[Thanks to La Fonda on the Plaza for providing the hotel photographs for these vignettes.]
The historic La Fonda on the Plaza hotel was a gathering place for Manhattan Project scientists and workers.
Narrator: Author Jennet Conant describes why the La Fonda hotel was an oasis for Manhattan Project scientists and their families.
Jennet Conant: Wonderful classic hotels in small towns are much more than hotels. They are the meeting spot. They’re the heartbeat of town. It’s where everybody important does business, has meetings, has conferences in their ballrooms. It’s where everybody important stays when they’re in town.
They’re well-known watering holes. It’s where you go to get all the information and the gossip. They are really the center of the town. La Fonda was that already before the scientists started coming. But once they started coming, this was where they all stayed before they went up the Hill. It was this little oasis of civilization, of amenities, of a bathtub, hot water, and a good meal. The very words “La Fonda” had a magical quality to them. When they’d really gotten fed up, the physicists would arrange passes, and they and their wives would come to Santa Fe for two or three days and just check into the La Fonda and try to recover.
Narrator: J. Robert Oppenheimer remembered how visits to Santa Fe gave him a much-needed respite from the stress of Los Alamos.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Once every two or three months, we would spend Saturday night in Santa Fe and feel somewhat more human.
Narrator: Manhattan Project veterans Stanley Hall and Edward Doty recall dancing and drinking at La Fonda.
Stanley Hall: I’d go dancing there, almost every weekend. I’d get a room at the La Fonda and they’d have a live band, and the room would fill up.
Edward Doty: We’d go down once a month on Saturday afternoon and get into the La Fonda bar and have a couple of drinks. I suppose we were watched carefully by FBI or somebody, but I never noticed that. Didn’t bother me anyway, or wouldn’t have. We’d come back and go back to work.