Ambassador Row is the unofficial name of a section of Massachusetts Avenue northwest between Scott Circle and the north side of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., where embassies, diplomatic missions, and other diplomatic offices in the United States are concentrated. The name may hereafter be used to refer to nearby streets on which diplomatic buildings are also located.
History
Massachusetts Avenue, considered the principal residence of Washington in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, became known for its many mansions that housed the city’s social and political elite. The stretch between Scott Circle and Sheridan Circle was nicknamed “Millionaire’s Row.
The Great Depression forced many to sell their homes. The vast old estates proved suitable for use as embassies as well as community club houses, giving Embassy Row its current name and identity. The move to Embassy Row of diplomatic missions, many of which had been opened in Meridian Hill in previous decades, was additionally the catalyst for the construction of the British Embassy, commissioned in 1925 and completed in 1930, and the Japanese Embassy, built in 1931. The largest number of embassies and offices moved into Embassy Row and the neighboring Kalorama neighborhood in the 1940s and early 1950s.
At the southeast end of the row, between Scott Circle and Dupont Circle, many individual houses and mansions were replaced by larger office or apartment buildings between the 1930s and 1970s. More recently, several prominent think tanks clustered in this area, sometimes referred to as Think Tank Row .
Many of the Embassy Row diplomatic buildings open to the public once a year in May through an initiative called Passport DC. This event was started in 2007 by embassies of European Union member states, and in 2008 was expanded to other countries around the world under the coordination of Cultural Tourism DC. Under this program, EU embassies are still open on a separate day, called the “EU Open House. A separate program, the Embassy Series, which began in 1994, coordinates concerts held in embassy buildings.
Embassy Row is protected as the Massachusetts Avenue Historic District , created in 1974 after the controversy over the demolition of the historic townhouses at 1722-28 Northwest Massachusetts Avenue. Many of its notable buildings are listed on the D.C. List of Historic Places. Because few historic buildings remain on Scott Circle, the eastern boundary of the Historic District has been set at 17th Street northwest, but because three embassies are located there and none further east, Scott Circle is included in the definition of Embassy Row in this article. The western boundary used here is identical to the Historic District boundary, namely Observatory Circle. However, some (e.g., real estate experts) describe Embassy Row as extending west to Wisconsin Avenue NW .
In close proximity to Embassy Row, many other embassies and diplomatic residences are located within a block or two of Massachusetts Avenue at street intersections, especially R, S and 22nd Street NW near Sheridan Circle, and in the Kalorama neighborhood north of Embassy Row. Only the section of New Hampshire Avenue northwest of Dupont Circle contains the embassies of Argentina, Belarus, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Grenada, Jamaica, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.
In the early days of Washington, D.C., most diplomats and ambassadors lived in or around Lafayette Square . The first specially designed embassy building in Washington was the United Kingdom Embassy at 1300 Connecticut Avenue, immediately south of Embassie Row, built in 1872 by Sir Edward Thornton to a design by John Fraser and demolished in 1931. The site, chosen by Thornton. , at a time when Dupont Circle was still almost entirely undeveloped, can be considered the origin of Embassy Row as a diplomatic quarter.
In the first three decades of the twentieth century, several European missions gathered further northeast, on a stretch of 16th Street near Meridian Hill Park . This neighborhood was specifically designed by local resident Mary Foote Henderson to attract embassies, and she even intended to move the residences of the president and vice president of the United States there. However, the neighborhood suffered from the Great Depression, and since the 1930s Embassie Row has become a comparatively more attractive place for diplomats. Former embassy buildings in the Meridian Hill neighborhood include those of France (designed by George Oakley Totten, Jr. in 1907, now the Professional Recognition Council); Mexico (designed by Nathan C. Wyeth, 1911, now the Mexican Cultural Institute); Netherlands (designed by George Oakley Totten, Jr. in 1922, now the Embassy of Ecuador ); Spain (arch. George Oakley Totten, Jr. , 1923, and the addition of Jules Henri de Sibur, 1927; now the Spain-US Foundation ); Egypt (arch. George Oakley Totten, Jr. , 1924, now Meridian Hall); Italy (Warren and Wetmore, 1925, now being reconstructed); and Brazil (George Oakley Totten, Jr., 1927, later the Hungarian Embassy and now the Josephine Butler Parks Center). The embassies of Cuba (McNeil & McNeil, 1918), Lithuania (George Oakley Totten, Jr., 1909) and Poland (George Oakley Totten, Jr., 1910) are still located in the Meridian Hill neighborhood. Just down 16th Street, the Embassy Building No. 10, built in the late 1920s, never served as an embassy, even though it was designed as one.
The high-security enclave at Van Nuess , one mile north of the Naval Observatory on the former federal grounds of the National Bureau of Standards in Cleveland Park , has been developed since 1968 as the International Stationery Center . Here are the embassies of Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Monaco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, Slovakia and the United Arab Emirates.
A number of other embassies are scattered south of Massachusetts Avenue and closer to National Alley , especially the embassies of Canada , Mexico , Spain , Saudi Arabia , and the European Union . Others are located in or around Georgetown, such as France , Germany , Russia , Sweden , Thailand , Ukraine and Venezuela . Caribbean Chancery at 3216 New – Mexico – Avenue NW hosts the embassies of the five English speaking Caribbean countries.