(nytimes.com) Shimmering white and gracefully statuesq...

(nytimes.com)
Shimmering white and gracefully statuesque, the Mount Washington Hotel is a granite fortress, a manmade anomaly among the raw wilderness of the surrounding White Mountains in remote northern New Hampshire, U.S. Even to this day, the hotel is geographically secured by 800,000 acres of the White Mountain National Forest around it. This was the main reason why the Hotel was chosen for a World War Two meeting – a meeting that shaped present-day global economic policies.
(Linda Laban. www.bbc.com, 26.08.2020. Adapted.)
The term “this”, which introduces the last sentence in the text, refers to the fact that the Mount Washington Hotel