Riggs Washington DC

Riggs Washington DC opened in February 2020 inside the 1891 Riggs National Bank headquarters in Penn Quarter, giving Lore Group its first US property and Marriott its Autograph Collection debut in a landmark bank building. The 181-room hotel keeps the address's Richardsonian Romanesque shell — including the original vault, now a subterranean cocktail bar — while running a European-inflected restaurant and bar program under a luxury-lifestyle brief.

The place

The hotel occupies 900 F Street NW in Penn Quarter, in the heart of downtown Washington, a few blocks from the White House, the National Portrait Gallery and Capital One Arena, with Gallery Place-Chinatown and Metro Center metro stations both about a tenth of a mile away. The location sits within easy reach of the National Mall and the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, putting the hotel roughly equidistant between the city's federal core and its downtown commercial and entertainment district — a position suited to both government-adjacent business travel and leisure stays anchored around the Mall's museums.

The concept

The building was completed in 1891 as headquarters for Riggs National Bank, designed by architects James G. Hill and Arthur Heaton in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and counted among the last surviving examples of that architecture in Washington. Known in its day as the "Bank of Presidents," Riggs National Bank handled the personal finances of twenty-three US presidents, from Martin Van Buren to Richard Nixon, and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. It operated as a Courtyard by Marriott convention-center hotel from 1999 until closing in 2018 for a full renovation that returned it as Riggs Washington DC in February 2020. Riggs is Lore Group's first US hotel, joining the Pulitzer Amsterdam and Sea Containers London in the company's small portfolio of independently minded, design-led properties, while carrying Marriott's Autograph Collection affiliation for distribution and loyalty. The 181 rooms and suites span roughly 121,000 square feet, including eight ADA-accessible rooms, positioned at the luxury-lifestyle end of the market. The design keeps the bank's original bones legible — vaulted ceilings, stone arches and the underground vault chamber among them — rather than erasing the building's institutional history, and the hotel has since been recognized with AAA Four Diamond status and Travel + Leisure's top ranking among DC hotels.

Dining & wellness

Café Riggs, the ground-floor restaurant, draws on the grand European brasserie tradition for an all-day menu across its bar, café and dining room, with a notably expansive plant-based selection alongside its classic dishes. Silver Lyan, the hotel's subterranean bar, occupies the bank's original vault and comes from bartender Ryan "Mr Lyan" Chetiyawardana, known internationally for World's 50 Best Bars-listed projects; it has drawn its own awards recognition for cocktail programming. A rooftop event space rounds out the offer with city views, used primarily for private functions rather than daily food and beverage service.