What Watergate?

Washington, D.C., is home to Watergate, what many would argue is a critical piece of U.S. history that included toppling a president and introducing a new era of distrust of the government.

But on lists of historical landmarks and sites in Washington, you likely won’t find the Watergate office building — where on June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee office. Even many experts on Watergate no longer care about the place.

“Why should anyone be concerned with [the building]?” said Stanley Kutler, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He is best known for being the man to successfully sue the National Archives and Richard Nixon for the release of Nixon’s secret tapes.

“Things change. The Washington Monument endures because that’s important, but who cares where Watergate happened?” he said.

Forty years after Nixon’s resignation after the Watergate scandal, the sites where one of U.S. history’s greatest political scandals unfolded seem to have largely disappeared from national memory. None of the sites have been made into major landmarks or tourist destinations.

One of the few tours in Washington featuring the scandal as a major point of interest is led by the Gross National Product, a comedy troupe, and is hosted not by historians but by professional actors.

“People are not going to remember there was a break-in,” Kutler said. “The one thing we will always remember is that Richard Nixon was the first president ever to resign because of a political scandal. That’s what’s important.”

Over the years, the sites have slid from infamy into perhaps mundane normalcy: Penzance Cos., a real estate development company, bought the Watergate office building for $76 million in 2011 and, in 15 months, acquired three leases for the building.

The parking garage where Bob Woodward, one of the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, allegedly met “Deep Throat,” later discovered to have been the FBI’s Mark Felt, for tips on the scandal will be replaced with retail and residential buildings and an accompanying new parking garage.

The motel where Alfred C. Baldwin, former FBI agent, monitored the Watergate break-in operation as it was happening, has since been converted into a college dorm.

Experts still say there is general interest in the Watergate scandal, though it may wane with younger generations. Below is a map of some of the major sites in Washington where the Watergate scandal unfolded.

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