and its structure. Over 6,000 pieces, valued at more than $5 million, are featured throughout the hotel. One of the hotel's masterpieces is the St. Francis of Assisi Chapel, which houses the magnificent 17th century, 10-karat gold-leaf Rayas Alter. Enhanced with Tiffany-designed stained glass windows and ornately carved woodwork, the chapel is a favorite spot for weddings.
• Located in the heart of downtown Portland, The Heathman Hotel is well-known for its support of the arts. The hotel houses an eclectic accumulation of over 250 contemporary works of art. Showcasing a variety of artists, including Andy Warhol, the collection does not adhere to conventional hotel art standards.
• Immortalized in Norman Rockwell's "Main Street, USA," The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Mass., is also home to a vast array of art and antiques. Artist's proofs by Norman Rockwell line the walls and are complemented by 18th century antiques, including Staffordshire china, pewter and an impressive collection of teapots. The inn's collection dates to 1873 when then owner Mrs. Charles H. Plumb scoured the Berkshires in search of collectibles. She even published a standing offer of "50 cents per pitcher and $1 for an antique mirror." The collection has been augmented over the years, and continues today through the efforts of inveterate collector and owner Jane Fitzpatrick.
• In 1893, the opulent Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, Wis., opened its doors to the public. Guido Pfister spared no expense in creating a luxurious hotel that would rival any in the east. Along with his son Charles, Pfister amassed a large collection of American and European sculpture and paintings throughout the hotel's public spaces. Today, this display is recognized as the largest collection of Victorian art housed in any hotel in the world. Artists represented include Georges Achille-Fould, William Henry Hilliard, Thomas C. Lindsay and father and son Daniel Ridgway Knight and Louis Aston Knight.

• The U.S. Army converted the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa in Ojai, Calif., into a training camp in 1941 and constructed Quonset huts along the resort's golf course. After the war, the links were repaired but altered, destroying two of its signature holes for more than 50 years. In December 1999, the "lost" holes were restored as #7 and #8.
• The original hotel on the current location of the Sheraton Read House Hotel in Chattanooga, Tenn., was occupied by Union troops and later served as a military hospital during the Civil War.
• In 1942, the U.S. Army purchased the luxurious Don CeSar Resort in St. Petersburg, Fla., for its assessed value of $450,000. The hotel was transformed into a convalescent center for battle-fatigued World War II airmen. The velvet-draped and Spanish-tiled King Charles II ballroom was converted to a barracks-style mess hall. Local St. Petersburg girls also formed a group called the Bomb-a-Dears to aide in the re-socialization of recovering airmen. The center's chaplain performed an average of two weddings a week.
• The Morrison-Clark Inn in Washington, D.C., originally built as two private townhouses, was renovated in 1923 by the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen's Club. For the next 57 years, the mansion housed servicemen staying in Washington, with rates as low as 50 cents per night. During World War II, the club housed more than 40,000 servicemen per year.
• Within a few short days of the U.S. entry into World War II, the U.S. Department of State contacted The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., requesting that the resort house high-ranking representatives of the German and Italian governments. These "enemy alien diplomats" and their families were to be exchanged for American diplomats stranded overseas. What began as a short-term arrangement stretched into a seven-month stay for over 1,000 German nationals. The Italian party, which numbered about 250, moved out after four months and replaced by the 400 Japanese diplomats and family members who had been at The Homestead. All of these foreign nationals were treated like regular guests until their final departure in July 1942.

To receive a copy of the National Trust Historic Hotels of America membership directory, send a $4.00 check or money order to National Trust Historic Hotels of America, P.O. Box 320, Washington, D.C. 20055-0320. Rooms at any of the member hotels can be reserved by calling 800-678-8946. Reservations made through Historic Hotels of America support the National Trust, a non-profit organization of 200,000 members that provides leadership, education and advocacy to save America's diverse historic places and revitalize our communities. GDS code: HE.

Historic Hotels of America is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Historic Hotels has identified 218 hotels that have faithfully maintained their historic integrity, architecture and ambience. To be selected for this prestigious program, a hotel must be at least 50 years old, listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places or recognized as having historic significance. A directory of member hotels can be purchased for $4.00 by sending a check to Historic Hotels of America, P.O. Box 320, Washington, D.C. 20055-0320. Rooms at any of the member hotels can be reserved by calling 800-678-8946 or at www.historichotels.org. Reservations made through Historic Hotels of America support the National Trust, a non-profit organization of 200,000 members that provides leadership, education and advocacy to save America's diverse historic places and revitalize our communities.