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Even while watching Gaslit, those of us born after a certain year may not fully realize that before the 1972 Watergate scandal, not every controversy was labeled with the “gate” suffix. Without Richard Nixon’s original sin, we would have never had “donutgate” (when Ariana Grande was caught by a security camera licking a tray of pastries in a donut shop), “deflategate” (when the New England Patriots were accused of deflating footballs during a 2015 championship game), and everything in between.
The miniseries (on Starz) chronicles the events that led to articles of impeachment being brought against Nixon and to his eventual resignation, which was seen in the season finale on June 12. Julia Roberts stars as Watergate whistleblower Martha Mitchell, and an unrecognizable Sean Penn plays her husband John Mitchell, Nixon’s former attorney general and the head of his 1972 reelection campaign.
Obviously, the scandal has left quite a political and linguistic legacy, but those unfamiliar with the saga may also not realize that it all started with a building development that has an important architectural legacy of its own. The scandal was named for the 10-acre complex in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where five men were caught breaking and entering at the office of the Democratic National Committee with the goal of planting listening devices and stealing information on Nixon’s behalf. The 50th anniversary of the break-in is on June 17.
Gaslit tells the tale with a new lens by focusing on the characters. The show explores the Mitchells’ complicated marriage, White House counsel John Dean’s (Dan Stevens) budding romance with a flight attendant named Mo (Betty Gilpin), and how Watergate building security guard Frank Wills (Patrick Walker) coped with life in the spotlight after calling the police during the break-in and becoming a pseudo-celebrity.
Production designer Daniel Novotny, set decorator Jennifer Lukehart, and assistant set decorator Jill Carvalho recreated the six-building Watergate complex for the show on a soundstage at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, but the show is not heavy-handed in spelling out the geography of it all. “The director chose to not get into that too much because it just takes too much explanation,” Novotny tells AD.
Given the fact that the architectural importance of Watergate is so often overshadowed, we thought we’d compile some design-focused facts about the place where the infamous scandal went down. Below are five things the show doesn’t reveal about the real-life Watergate complex.
Still today, the Watergate comprises three co-op apartment buildings, the Watergate Hotel, and two office buildings. One of these offices housed the DNC, where the break-in happened, and one of the co-op buildings is where John and Martha Mitchell lived. Retailers, a grocery store, and a post office make the complex a sort of town-within-a-city, a novel idea when it was built, between 1963 and 1971.
Italian real estate developer Società Generale Immobiliare hired the modernist architect Luigi Moretti to design the complex. A forward-thinker who wrote extensively about parametric architecture, he once called other Washington, D.C., buildings “too conformist,” according to the 2018 book The Watergate: Inside America’s Most Infamous Address by Joseph Rodota. His creation consists of multiple curvilinear structures, with pools and gardens (designed by Boris V. Timchenko) set into the concave space. The hotel and co-op buildings feature rows of balconies made of a cement-like material that create stripes against the windows and look striking when viewed from the side. Famously, the building features panels jutting up from the balcony walls which resemble teeth.
The August 8, 1969, issue of Life magazine included a spread declaring that “everybody” lived in Watergate—and that was before the complex was even complete. The story only offers small glimpses into the apartments of prominent lobbyists, senators, and other White House officials, but it quotes John Mitchell as saying that he finds his and Martha’s apartment there “convenient, but that’s about it.” Apparently, despite the architectural prowess of Watergate, “the real apartment was fairly boring and drab,” when it came to the interiors, Novotny says. It took some creative license to make the Mitchell penthouse space pop onscreen (there is a fantastic sunken living room!), but it was still important that the home reflect its conservative Republican owners.
“This was not the sassy disco ’70s. It was the real authentic ’70s of conservative white Republicans in Washington, D.C. They’re living in homes that are a little still stuck in the ’50s. There’s an elegance that you have to harness there that is tricky.” To achieve this, the crew custom-made items like the sunken sofa and purchased other things from eBay and vintage stores, including the Pasadena Antique Mall.
The Kennedy Center opened right next door to Watergate in 1971 after having been under construction since 1965. Designed by Edward Durell Stone, it is a grand square building with multiple theaters inside and an iconic foyer with high ceilings and dripping chandeliers. The original plans for the center would have resulted in a curved building, something Moretti took into account when drawing up Watergate. Down the line, any hopes of synergy were dashed when the Kennedy Center board took issue with Moretti’s designs. They vehemently opposed the final Watergate building being taller than the Kennedy Center, even going so far as to attempt to thwart construction all together. In the end, all parties had to appear before the United States Commission of Fine Arts. They reached a compromise that involved turning the angle of the building to provide more space.
When the Watergate Hotel opened in 1967, it featured interiors by Ellen Lehman McCluskey, whose other work included New York City’s Regency Hotel and some rooms at the Waldorf Astoria. Extremely traditional in style, her furniture choices stood in contrast to the building’s modern exterior. In 2016, the space was renovated by Ron Arad Architects in a much more modern style, with a curvilinear motif in the lobby that echoes the exterior.
If you tuned in to American Crime Story: Impeachment—Ryan Murphy’s salacious retelling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal—in the fall of 2021, you may have realized that the swanky apartment where the former intern (played by Beanie Feldstein) holes up after the news of her affair with Bill Clinton breaks is, in fact, located in the Watergate complex.
