As the trial progressed, evidence emerged that the F. H. Smith Corp. had signed secret agreements to allow its chairman, G. Bryan Pitts, to occupy an entire floor of the building (17 rooms, including five baths) rent-free, which had caused The Jefferson Corporation's financial difficulties.

[8] In 1931, Alfred Robinson Glancy, a General Motors executive, purchased the building from the bankrupt Jefferson Corp. for an undisclosed sum.

[9][10] The Jefferson partially converted to a hotel in 1941[11] to serve workers mobilizing for a potential war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

[5] Glancy died in 1959, and in 1960 his heirs purchased 1214 16th Street NW, a four-story building adjacent to the north side of the hotel, for use as office space.

[13] The hotel was not considered luxurious by the standards of the day, but it had a great deal of cachet with artists, musicians, theater and movie stars, and top domestic and foreign government officials.

[13] In March 1963, Glancy's heirs sold The Jefferson to the American Realty Trust Co. of Arlington, Virginia, for $1 million ($9,952,174 in 2023 dollars).

[14] American Realty Trust sold The Jefferson in January 1976 to attorney and sports team owner Edward Bennett Williams for $1.8 million ($9,637,895 in 2023 dollars).

[16] The renovation replaced most of the guest-room and public space furniture with antiques, and original American artwork from the past 200 years graced walls throughout the hotel.

[3][4][17] Williams was a confidante of a number of presidents (Republican and Democrat),[18] and The Jefferson became a favorite hotel of top officials in the Reagan administration.

[19] The hotel's reputation for discretion continued to attract some of the most famous visitors to the city, and in the 1980s actress Candice Bergen, writer William F. Buckley Jr., economist John Kenneth Galbraith, film director Louis Malle, and actor Jason Robards stayed there.

[21] The hotel was also the home of former Senator John Tower during confirmation hearings for his unsuccessful 1989 nomination as United States Secretary of Defense.

[19] Radio talk show host Larry King broadcast from the hotel the first Friday every month in the mid and late 1980s.

Her bid was topped by the Aoki Corp., a Japanese construction and real estate investment company, which signed a letter of intent in February 1989 to purchase the "landmark" hotel for $30 million ($73,739,597 in 2023 dollars).

[24] Paine Webber Realty acted as the agent for Value Enhancement Fund III,[3][4] a group of Japanese institutional investors.

[17] This included canopy beds and mahogany and hickory armoires with built-in mini-bars, and the wood-burning fireplaces (in those rooms equipped with them) were restored to operation.

[27] During the renovations, the building's skylight was uncovered for the first time in decades,[25][28] and the lobby's dropped ceiling was removed to expose the original barrel vault.

[29] The hotel cocktail lounge was completely remodeled as well, and now featured an orange colored bar countertop of molded glass embedded with optical fibers that made it glow.

[28][29] The hotel retained its Federalist interior design style in its public spaces, including the unique antique furniture, artwork, and displays of Jefferson-signed documents.