Qualla: Embassy Row

Embassy Row: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0. Larz Anderson built a mansion at 2118 Massachusetts Avenue in 1905 because he could. He was a diplomat, an heir to a Cincinnati shipping fortune, and one of the founders of the American hereditary patriotic society called the Society of the Cincinnati. The house his architects Arthur Little and Herbert Browne designed for him had a marble-paneled great hall, a Tiffany-lit dining room, a grand staircase, and a courtyard with a fountain. When Larz died in 1937, his widow Isabel gave the entire house to the Society of the Cincinnati, which still operates it as a museum today. Larz Anderson House is exactly one of about a hundred buildings along Massachusetts Avenue NW that tell the same story in different versions: a Gilded Age mansion bought, bequeathed, or rented by a government that needed Washington property to plant its flag. They are the spine of Embassy Row.

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Image: ajay_suresh | CC BY 4.0

Embassy Row: Millionaires Before Diplomats

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY 4.0. The stretch of Massachusetts Avenue between Scott Circle and Sheridan Circle, about a mile and a quarter, was the Millionaires' Row of Washington in the decades around 1900. New money from Pittsburgh, Chicago, the West, and the Gilded Age industries arrived in the capital, hired ...

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Image: APK | CC BY 4.0

Embassy Row: The Switch to Embassies

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY 4.0. Between the wars, foreign governments started buying. An empty mansion with grand reception rooms, conveniently located on a major avenue close to the State Department and the White House, was exactly what an embassy needed. The British had built their own purpose-designed embass...

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Image: APK | CC BY 4.0

Embassy Row: Saved by a Demolition

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY 4.0. The change of use did not always go smoothly. In the early 1970s a developer announced plans to tear down the historic townhouses at 1722 through 1728 Massachusetts Avenue and replace them with an office tower. The fight that followed produced the Massachusetts Avenue Historic Di...

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Image: APK | CC BY 4.0

Embassy Row: Observatory Circle

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY 4.0. The northern end of Embassy Row culminates at Observatory Circle, where the United States Naval Observatory sits on seventy-two wooded acres. The Vice President's official residence, Number One Observatory Circle, is here. Built in 1893 as the home of the superintendent of the Ob...

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Image: APK | CC BY 4.0

Embassy Row: Two Days a Year

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0. Most days the embassies are closed to the public. Twice a year, that changes. Passport DC, an initiative launched by the European Union embassies in 2007 and extended to other countries in 2008, opens the doors of dozens of embassies on a single weekend each May. Lines stretch ar...

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Image: ajay_suresh | CC BY 4.0