Private residences and embassies located on Massachusetts Avenue between 22nd Street and Sheridan CircleThe Indian Embassy building with the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial in the foreground.
Of the 177 diplomatic missions in the city, the majority are located on or near Embassy Row, including those of Italy, Australia, India, Greece, Egypt, Ireland, Japan, and the United Kingdom.[1] Due to the large number of well-preserved Gilded Age estates and townhouses, many of which house diplomatic missions or dignitaries, Embassy Row has been protected as part of the Massachusetts Avenue Historic District. Its historic and multicultural character has also made the area a center of tourism and local cultural life.[citation needed]
History
Considered Washington's premier residential address in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Massachusetts Avenue became known for its numerous mansions housing the city's social and political elites. Consequently, the segment between Scott Circle and Sheridan Circle gained the nickname "Millionaires' Row".
The Great Depression of 1929 led many to sell their homes; the often illustrious and expansive estates were well-suited for housing diplomatic missions as well as lodges of social clubs, giving Embassy Row its present name and identity. The relocation to Embassy Row of diplomatic representations, many of which had been established in Meridian Hill in previous decades, was further catalyzed by the construction of the British Embassy, commissioned in 1925 and completed in 1930, and the Japanese Embassy, built in 1931. The greatest number of embassies and chanceries moved to Embassy Row and the neighboring Kalorama neighborhood in the 1940s and early 1950s.[3]
On the southeastern section 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 the 1970s. More recently, several prominent think tanks have clustered in that area, which has occasionally been referred to as Think Tank Row.
Many of Embassy Row's diplomatic buildings open to the public once a year in May, an initiative nicknamed Passport DC. This event was started in 2007 by the embassies of member states of the European Union, and extended in 2008 to other countries around the world under coordination by Cultural Tourism DC.[4] Within this program, the EU embassies still open on a separate day, labelled EU Open House. A separate program, the Embassy Series, started in 1994 and coordinates concerts organized in the embassy buildings.[5]
Embassy Row is protected as the Massachusetts Avenue Historic District, created in 1974 following controversy about the demolition of historic townhouses on 1722-28 Massachusetts Ave NW.[6] Many of its notable buildings are listed in the DC Inventory of Historic Sites.[7] Because few historic buildings remain on Scott Circle, the eastern boundary of the Historic District was set on 17th Street NW, but, since three embassies are located there and none farther east, Scott Circle is included in this article's definition of Embassy Row. The Western boundary used here is identical to that of the Historic District, namely Observatory Circle. However, some (e.g. real estate professionals) describe Embassy Row as extending as far west as Wisconsin Avenue NW.
From Scott Circle to Sheridan Circle
This section of Massachusetts Avenue was the one known as the "Millionaires' Row" of Washington, D.C., in the late 19th and early 20th century.
North Side
1499 Massachusetts Ave NW: Post Massachusetts Avenue apartment building (arch. Esocoff & Associates, 2002)
The monumental setting of the Row has favored the erection of many memorials and statues. They are erected either on private grounds, many of them by the embassies to showcase a prominent national figure, or on public (federal) land following an Act of Congress, including the successive Circles and several triangular parks created by the intersections between the diagonal avenue and the L'Enfant Plan grid. A special case is the statue of Winston Churchill, which has one foot on the grounds of the British Embassy and the other on federal land to symbolize the UK-US alliance.[35]
a copy in reduced size of the 1969 bronze statue of Eleftherios Venizelos by Yannis Pappas, now in Freedom Park in Athens, erected in front of the Greek Embassy (2009)
In the early days of Washington, D.C., most diplomats and ambassadors lived on or around Lafayette Square. The first purpose-designed embassy building in Washington was the embassy of the United Kingdom on 1300 Connecticut Avenue, immediately south of Embassy Row, built in 1872 by Sir Edward Thornton on John Fraser's design, and demolished in 1931. Thornton's choice of location, at a time when Dupont Circle was still almost entirely undeveloped, may be considered the origin of Embassy Row as a diplomatic neighborhood.
A number of other embassies are scattered south of Massachusetts Avenue and closer to the National Mall, notably those of Canada, Mexico, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and the European Union. Still others are located in or around Georgetown, such as those of France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela. The Caribbean Chancery on 3216 New Mexico Avenue NW hosts the embassies of four English-speaking Caribbean nations.
^James M. Goode (2008). Washington Sculpture: A Cultural History of Outdoor Sculpture in the Nation's Capital. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.