Grounds of Diplomacy: A History, A Place, A Mission

Meridian is a nonpartisan, nonprofit diplomacy center that strengthens engagement between the United States and the world through diplomacy, leadership and culture to solve shared global challenges. For the last 60 years, Meridian has partnered with the U.S. government, businesses and the diplomatic community on three core pillars of programs: global leadership, culture and collaboration. Meridian’s global leadership initiatives develop the next generation of global leaders through exchange and training programs. Meridian uses the arts and culture to connect people around the world and bridge divides and promotes collaboration across sectors and borders to solve global issues.

Believing that the U.S. is stronger at home when globally engaged, Meridian equips thousands of leaders with the networks, insights and cultural context essential for non-partisan collaboration on shared challenges and opportunities.

MERIDIAN

Grounds of Diplomacy

a history , a place , a mission

To commemorate its 60th anniversary, Meridian International Center is looking back on the evolution of its work, its historic campus in Washington and its place in welcoming the international community to the nation’s capital. Originally home to two accomplished American ambassadors and the influential Eugene Meyer family, the White-Meyer House and Meridian House that make up Meridian’s campus have long served as a space for bringing global leaders together. These two residential jewels on Crescent Place, built in the early 1900s and designed by renowned architect John Russell Pope, form a city block of supreme historic and architectural interest in a neighborhood defined by its position along the Washington meridian line and once characterized as the ‘diplomatic quarter of Washington.’ Through over a century’s worth of compelling photographs, Grounds of Diplomacy: A History, A Place, A Mission pays tribute to the elegant homes on Crescent Place and celebrates how Meridian’s work to advance diplomacy through leadership, collaboration and culture upholds the legacy of those who built Meridian Hill into a neighborhood that has long been influential in the United States’ engagement with the world.

MERIDIAN Grounds of Diplomacy

Grounds of Diplomacy a history , a place , a mission

and edited by Natalie Shanklin

Foreword by Ambassador Stuart W. Holliday

Copy-edited by Henry Collins

Photography by Stephen Bobb, Jessica Latos and Didi Cutler

Design by Nicole Miller

Cover art by Peter Waddell

ISBN: 978-0-9661013-8-6

Front cover image by Peter Waddell

Book design by Nicole Miller Printed by District Photo

“We can all do something, however little individually, but something, to advance the cause of universal peace by taking in the point of view of the foreigner and by trying, as well, to make him understand ours.”

a mbassador i rwin b oyle l aughlin

“Diplomacy, after all has nothing very remarkable or exotic about it. It requires no very exceptional amount of intelligence, but it does require an understanding and appreciation of human nature, and I should not advise anyone who does not possess certain tendencies of that sort to go in for it.”

a mbassador h enry w hite

Photo by Didi Cutler

Foreword

A meridian is a circle of longitude passing through a given place on the earth s surface and the geographic poles. Beginning in the early 19th century, one meridian came to define the young capital city of a country that in the centuries to come would reshape the world. When Thomas Jefferson stood on a hill approximately one mile north of the proposed presidential mansion, today’s White House, he surveyed the meridian along which 16th Street runs today. What was once high ground for Native American tribes, farmers, a civil war encampment and elegant private homes and embassies ultimately became the site of Meridian International Center.

Meridian is a product of its location and history and continues to define it. Since 1960, hundreds of thousands of global leaders have gathered, shared insights and explored other cultures at Meridian. The idea is simple: diplomacy matters and leaders who collaborate across international borders can advance shared interests to build a more secure and prosperous world.

Long before Meridian was founded, the people who developed the neighborhood, and those who lived in the homes that today make up our campus, had a global view and an ambitious idea of America’s role in the world. Mary Henderson’s vision for a diplomatic neighborhood with buildings on par with European capitals reflected her belief that the United States was growing into a global power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The two American Ambassadors, Henry White and Irwin Laughlin, who built the historic homes were professional diplomats who played key roles in the foreign affairs of a United States that was just beginning to engage with the rest of the world. Later Eugene and Agnes Meyer would continue this role as their home became an intellectual and social hub for Washington’s civic, media and diplomatic elites. The former residents of Meridian House and the White-Meyer House held a deep commitment to diplomacy that would not end with retirement but would carry forward as their homes became a gathering place for world leaders.

The modern journey of our institution begins in 1960, when the American Council on Education was searching for an iconic building to serve as America’s gateway for international visitors in the post-World War II era and the Ford Foundation provided the funds to acquire Meridian House. In the late 1980s, Meridian acquired the White-Meyer House, unifying the two John Russell Pope-designed houses that in many ways were always a natural pair. Though distinct in architectural style, the two homes were constructed along the same plane-both boasting grand views of the city-almost as if Pope had known of their future purpose as a united international campus.

As Meridian celebrates its 60th anniversary, we are proud of the role the organization has played in bringing the world together and we are excited about its future. I am pleased that this book not only celebrates the history of Meridian and its splendid architecture, but also shows the enduring value of our mission. As we chart a course for the future, the nature of our challenges in the world may change, but U.S. global engagement will always be critical in solving them. This special place has been a keystone in that engagement, providing a neutral forum for the exchange of ideas, educating and connecting future global leaders, and bringing cultures closer together.

We hope you will enjoy this unique story and be inspired to engage with and support Meridian. I would like to thank all those who have helped Meridian in the past and will guide us in the future, including trustees, staff, friends and supporters. I would especially like to thank Natalie Shanklin, Megan Devlin, Natalie Jones and Lee Satterfield who turned the vision for Grounds of Diplomacy into a reality.

Ambassador Stuart W. Holliday President and CEO of Meridian International Center

Photo by Didi Cutler

Acknowledgments

We are profoundly grateful to the following supporters for their generous contributions in support of this book.

BENEFACTOR

Philip C. Lauinger, Jr.

PATRON

Donald E. Graham

LINDEN CIRCLE

The Honorable Stuart W. Holliday and Mrs. Gwen Holliday

Manisha and Roy Kapani

Annie Simonian Totah

The Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation

TERRACE CIRCLE

William T. Bennett

The Honorable Kenneth Bentsen and Mrs. Tamra Bentsen

The Honorable Dwight Bush and Mrs. Antoinette Bush

Vicki Davis and James G. Davis, Jr. in recognition of Edwin W. Davis, General Contractor of Meridian House

Gretchen M. Ehle

Karyn H. Frist

The Honorable Fred Hochberg and Mr. Tom Healy

Dr. James Kanski

Bonnie A. Larson

Deborah Taylor Ashford

Tracy and Adam Bernstein

The Honorable Don Beyer and Mrs. Megan Beyer

Carter Brown

Sean Cahill

Polly W. Lefaivre

Hongxia Liu

Drs. Ainsley MacLean and Bruce Wollman

Mr. and Mrs. F. Joseph Moravec

The Honorable Sam Nunn and Mrs. Colleen Nunn

Albert H. Small

The Honorable William Webster and Mrs. Lynda Webster

Page and David Winstead

theGroup

Neil Cohen and District Photo

SUPPORTERS

Dr. Andrea Giacometti and Mr. Ross Vincenti

Barton Gordon

Admiral Jay Johnson, Ret. and Mrs. Sydney Johnson

Natalie Jones and Patrick Hallahan

Kier and Justin Peterson

Robin Phillips

Lee Satterfield and Patrick Steel

The Honorable Ann Stock and Mr. Stuart Stock

Mrs. Togo D. West, Jr.

Photo by Didi Cutler Following photo by Stephen Bobb

THE RISE OF MERIDIAN HILL MERIDIAN

The Washington Meridian

While Meridian Hill today is home to apartment buildings, hotels, churches, foreign embassies, and one of Washington’s most popular parks, the neighborhood’s beginnings reflect a quainter, more idyllic escape from the bustle of city life. Set just outside the original northern border of the District as outlined in Pierre L’Enfant’s Plan, Meridian Hill for many decades was not much more than rolling farmland, interrupted only by dusty roads and grazing livestock. But as the burgeoning city below rose in global importance, it began to look north along the line extending directly from the President’s mansion, toward the hill that would come to be regarded as an elegant gateway to the nation’s capital.

Little is known about the origins of Meridian Hill or the native tribes who first settled it. It wasn’t until after the Revolutionary War and establishment of Washington as the new capital that the region’s history began to be documented. The land north of the city’s original border was owned by wealthy Georgetown merchant Robert Peter and was thus known as Peter’s Hill. The neighborhood’s role in the lives of the city dwellers became more vivid in the early 19th century, serving for many years as “the mecca of race course gamblers.”1 Virginian landowner Col. John Tayloe’s Holmead Farm on Meridian Hill was host to thousands at its Washington horse racecourse and served as headquarters to the once-popular Washington Jockey Club until around 1840, when Tayloe subdivided and sold the property.

Still, the rumble of activity just beyond the city continued to echo along present-day Sixteenth Street, the original center line of D.C. that had come to be known as the “Washington meridian.” In

Preceding spread meridian hill, early days  A man gazes out from Meridian Hill Park, under construction, across 16th Street at the White-Meyer House.

washington meridian marker

Tablet on the west wall of Meridian Hill Park, placed in 1923 by the Daughters of the American Revolution to commemorate the Washington Meridian marker stone, which was formerly located 52 feet 9 inches west of the tablet. The original two-foot stone was made of iron, with a rounded north edge and a brass sun dial and was placed by Thomas Jefferson.

the early 1800s, as the newly founded United States sought to establish a distinct national identity, many Americans called for the country to set its own geographic and scientific standards and campaigned to make the White House longitude the prime meridian of the United States. President Thomas Jefferson had placed a geographic marker on the knoll just north of the city’s boundary in 1804 to mark the meridian.2 But as international authorities debated where the longitude should fall, potential for confusion on the high seas forced Washington to abandon the idea and Greenwich was ultimately chosen. Nevertheless, the ‘White House meridian’ remains central to the geographic and cultural landscape of the capital.

Commodore David Porter

Meridian Hill officially got its name when it was purchased in 1816 by Commodore David Porter, who settled in Washington following an impressive naval career. Born in Boston in 1780 into a family with a five-generation history of distinguished naval service, Porter entered the Navy in 1798, rising through the ranks to serve as a lieutenant in the First Barbary War and promoted to captain just as the War of 1812 began to stir the nation. He sailed the USS Essex south from New York, and upon rounding Cape Horn the Essex became the first U.S. naval ship to display American flags in the Pacific. Porter and his crew soon captured the first British warship of the conflict.3

Porter made his mark on naval history during the war by undermining the British whaling industry in the Pacific, which gave the U.S. a monopoly on the trade that would last until the Civil War. In

l’enfant’s plan Original plan for the city of Washington, D.C., by Pierre Charles L’Enfant, 1794. The plan stops along the northern Boundary Street, just below the area that would come to be known as Meridian Hill as the city developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

search of more enemy ships, he came across the Marquesas Islands north of Polynesia and took possession of the island of Nuku Hiva, renaming it Madison Island and intending to bring its people into the “great American family.”4 Though this annexation was never seriously pursued, this was an unprecedented act that established Porter as essentially the U.S. Navy’s first imperialist.5 As early as 1815, he had proposed a naval mission to Japan to open its trade with the West, a suggestion that influenced the organization of Commodore Matthew Perry’s famous expedition.

Despite his successes in the war, a relentless British attack on the Essex at Valparaíso, Chile, forced Porter to surrender and flee, but the battle would be remembered as “one of the most desperate and remarkable in naval history.”6 After one other defeat, in which Porter

was taken prisoner and managed to escape, he arrived back in New York, where his countrymen received him with honor.

Porter made it to Washington in 1814, just in time to play an instrumental role in driving the British out of the city. He was then appointed as a commissioner of the Navy Board in 1815, a new administrative body composed of the most esteemed and accomplished naval officers. Having accumulated a significant amount of prize money during his adventures at sea and wanting to settle down on a property “commensurate with his social position,”7 Porter set his sights on the hill one mile due north of the White House, the highest point in the District. “So rolling was the contour of the meadows that their appeal to the eye of a sailor ashore was irresistible,”8 and so in 1816, he purchased a 110-acre farm for

$13,000. A patriotic supporter of the proposal to make the White House longitude the prime meridian of the U.S., he called his estate Meridian Hill.9

He chose architect George Hadfield, designer of the Washington City Hall, to design a large, elegant mansion on the knoll a bit south of today’s Crescent Place, with views of the city and Potomac River below. With Porter’s esteemed reputation and his wife Evalina’s education and social connections, their new home quickly became a popular destination for Washington’s elite. Porter’s son, Admiral David Dixon Porter, described the estate in his memoir of his father’s life:

“The chain of hills, on which the house was built, forms an amphitheater around the city, and were, at the time, covered with a fine growth of forest, the whole forming an extensive landscape which, to this day, has lost little of its beauty. Here was to be found everything that money could procure, to make the time pass pleasantly after the life of toil and warfare through which Captain Porter had passed; and here he delighted to dispense that hospitality, which made his house a place of reunion for some of the wisest and greatest in the land.”

When he wasn’t entertaining his many guests, Porter tried his hand at farming, but did not find nearly as much success with the land as he did with the sea. The soil on Meridian Hill did not allow crops to prosper, and despite having servants, livestock and 100 acres of corn, wheat and oats, Porter’s efforts did not yield any profit.10 These struggles, compounded by his expensive social lifestyle, formed the beginnings of his financial woes.

His primary purpose in Washington, however, saw much more progress. Working alongside Commodores Stephen Decatur and John Rodgers, his colleagues on the Board of Naval Commissioners, Porter cultivated favorable relationships with government officials and lawmakers to promote the interests of the U.S. Navy. But even after six years as commissioner, Porter did not fully settle into life in the capital and was described as having a “peculiarly restless disposition,”11 longing to return to the action and excitement of being at sea.

He soon found both. As a Naval Commissioner, he was able to write his own orders and sailed for Puerto Rico in 1824 as commodore and commander of the West Indies Squadron with the objective of suppressing piracy. Pulling into San Juan harbor, his vessels came under attack from the shore, and Porter subsequently learned that one of his lieutenants had been captured and imprisoned on false charges of piracy, which Porter found to be a severe offense by the

Spanish garrison against both his officer and the United States. In retaliation, he sailed for Fajardo, where the lieutenant was being held, to demand an apology, despite warnings from the Navy Secretary against such overzealous actions.12

When Washington got word of Porter’s activities, the Navy summoned him to the U.S. for an investigation and court-martial in 1825. Outraged, Porter argued with court personnel and wrote insolent letters to his superiors, further exacerbating his situation.13 The court found that his invasion of Puerto Rico encroached on the provisions of the Monroe Doctrine and found him guilty of disobedience of orders, a severe infringement of military discipline. Because of his venerated reputation, however, Porter received only a sixmonth suspension. Nonetheless, his pride and belief that the whole affair was unwarranted compelled him to resign from the U.S. Navy in 1826. Still unable to resist the call of sea duty, he entered the Mexican naval service as its commander-in-chief.

Porter found himself miserable in Mexico after three years there, with his misery compounded by two assassination attempts. He also struggled with an enduring homesickness, writing to his wife in late 1826 that he longed to return home and spend the rest of his life at Meridian Hill, “that most beloved of all spots on the earth.”14 He left Mexico in 1829 but never received his salary, which further ruined his finances and forced him to mortgage, lease and eventually sell his Meridian Hill estate for only a third of its value.15

Having lost his treasured Meridian Hill property and coping with a marriage that had suffered from his worsening financial situation, Porter sought support from President Andrew Jackson, who had admired the commodore. President Jackson suggested that he return to the U.S. Navy, but Porter, still bitter over the court-martial, declined but did accept an appointment as U.S. Consul General in Algiers. Unfortunately, during his voyage there, France had colonized Algeria and rendered his position obsolete. He was then transferred to Constantinople, where he served as the first U.S. Chargé d’Affaires from 1831 to 1839 and later as U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire from 1839 until his death in 1843 at the age of 63.

While in Constantinople, Porter found success in his work for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and although he may not have accomplished much in these first years of relations with the region, his charisma and respected reputation earned him favor among the diplomatic corps and Turkish officials.

According to David Dixon Porter, “the sailor was so completely absorbed by the diplomat, that one would never have suspected the American representative of having commanded a ship of war.”16

THE RISE OF MERIDIAN HILL

commodore david porter Portrait in oils of Commodore David Porter as a captain in the American Navy. Possibly painted by John Trumbull.

camp cameron, 1861

Soliders of the 7th New York State Militia at Camp Cameron in Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, much of Meridian Hill was transformed into a military camp and hospital for Union soldiers.

Facing bicycle race

A bicycle race takes place on Meridian Hill between 1883 and 1887.

Porter spent the remainder of his life in Turkey, where he died of heart failure on March 3, 1843. Ministers, missionaries and the entire diplomatic corps attended his funeral in San Stefano before his body was shipped back the U.S. to be buried in Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia. He was survived by his 10 children. His foster son David Glasgow Farragut and his biological son David Dixon Porter would go on to become the first and second admirals in the history of the U.S. Navy, respectively. Though his bold career saw the extremes of both success and failure, Commodore David Porter is today remembered as a naval hero who managed to leave a mark on the early history of the United States,17 and certainly that of Meridian Hill.

Camp Cameron

David Porter was not the only famous or colorful personality to have an interest in Meridian Hill. After Porter was forced to give up his Meridian Hill estate, the property went on to serve many important purposes across the 19th century. When Porter first mortgaged the property to Commodore John Rodgers, it was leased to such prominent figures as President John Quincy Adams. After his loss to Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828, Adams was said to have walked just a little over a mile from the White House to Meridian Hill, where he “found himself withdrawn as completely as if he had been a thousand miles from the nation’s capital. However painful and mortifying the defeat, he welcomed the relief from responsibility, the quiet of countryside.”18

During the Civil War, the estate was combined with the land of neighboring Columbian College (today’s George Washington University in its downtown location), to form the Camp Cameron military base for Union soldiers. Porter’s mansion was converted into a hospital, though it ultimately burned down in 1863 from indoor fires lit by soldiers to keep warm, with no surviving photographs of the structure.19 The base was primarily occupied by the Massachusetts Brigade and the New York 77th Infantry Regiment. Surgeon George T. Stevens of the 77th Regiment recounted his time at the encampment:

“Meridian Hill is the most delightful locality in the city of Washington. The plain on which the city stands extends back some two miles from the river and is terminated by a line of hills. Along the margin of these hills were some fine old suburban mansions…The Porter mansion became our hospital and also for a time served as headquarters…From the broad piazza we could look upon the busy scenes of the city and see the vessels passing up and down the river.”20

The Civil War period on Meridian Hill also saw the military hospitals and camps there become refuges for freed and escaped slaves. There they were able to find jobs and shelter, and over the next several decades established small communities in the neighborhood. The influx of population prompted real estate opportunists to pursue development of the area, and in 1867, the Hall & Elvans’ formal subdivision of Meridian Hill took shape. In 1873, 16th Street, at that time referred to as Meridian Avenue, was finally paved beyond Florida Avenue to Columbia Road.21

As the city continued to develop after the war, Meridian Hill, given its position overlooking the city, remained a prominent location in Washington and became an ideal place for social gathering and outdoor activities like picnics and bicycle races—perhaps echoing the horse races it once hosted. It would not be until the following century, however, that the neighborhood would see its most transformative period of growth into a ceremonial gateway to the capital.

One Woman’s Vision

Meridian Hill would not be what it is today without Mary Foote Henderson, who transformed the neighborhood with her architectural endeavors and played an important role in the development of Meridian Hill Park. Her husband, former Missouri Senator John Brooks Henderson, was well known as a co-author of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery. Born in 1829 in Virginia, Henderson grew up in Missouri and served as the state’s senator from 1863 to 1869, marrying Mary Newton Foote in 1868. His deciding vote against President Andrew Jackson’s impeachment charges cost him his reelection, which he followed with an unsuccessful bid for governor of Missouri.

Mary Henderson, born in 1841, was known as more than a senator’s wife. She was an activist in her own right, and later in her life became known as the “Empress of 16th Street.”1 She championed various causes related to health, manners and nutrition, authoring several books and publications on these topics, and was believed to have chosen Meridian Hill as her home for health reasons due to its “pure air and cooling breezes.”2

In her quest to transform 16th Street into the “finest residential avenue in America,”3 she wrote articles and letters to newspapers, and became a familiar face on Capitol Hill, where she was well respected by the members of Congress she lobbied. And when she wasn’t campaigning, she “presided over social Washington, hosting large and extravagant parties at her castle home.”4

The Hendersons had become wealthy through bond investments before permanently relocating to Washington in 1889, where they retired to the 30-room, red Seneca sandstone mansion they had just built on the corner of 16th Street and Florida Avenue, famously referred to as Henderson Castle due to its many turrets and crenellations inspired by medieval castles Mrs. Henderson had seen on the Rhine. The impressive structure, enhanced by her collection of rare artwork, was believed to have featured the first private swimming pool in Washington, and “stunned the Capital with an opening party said to be still unequalled here.”5

Facing

meridian hill subdivision plat

Cadastral

Following spread henderson castle Henderson Castle on 16th Street, home of former U.S. Senator John B. Henderson and Mary Foote Henderson. The home was demolished in 1949, and all that remains today is the stone entrance gate posts.

mary foote henderson

Mary Foote Henderson, wife of former U.S. Senator John B. Henderson, known for her work to shape 16th Street and the Meridian Hill area into the ‘diplomatic quarter’ of Washington.

survey map showing residential lot lines, lot numbers and some square-footage data. Richard M. Hall and John R. Elvans were D.C. businessmen who together officially organized the Meridian Hill subdivision in the mid to late 1800s.

Left french embassy

The former French Embassy at 2460 16th Street, a building commissioned by Mary Henderson and designed by George Oakley Totten, Jr. Today the building houses the Council for Professional Recognition.

Right embassy of poland

The Embassy of the Republic of Poland at 2640 16th Street. The building, designed by George Oakley Totten, Jr. was commissioned in 1910 by Mary Henderson and still serves as the Embassy today.

Gateway to Washington

The lead-up to the 20th century in Washington saw a swirl of renewed interest in urban planning among politicians, architects and civic leaders, motivated in part by the city’s upcoming centennial as the seat of federal government. The country’s architectural community was energized by the success of the “White City” of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and many looked toward the capital as a city that could capture the grandiose classicism of Europe in a modernized, American way. As a result, the Senate Park Commission of D.C. created the McMillan Plan in 1902 to improve upon L’Enfant’s Plan and enhance the architectural landscape of the capital through the City Beautiful Movement, an American urbanplanning movement that swept the country between the 1890s and 1920s. The Plan also led to the formation of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in 1910, created “to guide the architectural development of Washington so that the capital city would reflect in stateliness and grandeur, the emergence of the United States as a world power.”6

This new plan placed a particular emphasis on 16th Street as the northern entrance to the capital, and thus extended it beyond the original municipal borders to formally bring Meridian Hill into the city of Washington. Despite the neighborhood’s humble beginnings, Mary Henderson had ambitious plans, envisioning it as a hub for monuments, embassies and luxurious homes. From the late 1880s until her death in 1931, she systematically purchased lots throughout the subdivision, often referring to its central avenue as “my Sixteenth Street.”7 Speaking to Congress, she described her vision for it:

“Something like the Champs Elysees, Sixteenth Street is central, straight, broad and long…On the way down its seven-mile length to the portals of the White House each section of the thoroughfare will be a dream of beauty; long, impressive vistas; beautiful villas, artistic homes…whatever there is of civic incongruities will be wiped out. It will be called Presidents Avenue…”8

In two phases, from 1905 to 1910 and from 1920 to 1930, the Hendersons built 13 glamorous and ornate residential buildings on the lots they purchased, commissioning for all the designs George Oakley Totten, a classically trained architect educated at the esteemed École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Totten eventually designed his own home on Meridian Hill in 1915, relishing in a “tranquil country-like existence within walking distance of the city.”9 For the few lots that they didn’t build on, they sold only to other wealthy clients who could propose designs on par with Totten’s creations.

After the buildings were completed, Mrs. Henderson invited primarily foreign legations to purchase or lease the homes and use them as their private residences or official embassies. In some cases, she had the home designed for a specific country, as with the former French embassy at 2460 16th Street, which was commissioned after Ambassador Jules Jusserand complained to Mrs. Henderson about the previous embassy on S Street, which he deemed too small for the growing legation.10 When she heard this, Mrs. Henderson had Totten design an elaborate Beaux Arts mansion on Meridian Hill that incorporated several French details throughout. When the French Embassy moved to Kalorama decades later, the building became the Embassy of Ghana.

Other notable foreign legations that moved along Mrs. Henderson’s fast-growing “embassy-lined corridor to the White House”11 were those of Poland, Cuba, Mexico and Spain. Poland purchased one of Totten’s more popular designs built in 1910 and has been the building’s only occupant since 1919. The Hendersons sold the three vacant lots next door to the Republic of Cuba, on which the Cuban government commissioned a building from architects MacNeil & MacNeil modeled after an Italian villa. The Cuban government occupied the building from 1917 until 1961, when formal relations between the U.S. and Cuba were severed, but returned to the same space upon President Obama’s restoration of diplomatic ties in 2015.

Left cuban embassy

The Embassy of the Republic of Cuba, located at 2630 16th Street, was designed to emulate an Italian villa. The lot was purchased from Mary Henderson by the Cuban government, which occupied the building from 1917 to 1961, and returned in 2015 upon restoration of U.S.–Cuban diplomatic ties.

Right spanish ambassador’s residence

The former residence of the Ambassador of Spain at 2801 16th Street was originally proposed by Mary Henderson as a residence for the Vice President of the U.S. Today the building serves as headquarters for the Spain-USA Foundation, which works to promote greater cooperation and dialogue between the U.S. and Spain.

DIPLOMACY A HISTORY, A PLACE, A MISSION

The former Mexican embassy was first built as a private home for Secretary of the Treasury Franklin MacVeagh in 1910, as a thoughtful Christmas gift from his wife, who somehow managed to keep the project a secret until the couple moved in. 12 When Mrs. MacVeagh died in 1916, Mr. MacVeagh could not bear to remain in the home and, after leasing it to several prominent figures, sold it to the government of Mexico in 1921, which redecorated the interior with colorful murals and Mexican tiles. While the embassy has since moved downtown, the building today houses the Mexican Cultural Institute to promote U.S. – Mexico cultural exchange. The Spanish Ambassador’s residence just up the street proved to be one of Mrs. Henderson’s most high-profile projects. She had intended it to be the residence of the Vice President, but the government quickly rejected this proposal, believing it to be too costly for a vice president’s salary. 13 Completed in 1922, the house remained vacant for a few years until Spain purchased it in 1926.

Together, the embassies along 16th Street, in their distinct architectural styles, came to form an elegant boulevard to welcome diplomats into the nation’s capital as the country grew as a world power. The Washington Post praised the additions just before the completion of the Embassy of Poland:

“When the new embassy is completed there will be no other portion of the city where such a variety of architecture can be found in such close proximity. The Venetian palazzo, the French renaissance, the Spanish renaissance, and the classic styles will then be seen side by side in the palatial homes which form the fast-growing diplomatic center.”14

Avenue of the Presidents

The residence of the Ambassador of Spain was not the first building Mrs. Henderson had proposed as an executive residence. Early in her endeavors along 16th Street, she pushed for the construction of a new, more extravagant White House atop Meridian Hill, going so far to commission designs from architect Paul Pelz. In her presentation of the designs to Congress, she trumpeted “the views of the city, the prevailing winds of summer, the country air, proximity to Rock Creek Park, and adjacency to ‘what will, in the future, be one of the finest avenues in the country.’”15 Congress demurred, but two years later Mrs. Henderson backed a different architect, Franklin W. Smith, who proposed designs for an executive mansion in the same spot. Again, Congress showed no interest, but Mrs. Henderson’s advocacy for the proposals made her well known among the legislators whose favor she would later seek for her other grand ideas.

Despite her several setbacks, Mrs. Henderson was still able to temporarily bring a presidential aura to Meridian Hill through her briefly successful renaming of 16th Street to the “Avenue of the Presidents” in 1913. Though she had a vision to line the street with presidential busts from the White House to the burgeoning embassy row, the name did not stick and reverted to 16th Street after only a year.

As new monument locations and designs were proposed in the early 1900s as part of the McMillan Plan, Mrs. Henderson seized the opportunity to advocate for Meridian Hill as the Lincoln Memorial site, which in 1911 was part of

a national design competition. Early in the debate, Mrs. Henderson hired the architectural firm of Murphy and Olmsted to prepare designs, and presented the firm's plan for a ”Lincoln arch” before Congress in 1912, arguing that if the memorial were constructed on Meridian Hill, it “may sooner or later be on the line of roadway which will connect the White House with the Gettysburg Park,” ambitiously implying that 16th Street should be extended 60 miles north.16

Mrs. Henderson was not the only one to promote Meridian Hill as the Lincoln Memorial site. At the same time, architect John Russell Pope, who would later design the Jefferson Memorial, launched a campaign to win the commission. Though the Commission of Fine Arts, established to oversee the execution of the McMillan Plan, preferred architect Henry Bacon and the Potomac Park site, Senator Joseph Cannon advised the Lincoln Memorial Commission to create an advisory committee of three architects Bacon, Pope and Elliott Woods each tasked with designing a monument for one of the three sites being considered, which in addition to Meridian Hill and Potomac Park included Old Soldiers’ Home on North Capitol Street. As Potomac Park was the obvious choice given the monumental core plan for the National Mall, the competition was more for show, but Pope was nevertheless determined to impress the Commission. He proved to have a competitive edge with his Meridian Hill design for layers of wide steps reaching toward a massive, columned shrine to President Lincoln that would boast sweeping views of the entire city below, but the design was ultimately deemed too imposing for the residential neighborhood,17 and the Potomac Park site remained the favored choice. Even after the vote for Bacon’s design was passed, Mrs. Henderson continued to advocate for the Meridian Hill site. Pope, on the other hand, managed to make his mark on Meridian Hill with two new residences on Crescent Place, both of which fit in perfectly with the elegant, diplomatic landscape of the growing neighborhood.

lincoln memorial design John Russell Pope’s competition proposal for a monument to Abraham Lincoln on Meridian Hill, which in 1911 was considered a possible site for the memorial due largely to Mary Henderson’s lobbying efforts.

executive mansion design Proposed design of the presidential palace on Meridian Hill by Paul J. Pelz (1898), lobbied for by Mary Henderson. While the relocation of the White House was never approved, the terraces and gardens shown here were partially realized in the design of Meridian Hill Park.

Meridian Hill Park

In addition to monuments, the McMillan Plan reintroduced an investment in the city’s public parks, with a focus on the National Mall. But Mrs. Henderson, in her usual fashion, seized upon this renewed enthusiasm for enhancing the D.C. park system and, after her unsuccessful attempts to build an executive mansion or Lincoln Memorial on the land across from her castle home, she managed to turn it into one of the city’s most distinctive parks.

Before Meridian Hill Park, there were no parks north of Florida Avenue. It was also one of the first public parks in the country designed in the neoclassical style as an extension of its topography. 18 In response to the McMillan Plan and Mrs. Henderson’s lobbying, the U.S. government purchased the 12 acres in 1910 that were once part of Commodore David Porter’s grand estate and began planning the park’s construction in 1912. Two years later, George Burnap, landscape architect for the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, was selected as the park’s lead architect to work alongside John J. Earley, Horace W. Peaslee (who would take over as lead designer in 1915) and landscape designer Ferruccio Vitale.

Though the designers and engineers drove the execution of the park, drawing inspiration from travels to France, Italy and Switzerland to examine 16th-century villas, Mrs. Henderson remained influential in every stage of its development, lobbying Congress for zoning regulations to safeguard Meridian Hill’s extraordinary views and advocating for the park’s continued funding through its official completion in 1936. The result was a French Renaissance and Italianate terraced park 75 feet in elevation from south to north, with a flowing cascade and unmatched vistas of the capital below. In its peak condition in the years just before World War II, “Washingtonians gathered there on the hot evenings of summer for Starlight Concerts, enjoying the cool breezes of the hilltop amid the cascading waters.”19

During the war and in the decades to follow, the park and surrounding neighborhood saw many setbacks. The war forced maintenance cuts for the park, and it continued to face a lack of funding thereafter, along with recurring vandalism and security threats. In the 1968 riots that erupted after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the park suffered further, and Mary Henderson’s overall vision for Meridian Hill—which failed to include the African American communities that had taken root there after the Civil War— began to fade as embassies moved to other parts of the city.

Henderson Castle was turned into a boarding house after Mrs. Henderson’s death in 1931 and later into a nightclub that blared its music so loudly it caused Eugene Meyer, its northern neighbor on Crescent Place, to purchase the property in 1941 and have it demolished in 1949.20 The castle, once “the scene of many lavish entertainments at which men whose names loom large in the galaxy of public life have been proud to be guests,”21 has since been replaced by the Beekman Place condominiums.

Though Meridian Hill’s development today lacks the persistent efforts of a woman with a commitment to her singular vision, it has in recent decades seen a return to its previous splendor as a hilltop

escape from the commotion of downtown D.C., with the park in particular growing in popularity for outdoor activities such as yoga, drum circles and picnics. Many embassies have remained, and the neighborhood continues to welcome people from around the world to the nation’s capital. By the end of her life, Mrs. Henderson’s influence had reached beyond the diplomatic circle to bring several beautiful churches to the area, with 10 built on 16th Street in the 1920s.22 While the buildings that have been added since would likely not live up to her standards, Mrs. Henderson's legacy on Meridian Hill remains as solid as the palatial structures that now line what has come to be one of Washington’s most important avenues.

plan of meridian hill park

Architectural plan for Meridian Hill Park designed by lead architect Horace W. Peaslee, adapted from the original design by George Burnap. The designers had drawn inspiration from similarly terraced parks in Italy, as well as 16th century villas in France and Switzerland, with the ultimate goal of showcasing Meridian Hill’s panoramic views of the city.

great cascade and armillary sphere  Visitors enjoy an afternoon by the Great Cascade at the center of Meridian Hill Park. The Noyes Armillary Sphere in the foreground was constructed by Carl Paul Jennewein in 1931 and includes rings to represent the Meridian and Equator. The bronze sculpture was damaged in the 1968 Washington, D.C., riots and removed for repairs, but little is known regarding its whereabouts today.

An American Architect

The elegant, refined character of Meridian Hill is perhaps best exemplified by two homes on Crescent Place designed by renowned architect John Russell Pope. Though he is known for such monumental creations as the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives and the Jefferson Memorial, Pope’s residential designs have stood the test of time to remain some of the most attractive structures in Washington today. With a 34-year career that saw the peak of an architectural renaissance in the United States, Pope produced a body of work reminiscent of the timeless, classical styles of Europe, and at the same time deeply reflective of a period of American history infused with an innovative spirit and a renewed sense of national pride and progress.

Born in New York in 1873 to John Pope, a successful portrait painter, and Mary Avery Loomis Pope, a piano instructor and landscape artist, Pope grew up in a world of creativity and design. Despite this influence, Pope originally had no interest in an artistic profession, choosing instead to pursue medicine, following in the footsteps of his maternal uncle Dr. Alfred Loomis who had guided Pope after his father died when he was six years old. He enrolled at the City College of New York to study medicine with plans for graduate studies at John Hopkins University, but found more success in his drawing courses, and after witnessing a surgical procedure, he changed his mind and entered the School of Mines at Columbia University in 1891 to study architecture.1

Though a formal education in architecture was still rather novel at the time Pope started at Columbia, he was able to study under some of the greatest architectural minds in the country and found mentors in such accomplished architects as William Robert Ware and Charles McKim. By the time he graduated in 1894, he had already made many important connections in the field and was well respected by teachers and colleagues. He was awarded the McKim Travelling Fellowship upon his graduation, allowing him to spend 18 months at the American School of Architecture in Rome, a period of his education that would later be evident in much of his work. A skilled artist and avid photographer, he studied the classical architecture of

Europe through the lens of his camera and a pencil to his sketchbook. Not ready to leave the enduring splendor of Europe’s cities behind after his time in Rome, he moved to Paris in 1896 to study for entrance exams to the world-famous École des Beaux-Arts, passing without issue and entering the school in 1897.

Though he received crucial training in Paris, his limited funds forced him to return to New York in 1900, at the apex of the American Renaissance that was heightened by the architectural feats of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Building off the momentum and standards set by American architects of the late 19th century, “Pope was well positioned to exploit these feelings of patriotism and idealism.”2 He began his career at the office of Bruce Price, where he worked for five years before opening his own practice. Business was slow at first, and so Pope earned additional income by working at the university’s new atelier alongside his former mentor McKim, who sponsored Pope to join the American Institute of Architects and helped him develop key relationships in New York and D.C. that would grow his fledgling practice. Pope soon began winning more commissions, and around 1909 he hired Otto R. Eggers and Daniel P. Higgins, on whom he heavily relied as the practice expanded in size and reputation. In maintaining valuable relationships with the architectural press, his practice became well known for its beautiful drawings and for Pope’s skill and eclecticism.3

His early work primarily consisted of small vacation homes for less wealthy clients but soon grew to encompass commissions for grander, more expensive urban residences and rural estates, mostly in Washington and Long Island or other New York suburbs. He also contributed larger-scale designs for the campus planning of Dartmouth, John Hopkins, Syracuse and Yale, and was awarded honorary degrees from the latter two as recognition for his contributions to the universities’ development. Of his earlier designs, one of the most famous is Union Station in Richmond, VA, noted for its allure as a “modern gateway to the city.” 4

All of his designs drew from his highly comprehensive studies of 17th and 18th century Europe, and he experimented with a variety of styles ranging from Renaissance Rome, Gothic and Tudor to

house of the temple Drawing of the House of the Temple at 1733 16th Street, originally featured in The Federal Architect in July 1935. Completed in 1915 and one of Pope’s most noted public designs, the Masonic temple serves as headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

john russell pope

Portrait of John Russell Pope, American architect best known for designing the National Archives Building, the Jefferson Memorial, and the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. He is also respected for his eclectic residential architecture, which includes the WhiteMeyer House and Meridian House on Crescent Place.

“Pope produced refined and original designs that satisfied the growing pride of an increasingly dominant and influential America.”

—James B. Garrison, Mastering Tradition: The Residential Architecture of John Russell Pope

Adam-Federal, Georgian Revival and 18th century French. His plans were well-regarded for their efficient use of space, and Pope became known for his ability to adapt these classical European styles in a way that was true to form and yet distinctly American. As James Garrison wrote in his book on Pope's residential architecture, “No mere copyist or assembler of pieces, Pope produced refined and original designs that satisfied the growing pride of an increasingly dominant and influential America.”5

Pope’s work was also shaped by an individualized form of architecture that began to emerge in the early 20th century, in which designs were tailored to a client’s specific needs, occupation and personal tastes, whereas before, architectural styles were considered more broadly for entire classes of people.6 This individualism in design made architecture more difficult, but Pope, with his stylistic eclecticism, managed to master this architectural customization. Herbert Croly wrote of Pope’s talents in the Architectural Record in 1911:

“In the case of Mr. Pope, probably the most obvious characteristic of his work is its versatility. He has experimented in many different styles and sub-styles, and the range of his experimentation is so considerable that a critic might hesitate to say that a certain house unmistakably belongs to him…And in accounting for this versatility it should be clearly understood that it is not the result on Mr. Pope’s part of sheer facility, of an amiable eclecticism, or the want of stylistic principle. It is the result of lively human sympathy—of a conscious attempt to make the houses an appropriate background for the lives of their owners.”

Pope did struggle to adapt his designs, however, for commercial buildings, as his aesthetic tendency toward elegance and severity was not conducive to the functional requirements of more bureaucratic spaces.7 But his rich body of residential work, known for its stateliness and monumentality, had brought him into a network of influential people who helped Pope to win larger, public commissions in his later career—a transition that was amplified by several centennial celebrations that called for the construction of new monuments and memorials. Having already designed several grand residences in Washington, as well as the imposing House of the Temple (1911-15), Pope solidified his mark on the capital in the last years of his life with the National Archives and Records Administration building in 1935, the National Gallery of Art in 1941 and the Jefferson Memorial in 1943. He also influenced the design of the National Mall with the decision to remove its trees,8 opening up views of its awe-inspiring museums and monuments. These public commissions pulled

heavily from Pope’s proficiency in Roman classicism, and though the National Gallery and Jefferson Memorial were executed after his death in 1937 by his assistants, they continue to be recognized as the pinnacle of Pope’s contributions to American architecture.

Little is known about Pope’s life behind the monuments and mansions, as he was a fairly reserved man and preferred to let his associates mingle with clients while he worked on his designs. He summered at his home in Newport—a residence he designed called The Waves—with his wife Sadie Jones, daughter of a wealthy Civil War-era blockade runner, and their three daughters Mary, Jane and the youngest, Sarah, who died at an early age in a car accident in 1930. After this tragedy, Pope further retreated into his work, focusing on his last big public commissions in D.C. He did maintain public engagements by serving as a trustee and later president of the American Academy in Rome from 1925 to 1937, and through a number of recognitions, including the 1917 Medal of Honor from the Architectural League of New York, a title of chevalier in the French Legion of Honor in 1924, and an appointment by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 to the Commission of Fine Arts followed by an appointment by President Herbert Hoover to the National Board of Consulting Architects. Otherwise, though, Pope “preferred to let his work speak for him.”9

The period in architectural America immediately following his death was defined by the rise of modernism, first revealed at the Chicago Exposition of 1933-34. As a result, Pope’s work became widely condemned as archaic and at odds with the progressivism of the latter half of the 20th century. While the American fervor for neoclassicism of his time had set the stage for Pope’s success, modernism stood in the way of its continued legacy, leaving little secondary sources on his work.10 None of his Washington houses are still used as private residences—aside from the Robert McCormick house on Massachusetts Avenue that is used as a residence for the Brazilian Ambassador11—yet, those who do occupy Pope’s grand creations steward them proudly and enjoy their luxuries, spatial planning and historical value.

Though the styles and inspirations behind Pope’s work are not so visibly present in today’s architecture, his commitment to them contributed to the overall character of Washington as a city of prestige, endurance and global importance. As The New York Times reported upon his death in 1937, during his career Pope produced “temples that sit serene in the moil and toil of modern commerce [and] belong to a specific period in our development as a nation: [they] help express and interpret the era through which we have just lived and in which we still strive to come to grips with our national soul.”12

Above jefferson memorial design

Line drawing of the north elevation of the Jefferson Memorial, designed by John Russell Pope and completed in 1943.

Below jefferson memorial  One of Washington’s largest and most famous memorials, the Jefferson Memorial serves as the southern anchor of the city’s monumental plan, the other elements of which include the Capitol, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and the White House.

floor plans

Floor plans of the first and second levels of the WhiteMeyer House.

Facing elevations

Line

Diplomacy and Design

John Russell Pope’s mastery of residential architecture is evident in two stately mansions on Meridian Hill, built side by side on Crescent Place as homes for a pair of accomplished American diplomats.

As Meridian Hill grew into its role as Washington’s first Embassy Row, it began to attract more globally minded citizens, and in January 1910, Ambassador Henry White, former Ambassador to Italy and France, purchased a 1.5-acre plot of land just north of Henderson’s Castle and asked Pope to design for him and his wife a grand residence in the Georgian-Italianate Style, with sweeping views of the capital.

The lot was “a most desirable location,”1 just across from the proposed park and near the summit of Meridian Hill, with vistas to the south so supreme that despite the construction of townhomes in the late 20th century, they have remained unobstructed at the second-floor level. The property had previously been home to Joaquin Miller, an eccentric character from California better known as the “Poet of the Sierras.” After moving to Washington with the intention of getting involved in politics, he built his rustic-style log cabin on the property in 1883, only to find Washington too crowded and headed back west two years later. When Henry White purchased the lot, Miller’s cabin, considered a rare example of vernacular architecture in the city, was preserved and moved to its present location in Rock Creek Park by the California State Society in 1912.

White’s reason for choosing Pope to design his home is not clear, but Pope’s reputation in Washington at that time had certainly grown after his completion of the Robert R. Hitt house in Dupont Circle, which “set a new standard for residential design in Washington by bringing this cosmopolitan European arrangement to an American house,”2 as well as his involvement in the Lincoln Memorial and Temple of the Scottish Rite commissions. The White home would be his next big project and would reinforce his position as one of the leading residential architects in the city.

drawings of the north and south façades of the White-Meyer House, located at 1624 Crescent Place.

early sketch

An initial drawing by John Russell Pope of the White-Meyer House from an aerial point of view. The drawing shows the house design as it was originally conceived, before the wings were extended and the depth of the house was condensed to account for the challenging topography of the property.

Pope's design for the house blended seamlessly with fellow architect George Oakley Totten’s work in the neighborhood, as both were trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and had won the McKim Travelling Fellowship. Pope was challenged at first, however, by the topography of the hill, needing to make the house compact without limiting its imposing appearance or interior space.3 His first sketch was of a cubic structure with wings extending from the side and landscaping that would level the front entrance on Crescent Place to allow for a walled forecourt, but this made for odd proportions that would have made the house seem obtrusively large. Instead, he opted for a circular driveway to extend up the incline to the front doors. Pope also decreased the depth of the house and elongated its wings, containing the south façade’s more significant elevation with a red-brick retaining wall. The effect, when compared with Meridian House’s design erected a decade later, makes the White’s home appear as though it “extends along the skyline, riding it as if on the crest of a wave.”4

The whole design drew from Pope’s background in Adamesque and Roman styles, and when a brick and stone combination was later chosen for the exterior as opposed to the original all-stone option, the house began to reflect a more modernized American Federal style.5 This amalgam of European inspirations seemed to reflect White’s own international background and affection for the architecture he had grown accustomed to as a diplomat.

Construction on the house began in April 1910, with building estimates at $80,000. The Norcross Brothers Contractors and Builders led the project and in that same year were set to build Pope’s Temple of the Scottish Rite nearby. Visitors frequently stopped by to witness the massive structure’s progress, including Mrs. Henderson, who was quite pleased with this new addition to her growing neighborhood of prestige and influence.6 White was back and forth between Washington and his diplomatic travels and sent regular updates to his wife, who was staying in Germany at the

time. After a visit to the site with his son in the fall of 1910, he wrote:

“I went yesterday with Jack to the house and the highest part built is the floor of my bedroom to which we climbed by a ladder, and whence there is a glorious view. The day and the weather were exquisite and I thought of our happy life together…The brick looks very well and is just what you want I think, as indeed I feel that the house will be.”7

But as construction got underway, costs quickly escalated. Pope had written to Mrs. White early in the planning process, regretfully letting her know that expenses proved higher than expected but could be reduced by substituting different materials and decreasing the size. Henry White responded by saying they were “unwilling to spoil the house by curtailments suggested and will face the increased cost.”8 By the time of the house’s completion in 1912, its cost had nearly doubled to $155,497. The end result proved worth the expense, though, with a threestory, 40-room, red-brick mansion sitting high atop Meridian Hill among a number of other sophisticated structures that had sprung up over the course of Mrs. Henderson’s beautification initiative, greatly increasing the value of White’s new home. But in many ways, the addition of the house seemed to set the tone for the continued improvement of 16th Street. As architectural critic John Taylor Boyd, Jr. wrote in the November 1917 issue of the Architectural Record, “Fortunately, the design has determined the whole character of the neighborhood that is developing around it.”

The exterior was designed to resemble that of the Massimo Palace at Rome, accentuated by stone trim detailing drawn from Paul Letarouilly’s 1849 Edifices de Rome Moderne,9 and a sumptuous front lawn and dramatic porte-cochère, which is heightened by eight massive columns that are similar in size and design to the ones supporting the second-floor loggia overlooking the city. This 20-foot high garden terrace, evocative of Roman palatial architecture, along with the grounds, works in tandem with the park across the street to preserve some of the serene, rural openness that made Meridian Hill

such a desirable setting in the first place, while the exceptional views serve as a reminder that the city is not so far off. The grounds were extended in 1930 when Henry White’s son, John Campbell White, purchased the adjacent lot to safeguard the space between the house and 16th Street. The gardens were kept separate by brick retaining walls and stairway and landscaped to resemble an English garden, complementing the Adamesque style of the house, with old trees maintained to give the whole estate a feeling of antiquity.10

It was the interior design of the house, though, that captured the estate’s original atmosphere and purpose. With elegant, spacious rooms flowing into each other, decorated with the Whites’ collection of worldclass art and furniture, the house was made for entertaining the most sophisticated of guests. Pope’s take on the interior reflects a blend of Georgian and Adamesque styles with a touch of baroque French. Starting in the elaborate entrance hall, which was based on the Ionic of the Erechtheum of ancient Greece,11 the home’s many guests moved naturally in a clockwise fashion through 11-foot high mahogany French doors into a series of reception rooms, ending in the grand dining room, with doors opening onto the terrace and a frieze modeled on that of the Pantheon. Just above the fireplace, John Singer Sargent’s seven-foot tall portrait of Mrs. White, now in the National Gallery of Art, dominated the room and the guests’ attention, “the breezy elegance of the white silk and chiffon…very much in keeping with the intricate Adam plasterwork of the wall frieze and ceiling panel moldings.”12 Henry White’s daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Moffat White, once remarked, “Mrs. White used to dominate that dining room - you know the portrait. I would sit right under it and feel (laughing) so inadequate.”13

This interior flow, and the intricate yet simple ornaments and symmetry of each room, emulated the cultured life of the Whites and that of the house’s subsequent owner, the family of Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post. As Boyd assessed, “It is in these [interior spaces] that one discerns most clearly the atmosphere of the diplomatic circle. Stately, formal, sophisticated, sumptuous, yet with an exquisite classic spaciousness and absence of too much, they are some of the ablest designs that Mr. Pope has imagined.”14

“A house that is a fit setting for the life of the diplomatic circle of our capital—such is the residence at Washington of the Hon. Henry White, former ambassador to France.”

—John Taylor Boyd, Jr., Architectural Record, November 1917

Ambassador Henry White

Prior to building White-Meyer House, Ambassador Henry White was one of the most notable American diplomats of the 1890s and early 1900s, referred to by President Theodore Roosevelt as “the most useful man in the entire diplomatic service, during my Presidency and for many years before.”15 And even though he had retired in 1909 to build his mansion on Meridian Hill, it was not long before he would return to the U.S. Foreign Service, and both he and his new home would serve a valuable purpose in the United States’ involvement in World War I. Today he is often remembered as America’s first career diplomat, a legacy reflected in his life’s work to establish a formalized, nonpartisan diplomatic service in the U.S.

White was born in Baltimore on March 29, 1850, to John Campbell White, who had inherited a distillery fortune, and Eliza Ridgely White, member of an old and wealthy Maryland family. His father died when he was only three, and his mother settled the family at Hampton, a large plantation-like estate in Towson, Maryland—now a national historic site—where Henry spent his childhood amid slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. With tensions rising in Maryland, his mother, who sympathized with the south, moved the family to Europe in 1857 for over a year before returning to the U.S., giving him his first taste of international travel. At the war’s end, his mother married Dr. Thomas Hepburn Buckler, and the family moved again to Europe, where they would remain for the rest of White’s adolescence and young adulthood.

From 1865 to 1870, White lived and was educated in England, Paris, Italy and Germany, traveling often and becoming well-versed in European politics and society. He became proficient in French and Italian, largely at the impetus of his mother, who was said to be quite strict and would only speak and write to him in Italian.16 By the time he finished his secondary studies, he was well positioned to attend Cambridge University. However, he had by then developed a pulmonary

weakness that forced him to postpone his higher education and remain in France at the start of the Franco-Prussian War—a conflict that, along with the American Civil War, greatly impacted his perception of war in general. As Allan Nevins wrote in White’s biography, “It was an important part of White’s education that twice before his majority he witnessed the crushing defeat of two peoples with whom he had the most sympathetic ties. No small part of his lifelong love of peace and his desire to promote it dated from these years.”

The escalating war prompted the family to return to England, where White took up fox-hunting, a hobby that gave him skill in “pluck, self-control, and tact.”17 It also introduced him to many of the men that would come to be key friends and acquaintances in White’s diplomatic affairs in the country. He wrote of this period in his life:

“The nine winters of foxhunting were the best preparation which I could have had for the 21 years of diplomacy of which I was subsequently (though I little knew it at the time) to have experienced in England; not only because of the opportunities for acquiring a thorough knowledge of the different classes, but of meeting many of the leading men of the period, and also those who became more or less prominent, politically or otherwise, during the years which were to follow.”18

It was at this time in White’s life, too, that he met the person who would motivate his future in diplomacy: Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd, daughter of Margaret Chanler19 and astronomer Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, Jr. and a descendant of Lewis Morris, who signed the Declaration of Independence. She was described as being “one of those few women whom it gives a man a kind of public distinction to marry.”20 They married on December 3, 1879, in New York, and at her encouragement, White sought his first diplomatic appointment.

ambassador henry white

Portrait of Ambassador Henry White by Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat, 1880. White was a prominent U.S. diplomat who served as ambassador to Italy and France and is one of the signers of the Treaty of Versailles. The portrait still hangs in the entrance hall of the mansion he built in Washington, known today as the White-Meyer House.

margaret stuyvesant rutherfurd white

Portrait of Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White, wife of Ambassador Henry White. She and her husband lived in Paris when they commissioned this painting from American artist John Singer Sargent in 1883. The seven-foot tall portrait hung in the dining room at the Whites’ home in Washington for many years and is now on display at the National Gallery of Art.

Unfamiliar with the partisan landscape of American public service, White tried for three years to secure an appointment. It wasn’t until June 1883, under the Chester Arthur Administration, that he began his first post as secretary of the legation at Vienna, where he brushed up on his German and got a sense of diplomatic routines. Later that year, he transferred to the second secretaryship in London, where he felt much more at home and would remain for nearly a decade. Given his many connections in the country, he found much success at the legation and was soon promoted to first secretary, frequently taking over as chargé d'affaires. The ministers who served during that time regarded White as a man of great skill and prudence, and he was valued for his access to important information through his vast network.21

Despite White’s demonstrated competence, a changing political climate interrupted his career in 1893, when the incoming Grover Cleveland Administration replaced him with a Democrat. Several prominent figures objected to his removal from the London legation, but the decision further fanned the flame that would drive White’s lifelong quest to eliminate domestic politics from the foreign affairs of the United States.

White remained active in diplomacy after his departure from London, serving as an informal representative to Secretary of State Richard Olney in a boundary dispute between Britain and Venezuela. He and his wife indulged in the social life of Washington and made plans to move there the following winter, to a home at 1812 I Street. They developed key friendships with American notables like Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge and maintained their popularity among British leaders. Roosevelt wrote him during this time, “I need hardly say how I enjoyed seeing you here in Washington, and we look forward to having you here next winter, though I trust it will not be long before we again see you in our diplomatic service.”22 Sure enough, as soon as President William McKinley took office in 1897, White was reappointed to the U.S. Foreign Service and given a choice between a return to London and the ministership to Spain. He readily chose to resume his work in London, this time under Ambassador John Hay.

White stayed in London another eight years, hoping to succeed Hay as ambassador, but instead remained an indispensable and loyal aid to his superiors, playing an influential role in the negotiation of the treaty that enabled the building of the Panama Canal, as well as the treaty that decided the Alaskan border. He also advised Hay during the Boxer Rebellion in China and in efforts to promote the Open Door Policy in the region and helped strengthen the British-American alliance at the start of the Spanish-American War. Hay’s successor, Ambassador Joseph Choate, praised White’s contributions during this time, remarking that he had started a “school for diplomacy” in London, having spent so much time in England and at the legation that he wound up training and orienting the ambassadors who came through over the course of his time there.

“He took fresh, green Ambassadors and put them to school… Harry White smoothed my steps and saved me from pitfalls,

even if he could not quite control my tongue. He is a wonderful diplomatist. Hardly a question that could arise did not arise under the five Ambassadors under whom he served. You can imagine, with Harry White in the back room, how much of the responsibility they turned over to him.”23

After two decades of serving in subordinate positions, White was at last appointed Ambassador to Italy in 1905, and two years later named Ambassador to France. Despite the elevated title, there were fewer occasions during these years that allowed White to demonstrate just how capable he was as a diplomat. His most notable work as ambassador was when President Roosevelt asked him to serve as the American representative at the Algeciras Conference in 1906, at which he mediated French and German claims in Morocco and effectively staved off conflict over the region. But in 1909, President Taft dismissed White from the Foreign Service, again for political reasons, and despite more protests over the decision from Roosevelt and other influential figures echoing around him, White returned to Washington without bitterness to retire and build his grand home on Meridian Hill.

While construction at 1624 Crescent Place got underway, White spent time in Washington and on various diplomatic assignments abroad. In 1910, he traveled to Berlin and London as former President Roosevelt’s de facto chief of staff and later that year was appointed head of the American delegation to the fourth Pan-American Conference in Buenos Aires; he also served as special ambassador to the centennial celebration of Chilean independence. His son, John Campbell White, who would later follow in his father’s diplomatic footsteps, joined him on this trip as his secretary. By 1911, the walls of his home had been built, and White returned to Washington to oversee its completion. He further expanded his social circle in the capital, building friendships with British Ambassador Lord James Bryce, French Ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand, and other notable foreign diplomats. He also delivered public speeches and served various organizations, including the executive committee of the Carnegie Institution. Due to poor health, Mrs. White had remained in Germany with their daughter but recovered in time to return to Washington as the home was being completed. At that time Meridian Hill was still a newer part of the city, but the house was described in White’s biography as “one of the most artistic mansions of

first diplomatic post

From left, Henry White, U.S. Minister to Austria-Hungary Alphonso Taft (1882–1884), and Commander T.C. McLean, U.S.N. White served under Taft during his first post at the American legation in Vienna in 1883.

in europe with roosevelt  Henry White with Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm II while traveling in Europe in 1910 as Roosevelt's de facto chief of staff.

peace conference

The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, an oil-oncanvas painting by Irish artist William Orpen that commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, to formally end World War I. Ambassador Henry White is pictured seated third from the left, next to such figures as then U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, President Woodrow Wilson, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau.

Preceding spread

joffre mission

Aerial view of activities at Henry White's home in Washington in April 1917, when, at the request of the U.S. State Department, it was lent to the French World War I mission of Marshal Joseph Joffre for use as its headquarters. Joffre later wrote that in this house “ were sown the seeds of military and naval cooperation which bore fruit several months later on the battlefront.”

Washington, commandingly placed in the northwestern part of the city whither many of the embassies and legations were now being transferred.”24 The home became the center of the Whites’ social life, and such prominent figures as former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, Lord Robert Cecil, and President Warren Harding would come to pass through its halls over the course of the Whites’ time there. Whenever he hosted foreign dignitaries traveling to the U.S., White took a special interest in connecting them with government representatives and high-ranking officials, understanding the values of such relationships.

At the outbreak of World War I, White found his world in a peculiar state of both chaos and opportunity. Tragically, after suffering health challenges for many years, his wife died in 1916, a loss that deeply affected White just as the future of U.S. foreign relations was put into question. At the same time, White’s daughter, who had married a German nobleman, was still in Germany with her family as the war began, adding to his distress. He distracted himself by pledging his diplomatic capabilities to the United States’ involvement in the war, seeing it as “one last and largest opportunity for service to his country.” 25

In 1917, White temporarily moved downtown and served as regional director of the Red Cross and president of the War Camp Community Service, while also working with the Navy League. While he was devoting his time to these efforts, his home on Crescent Place saw its own service in the war when the U.S. State Department requested its use as headquarters for the French mission of Marshal Joseph Joffre and M. René Viviani in April 1917. With the French flag flying from the residence and guards patrolling the estate, White welcomed the military leaders to his home. He invited members of Congress to meet and dine with the delegation and joined the delegates on a visit to Baltimore. Over the course of the mission’s two-week stay in Washington, high-level strategic meetings took place inside the home that had historical impacts on the war’s progress. Joffre later wrote that in this house, “were sown the seeds of military and naval cooperation which bore fruit several months later on the battlefront.” 26

For White, the military strategy of the United States’ allies did not concern him so much as did their plans for peace, and he soon saw his opportunity to play his part in the war’s end. In 1918, when President Wilson appointed White to the Peace Commission, he leased his home to Rhode Island Senator Peter Goelet Gerry and sailed for Paris on the SS George Washington to negotiate with senior European

diplomats. Though surprised by his appointment, White was an obvious choice for Wilson, who understood that White’s unmatched knowledge of European diplomacy as well as his nonpartisan views and relationships would help him promote a fair peace not based on any bias or desire for retribution.27

In Paris, White played a “distinctly useful” 28 role in the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles and is best known today for being one of its signers. In helping to reconcile the conflicting territorial claims of Italy, France and Poland, he advocated for Wilson’s plan for the Upper Silesia plebiscite between Poland and Germany and worked to put an end to France’s food blockade of Germany. However, perhaps his most influential contribution was to promote the League of Nations among his American colleagues and government representatives. Though initially against the idea, he came to see its potential value and upon returning to Washington in November 1919, dedicated himself to the campaign for the League’s approval by the Senate, but it was ultimately defeated in 1920.

This loss signaled the end of White’s public career. Ten years after he’d originally planned to retire, he was finally able to do so for good, indulging in the comfort of his grand home and donating his time to the causes about which he was most passionate. He had by this time decided to remarry and on November 3, 1920, wed Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, philanthropist and widow of William Douglas Sloane, with children and grandchildren of her own.

Accustomed to a wealthy lifestyle, she preferred the Crescent Place home to the smaller house White had been residing in downtown,29 and together they lived between Washington, New York and Lenox, MA, traveling often and maintaining rich social lives. White served as a trustee of many prestigious institutions,

including George Washington University, Carnegie Institution, National Geographic Society and the Corcoran Gallery, as well as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution and active member of the Metropolitan Club. He was also heavily involved in the plans for the Washington National Cathedral, envisioning it as the city’s own Westminster Abbey.30 Although the cathedral was completed well after his death on July 15, 1927, White’s ashes were interred in the cathedral’s Bethlehem Chapel, very near the grave of President Wilson.

It was perhaps his work to strengthen the American Foreign Service that most clearly defines White’s legacy and how he is remembered today. He gave numerous speeches on the topic and provided Congressional testimony in support of legislation that would allow for the consolidation of the Foreign Service and the establishment of additional diplomatic facilities abroad. He also fought for the removal of partisan politics in the appointing and dismissal of diplomats, advocating for a system based instead on merit and skill. Joseph Clark Grew, American career diplomat of the early 20th century, praised White’s work in the field:

“He followed every development with keenest interest and watched the steady building-up of a profession, new in American life, of which he was one of the pioneers and most enthusiastic supporters. Often his wise advice was asked and followed in some difficult problem of administration. Promotion for merit he regarded as the basic principle of the service, and while he was far from advocating automatic advancement or anything that savored of bureaucracy, it was his earnest hope to see the greater number of our ambassadorships and ministerships eventually filled from the ranks.”31

Today, White is often regarded as the first American career diplomat. He paved the way for a diplomatic profession that would carry the country through the trials of the Second World War and promote international cooperation such as that exemplified by the United Nations. His legacy inspired his son, who became the second career diplomat in the family and eventually served as Ambassador to Haiti and to Peru. Remembered for his intellect, candor, honesty and patriotism, Ambassador Henry White greatly shaped the evolution of the United States’ foreign affairs just as the country was growing into a world power. The foundation he built in the field of diplomacy continues to influence the way the U.S. engages with an increasingly globalized world.

“I think I am well within my bounds when I say that [Henry White] was the most accomplished diplomatist this country has ever produced.”

—Colonel E.M. House, American diplomat and adviser to President Woodrow Wilson

the meyers

Eugene and Agnes Meyer at their Mount Kisco estate in New York. The pair met in New York City and later moved into the Henry White house in Washington, where Eugene found success as both a government official and publisher of The Washington Post and Agnes became an influential activist and art patron.

The Meyer Family & Katharine Graham

After Henry White’s death in 1927, his residence passed to his son, John Campbell White, who began renting the house to another influential Washington family, Eugene and Agnes Meyer, best known for their work to build The Washington Post into one of the leading American media outlets.

Eugene Meyer was born in Los Angeles in 1875 to a French-Jewish immigrant family. After graduating from Yale University, he spent two years in Europe learning foreign languages and the nuances of international banking, returning to join his father’s firm in New York where he found success as an investor and speculator. After four years, he opened his own firm in 1901, which saw profits in the financial growth of the copper, oil, automobile and railroad industries. Over the course of his time in the private sector, Meyer served as director of several companies, owned a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and amassed a fortune. By the time he was 40 years old, he was worth $40 million. While living in New York, Meyer met Agnes Ernst at an art gallery and was immediately taken with her energy and ambition. Born to a German immigrant family of notable Lutheran clergymen, Agnes grew up in Village of Pelham, New York, in a strict and traditional household that she credited for her independence and love of education.32 She often clashed with her father over her aspirations and paid her own way to attend Barnard College at age 16 by winning a scholarship and working part-time as a tutor and in a settlement house to cover the tuition. After she finished school, Agnes took a job as a reporter at The New York Sun, becoming—to the dismay of her family—one of the first women to work in a city paper’s newsroom.

Agnes’s education and early work introduced her to several notable figures that helped to shape her cultural interests and drive, including John Dewey and photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. She developed an affinity for French impressionist art, as well as Chinese art, history and philosophy, and would accumulate a vast collection of fine works during her life. It was this fascination with art that led her to the gallery where she met Eugene, and he followed her to Paris in 1908 as she continued her studies as the Sorbonne, where she floated among elite social circles that included Gertrude and Leo Stein, sculptor Auguste Rodin, composers Gustav Mahler and Darius Milhaud, and Marie Curie.

Eugene and Agnes married in 1910, and one year later had their first of five children. Despite having a large family and wealthy

husband, Agnes was not especially interested in domestic life, and continued to devote much of her time to her passions for education, art collection and political activism while her children were raised in part by governesses, nannies and tutors.33 She pursued further studies at Columbia University and developed an interest in Republican politics in New York, where the Meyers stayed until the outbreak of World War I. Prompted by the war to leave the business world for a career in public service, Eugene moved the family to Washington and was soon appointed director of the War Finance Corporation in April 1918, where he served for many years beyond the war’s end. During this period, the family continued to divide its time between Washington and New York, having just built a castle-like mansion on a large estate in Mount Kisco.

Meyer continued his career in the public sphere with an appointment as chairman of the Federal Farm Loan Board in 1927 and was later promoted by President Herbert Hoover to Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 1930. In this role he wrote the bill to establish the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and served as its first chairman. His staunch Republican views, however, led him to resign from public service in 1933 due to President Franklin Roosevelt’s election and embark on his third career with the purchase of a bankrupt Washington Post The paper had seen its darkest days as result of mismanagement by its previous publisher, Edward McLean, and the effects of the Great Depression. 34 However, with vast resources at his hands, Meyer was determined to build it up into an independent, unbiased publication that could reflect the many voices of Washington without following a political party line. Despite having no prior experience in journalism, he managed within a few years to elevate the newspaper’s coverage, bring in more advertisers and triple its circulation. And while he never intended to serve in an editorial capacity, he became editor in 1940 and instituted a robust and independent editorial policy. Of his vision for the paper, he wrote:

“The capital of this great nation deserves a good paper. I believe in the American people. They can be relied upon to do the right thing when they know the facts. I am going to give them the unbiased truth. When an idea is right nothing can stop it.”35

With Meyer’s new commitment to the long-term future of The Washington Post, the family settled into the capital more permanently and in 1934 purchased for $335,000 the Henry White mansion that they had been renting.36 Finding the interior of the home too flashy

GROUNDS OF DIPLOMACY A HISTORY, A PLACE, A MISSION

meyer in his library

Eugene Meyer reading an issue of The Washington Post in the library of his Crescent Place home. Meyer spent much of later life between his home in Washington and Mount Kisco, giving back to both communities through the Meyer Foundation and other philanthropic initiatives.

with its ornate columns and busts of Roman emperors, the Meyers hired Charles A. Platt, architect of the Freer Gallery of Art and their Mount Kisco mansion, to essentially strip the walls and simplify the architectural decor.37 They then filled it with the valuable art that both Eugene and Agnes had collected over the years, which included paintings by Renoir, sculptures by Degas and a large Chinese gong in the entrance hall.38 They later converted a portion of the terrace into a tennis court and opened up their hilltop view by buying the old Henderson Castle and having it demolished.39

The Meyers became very well-known in Washington for their hospitality and connections among the political and creative influencers of the city’s social scene. They hosted countless prominent guests at Crescent Place, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Governor Adlai Stevenson, British Ambassador Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian, German author Thomas Mann, Chief Justice Earl Warren, and John and Robert Kennedy. Eugene was well-regarded as a “man of ideas, a brilliant conversationalist, and a generous benefactor,”40 while Agnes was “one of the city’s most popular hostesses,”41 having become a notable figure in the city’s social and political scene as a journalist, art patron and civil rights activist. Their frequent dinner parties often evolved into friendly debates over politics, with Eugene

and Agnes usually on opposite sides. The two were routinely at odds, whether it was over a political issue or one of their gin rummy matches that they played every so often in their library,42 but the rivalry made for lively discussions in the dining room that had no small part in influencing the views and decisions of some of Washington’s most powerful.

Living in a neighborhood full of embassies and other foreign legations, the Meyers built relationships with much of the diplomatic community in Washington, which proved valuable to their influential work in the capital. Though he didn’t contribute to stories often, some of Eugene's connections to foreign notables in Washington provided exclusive information for the paper, such as his friendship with the British Ambassador Lord Lothian, which led to a Washington Post scoop on the scandal involving King Edward VIII's relationship with American socialite Wallis Simpson.43 Their children, too, benefited from growing up among other young people from around the world. Their son Bill’s best friend at age 10 was the daughter of Japanese Ambassador Tsuneo Matsudaira, and in a 1988 address, Katharine Meyer Graham recalled her childhood in the Crescent Place home and roller skating in the French Embassy with the French Ambassador’s daughter.44 Agnes wrote in her memoir that,

“Friendships with children of all nations and conditions was in itself an education.”45

While her husband was building the Post into one of the nation’s leading news outlets, Agnes had been making a mark on the country in her own way. She traveled to England during World War II to report on the bombing and U.S. war plants and wrote many articles for the Post on the issues facing veterans, migrant workers, overcrowded schools and African Americans. She also published a book on Chinese art, Chinese Painting as Reflected in the Thought and Art of Li Lung Mien, which won a graphic design award and amplified her status in the international cultural world. She was chosen by Charles L. Freer as one of only four people who were allowed to donate artwork to his gallery and served on its committee that signed off on the acquisitions.46

Agnes Meyer’s political activism was incredibly influential in mid-1900s legislative developments related to racial discrimination and public education in the United States. President Lyndon Johnson attributed many of his education policies, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, to Agnes’s investigative journalism and lobbying efforts.47 She and her husband established the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation in 1944, and for many

years it was one of the largest charities in the capital. Today, the foundation continues to work toward solutions to inequities in Washington, particularly in the areas of racism, education, health, community service and the arts and humanities.48

All five Meyer children went on to pursue successful careers in journalism, the arts and medicine. Daughter Katharine became only the second female publisher of a major American newspaper, eventually leading her family’s paper through its groundbreaking and Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon’s resignation. She had certainly not planned a career in newspaper publishing but came to the position through a series of family situations. When Eugene Meyer was appointed by President Harry Truman to serve as first president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, now the World Bank, he named Katharine’s husband Philip Graham as publisher. This decision apparently did not surprise Katharine. As she wrote in her memoir, “Far from troubling me that my father thought of my husband and not me, it pleased me. In fact, it had never crossed my mind that he might have viewed me as someone to take on an important job at the paper.”49

Under Philip Graham’s leadership, the Post faced off against its

meyer family dinner Eugene and Agnes Meyer, at the heads of the table, enjoy dinner with their five children in the dining room of their Crescent Place home.

rival the Washington Times-Herald and sought to purchase it when its owner died in 1948. The paper went instead to Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, who tried to remake the Times-Herald in the model of the Tribune, but it failed among a Washington readership, and after suffering losses in circulation and money, the paper was sold to the Post in 1954.50 The acquisition prompted one of the Post’s strongest periods of financial growth, with increased circulation, advertising and news services augmented by the purchase of various television stations and Newsweek magazine.

In 1963, Philip died by suicide after a life of suffering from bipolar disorder. Forced to assume this leadership role, Katharine took over as president, de facto publisher and CEO of the Washington Post Company in 1972 (and later as chairwoman in 1973), making her the first female Fortune 500 CEO. Despite facing gender inequality, and in the absence of female role models in the male-dominated industry, Graham asserted herself in her new role. She bravely supported the investigative reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to expose the Watergate scandal and became a leading voice on the relationship between the government and the press. She went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for her memoir, Personal History, in 1998, and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush a year after her death in 2001.

Eugene Meyer never witnessed his daughter’s success at the Post, having died in 1959. He had spent much of his retirement at their Mount Kisco residence but engaged in philanthropy there and in Washington. In 1955, he and Agnes gave almost $500,000 of non-voting stock to 711 Washington Post employees, remarking that, “Some people remember their old associates in their wills, but Mrs. Meyer and I have both thought that a rather melancholy approach to things. So we have worked out a plan to recognize you today.”51 During his professional life, Meyer received several honorary degrees and held memberships at the National Press Club and the American Society of Newspaper Editors along with many social clubs. A private funeral service was held at the Crescent Place home, followed by a larger memorial at All Souls Unitarian Church, at which Chief Justice Warren eulogized Meyer as “a distinguished mind, an artist in many métiers, a rare friend, a giver of good counsel, a patriotic spirit, a source of humor, and a graphic model of how a citizen in our democracy ought to bear himself if he means to bear himself well.”52

Agnes Meyer carried on her activism and charitable work until her death in 1970, receiving fourteen honorary degrees over the course of her life and awards from the Women’s National Press Club, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

Excerpt from Katharine Graham’s 1988 address at White-Meyer House

“[My mother] very much wanted the houses to go on as they had when she lived in them and entertained people with ideas and the spirit to defend them— artists and writers and producers, diplomats and politicians—and many from abroad who came and stayed. It would have given her, as indeed it gives me, great pleasure to know that this has actually happened, that this house has been recreated by Meridian House International so that it looks very much as it did, and that it serves a useful purpose in terms of today’s societal needs—that it will be a center to help foreign visitors learn about this country and bring us their wisdom from abroad.”

People. Governor Adlai Stevenson praised her work, saying, “She has withstood the heat of a turbulent century and brought light to many dark corners,” and astronomer Harlow Shapley named a constellation “Agnes Spiral” after her for her “fearless, dynamic nature.”53 After her death, the Meyer Foundation donated the Mount Kisco property to Yale University, and it was used as a nonprofit conference center for many decades before it was purchased by Donald Trump.54 The foundation maintained ownership of the Crescent Place home, known today as the White-Meyer House for its two influential owners. It was leased for a period by Antioch University as its law school library until it was purchased by Meridian International Center in 1987. Today, in a role befitting its history as a place connected to world affairs, the home continues to be a gathering place for diplomatic and cultural leaders from around the world to advance collaboration on key issues, inspired by its grand halls and historic rooms.

family reunion  The Meyer family together during World War II. From left, standing: Bill Meyer, Katharine Graham, Philip Graham, Ruth Meyer and Pare Lorentz. From left, seated: Mary Bradley Meyer, Florence Homolka, Eugene Meyer, Agnes Meyer and Elizabeth Lorentz.

Above entrance hall

White-Meyer House entrance hall, photographed before 1915.

Before the Meyers renovated and redecorated the home in 1934, it still contained the Roman columns, center tapestry and presidential busts from when the Whites had lived there. The Meyers later furnished it with a large carpet, a Chinese gong and a deep mahogany colored sofa.

Bottom, left sitting room

The sitting room, the smallest main room in the house, connects the entrance hall with the library and drawing room and served as a space for guests to greet the host and hostess before moving into the other rooms. Its decoration reflects the Georgian style of the house, with a late Renaissance fireplace mantel and basketweave parquet floor. Notables who have been greeted here include Georges Clemenceau, Lord Robert Cecil, President Warren Harding, Thomas Mann and Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Bottom, right drawing room

Elegant marble mantel in the drawing room, featuring pieces of the Whites' art collection, including Jean-Marc Nattier's portrait of Madame Victoire, one of the daughters of Louis XV, that Henry White had purchased from a French family in Paris while living there in 1879.

White's daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Moffat White, donated the portrait to Meridian International Center upon her death so that it could remain in the house, where it now hangs on the second floor.

Above library

The library, pictured here before 1928, is between the sitting room, drawing room and dining room and opens onto the rear terrace overlooking the city. It features walnut paneling and terracotta plaques brought from the Whites' home in Newport, as well as a green-veined black marble fireplace. Bookcases cover the walls, and the room was often used by Eugene Meyer as a quiet place of reflection after returning home from work. Katharine Meyer and Philip Graham were engaged in this room.

Below dining room

The dining room, located on the southwest side of the house, joins the library in opening onto the terrace and allows the most amount of natural light in the house. The room was dominated by the famous John Singer Sargent portrait of Mrs. White that for many years looked over the expandable European dinner table, around which conversations that led to strengthened military cooperation in WWI and to the establishment of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare took place.

Following spread terrace

View of the south façade of the White-Meyer House. This side of the house once featured elaborate terraced gardens and at one point a tennis court, used frequently by Katharine Graham until her mother had it abruptly removed.

The French Connection

For nearly a decade, the White-Meyer House stood alone on Crescent Place, looking more like a grand country manor than an urban residence in a fast-growing neighborhood. But at the time Henry White’s house was completed in 1912, the lot next door had already been purchased by his friend and fellow diplomat Irwin Laughlin, former Ambassador to Spain and Minister to Greece. Inspired by White, Laughlin had been making plans for a retirement home that would soon be considered one of the finest examples of French architecture in the United States. The two ambassadors shared an admiration for Meridian Hill and exchanged many letters in the years leading up to the construction of Laughlin’s house. As White wrote in 1913 after a year living in his new home, “We have never ceased for one moment to rejoice that we chose this spot. The view is beautiful, the air always fresh; at night, it is absolutely quiet as though one were miles in the country…”1

Though Laughlin purchased the property from the Hendersons in 1912, the design and construction of the house did not begin until 1920, when he temporarily retired from the U.S. Foreign Service. Impressed by the elegance and grandeur of White’s mansion,2 he chose John Russell Pope to design his 30-room, fourstory home, but requested an architectural style rather divergent from the stately, Georgian-Italianate aesthetic of the house next door. An ardent Francophile, Laughlin wanted his home to resemble the châteaux of the Louis XVI period and planned to fill it with his vast collection of 18th century French art that he had acquired during his diplomatic travels.

Heeding White’s advice,3 Laughlin purchased a few more lots to extend his land so that it encompassed the entire area between Crescent Place, Belmont Street and 17th Street, creating ample space for a large

floor plans  Floor plans of the main and second levels of Meridian House. Facing elevations  Line drawings of the north and south façades of Meridian House, located at 1630 Crescent Place.

garden and greenhouse, all to be bounded by a limestone wall. On the Belmont Street side, to the south, the terraced property was elevated to accommodate a garage and idyllic pebbled courtyard. Despite their different proportions, the White and Laughlin homes are perfectly aligned at their cornices.

The building permit for the house was issued in August 1920 with an estimated cost of $350,000. The firm of William P. Lipscomb and Company was selected as the builder, with the project to be led by Edwin W. Davis, who at around the same time cofounded DAVIS Construction, one of the top construction companies in Washington today. While his house was being built, Laughlin was often called back to diplomatic service and was frequently away on travel; he thus relied heavily on the builder to execute the home’s final details. He recommended Davis to another diplomat, Leland Harrison, writing in 1931, “…I think very highly of him. He is absolutely honest and very painstaking, and I depended entirely upon him in the building of my house in Crescent Place.”4

Though it was costly, the construction of the home fully embraced its French theme, with most of the hardware handcrafted in Paris and the architectural symmetry in keeping with the Louis XVI style throughout. The house is often considered Pope’s best residential work in Washington, deeply reminiscent of the country estates of French aristocrats in the 18th-century Île-de-France region.5 Having designed something very similar for Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark that was never seen through, Pope was able to perfect the style here, and just as he had done with the house next door, he captured the persona and needs of the home’s owner through its design. Matlack Price wrote of the house in the August 1929 issue of the Architectural Forum:

“There have been plenty of French houses in this country, but not many which have been really fine. This house…is perhaps as fine a piece of work of its kind as this country can show… Even to an eye architecturally untrained there must be, in the Laughlin house, a feeling of authority, of an inescapable finesse in its very corners—so finely sharp in its every moulding, so incredibly restrained…The whole manner of this house, deriving so definitely from the eighteenth century France of Louis XVI, is grand without being grandiose; impressive without being pompous; rich without being ornate.”6

The approach to the exterior opens with a walled entrance court paved with Belgian block that is rather modest compared to

the steep circular drive of the White-Meyer House, and thus emphasizes the monumentality of the grand oak doorway. A Latin inscription carved into the limestone façade above the doorway translates to, “Where happiness dwells, evil will not enter.” An inscription above the rear doors translates to, “Purer here the air whence we overlook the city.” Both inscriptions were specifically chosen by Laughlin.

The symmetry of the house is immediately apparent in its broad cubic design, with the north and south elevations divided into three main sections with a central bow window above the front and rear doors. It continues through to the grounds’ decorative detail, with small fountains placed on either side of the entrance court, and cherubs placed on all four corners of the slate mansard roof. The entrance court walls once boasted two sphinx statues on either opening, thought to be from the Petit Trianon in Versailles,7 but they have since been removed, along with the cherubs, to avoid degradation from city air pollution.8

The interior begins with a touch of drama, a red-carpeted double staircase leading from the checkerboard marble floor of the entrance foyer, technically on level with the basement, up to the main floor and culminating with the cipher “I.L.” for the house’s owner embedded into the intricate floral ironwork of the staircase railing. Statues of the Greek god Pan and goddess Pomona flank the entryway, accentuating the artistry and symmetry that commands the interior design. The main floor opens with a gallery surrounded by mirror-paneled walls that discreetly hide coat closets and 18th-century overdoor paintings above entrances to the other rooms. Like the house next door, the spacious rooms open up into each other with a seamless flow suitable for the diplomatic entertaining of an American ambassador.

The adjacent rooms are placed strategically around the gallery to allow for optimal natural lighting, with the library, needing the least light, situated at the northeast corner and defined by its green, bookcase-lined walls. The door even contains fake books and shelves to give the impression that one is surrounded by books on all sides, emphasizing the cozy, intimate nature of the room. The library originally contained over 5,000 rare books from Laughlin’s personal collection, including 18th-century works on art, architecture and literature, and a card catalog to organize them all.9

The room moves clockwise into the drawing room, a grand hall with pale green-gray walls covered with paintings and decorated with valuable antique furniture. Its French doors lead to the sunny, marble-floored loggia that extends from the gallery toward

the outdoor pebbled courtyard, which serves as a harmonious continuation of the interior space. Decorated with sculptures and an attractive marble fountain adorned by a bronze cherub, the courtyard is characterized by its nearly 40 linden trees imported from Europe to give the courtyard an atmosphere almost identical to that of a French garden. (Laughlin had also imported box turtles from Rock Creek Park to live and multiply in the garden.)10 The linden trees provide a unique backdrop with their knobby winter branches that blossom into a natural canopy in the spring and summer, and for many years were believed to be the only lindens in Washington. Oliver Chanler, Laughlin’s grandson, recalled his first impression of the trees:

“When I used to come as a child, it always seemed to be in the spring…and the linden trees had just little, tiny leaves, at best coming out. And I thought, ‘What ugly, ugly trees these are. Why would anybody want them? Everything else here is so nice and those are so ugly with those big, like clubs on the ends of the branches.’ But when we came here in the summertime and I saw what it was like out there when the leaves came out, it was wonderful, and they had the wicker furniture set up and they had tea served out there under the trees. It was beautiful. And I thought, ‘No wonder he got those trees!’”11

The linden grove can also be accessed via the dining room, the house’s largest chamber, which was designed around a 17th-century Mortlake tapestry that depicts the legendary meeting of Alexander the Great and the Greek philosopher Diogenes. The tapestry dominates the west wall of the house, but blind windows were added to the exterior so as not to interrupt the symmetrical illusion. The room also contains portraits of Laughlin and his daughter, and for many decades a large family dining table that could be extended to seat parties of 30 or more.12

The family’s bedrooms were placed at the top of another red-carpet staircase leading to the second floor, with servants’ quarters for a 10- to 20-person staff13 on the third floor and in the basement. The elevated linden courtyard and garden area at the west side of the house cleverly serves as a roof for laundry, garage and storage rooms, as well as the chauffeur’s quarters. The family remained in the home for decades, and it passed to Laughlin’s daughter Gertrude after her parents’ death. It is not clear at what point the house came to be referred to as Meridian House, but the name, taken from its position along one of the central axes of Washington, was used by Laughlin in letters dated as early as 1933,14 and became the namesake of the organization that purchased the house in 1960 for use as a diplomatic center to welcome envoys and visitors from across the globe to the nation’s capital.

line drawing

Drawing by John Russell Pope of the front elevation of Meridian House. Designed in the Louis XVI architectural style, the symmetry of the house is reflected throughout its exterior and interior. Following spread meridian house, 1929  View of the Meridian House entrance from the northwest, photographed for the Architectural Forum in August 1929. The home, designed by John Russell Pope in the French architectural style, was built from 1920-1922 by Ambassador Irwin Boyle Laughlin.

Irwin Boyle Laughlin

In many ways, Meridian House was the culmination of a life of travel, art patronage and diplomatic service. It was a true passion project for Ambassador Laughlin, who planned each and every aspect, from the architectural inspiration and artwork placement down to the detailing of the brass hardware on the windows and the copper corners of the entrance gate.15 His daughter Gertrude later reflected on what the house meant to Laughlin in a 1973 address:

“The whole thing was a work of art created by my father and tended by my mother. My father admired the French eighteenth century enormously and the house was for him a dream come true. He planned every detail, and then kept adding extra touches as the years went by. It seemed to me a long period of time, but when I look back now I realize that my father lived only twenty years in the house, and with interruptions of several years at that, while he was serving abroad. We moved into the house in 1921, and he died in 1941, right in the house he loved so much.”16

Before building the house, Laughlin had lived a life full of art, travel, diplomacy and business. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1871 to George McCully Laughlin, a partner in the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, and Isabel McKennan Laughlin. He was grandson of James Laughlin, the corporation’s founder, and thus possessed a bountiful inheritance which would later cushion the costly construction of his masterpiece home. He attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH, followed by Yale University, and upon his graduation in 1893, he joined his family’s steel business, where he worked for the next ten years, serving as the company’s treasurer from 1900 to 1903.

An idealistic man with an affinity for travel and learning about world cultures, Laughlin sought a career that would feed these interests. He joined the Foreign Service in 1903 as private secretary to the U.S. Minister to Japan, and later served as secretary to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo until 1906. He quickly found success in the diplomatic corps and remained in the Far East for a while longer at posts in Bangkok and Beijing.17 It was in this part of the world that he formed the beginnings of what would be an expansive and multiregional art collection, purchasing the numerous Chinese porcelains, Japanese scrolls and other works that would later decorate his grand home on Meridian Hill.

In 1907, Laughlin was transferred to the second secretaryship in St. Petersburg, followed by a year as secretary of the legation to Greece and Montenegro. He was appointed second secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Paris in 1909, which at the time was under the leadership of Ambassador Henry White. The two worked together for only a few months, however, as White retired later that year to build his home in Washington and Laughlin was soon named secretary of the special envoy to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He was then secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, staying there until 1912 and acting as chargé d’affaires from June to October 1911. The two diplomats remained in touch, though, dining together in 1911 in Berlin18 and frequently exchanging letters informing the other of developments on their neighboring houses.

From 1912 to 1917, Laughlin served as secretary to the U.S. Embassy in London, a post White had held for many years before. Serving during one of the embassy’s most crucial periods, Laughlin was promoted to chargé d’affaires and counselor, and received much praise from Ambassador Walter Hines Page for his tact in several

irwin boyle laughlin

Portrait of Ambassador Irwin Boyle Laughlin (1871-1941), by Philip de László in 1912. Laughlin served as U.S. Minister to Greece and Ambassador to Spain. He built Meridian House from 1920-1922 and played an active role in Washington’s artistic and historical communities. The portrait still hangs in its original location in the Meridian House dining room.

therese iselin laughlin Portrait of Therese Iselin (1880-1958), by Philip de László in 1916. Therese was the daughter of New York banker Adrian Iselin and wife of Ambassador Irwin Laughlin. She lived in Meridian House with her husband and two children until her death. The portrait, which once hung in the Meridian House drawing room, now hangs in the family's former breakfast room on the main floor next to the kitchen.

important negotiations over the course of World War I.19 At the war’s end, he left the Foreign Service to begin work on the home he had been planning for some time. White had written him from Paris on December 22, 1918, while serving on the American Commission to Negotiate Peace:

“I hear you are going home before long for a rest which you so richly deserve; with the intention, I was given to understand, of working in the State Department, and I hope you will avail yourself of your residence in Washington to begin the beautiful house of which I saw the plans some years ago; which is to adjoin mine and which of course will be a great addition to Washington…I shall hope to be back there before very long and I am more than ever convinced since living down-town that our hilltop is the best site in the whole city, and the air for children is incomparably better and cooler in summer than it is even at the bottom of the hill.”20

Though he had intended to take an extended leave of absence from public service to focus on his home, he ended up acting as secretary to Henry Cabot Lodge during the Washington Naval Conference from 1921 to 1922, during which time he was at one point listed as “boarding” at White’s house as construction was completed on his own house next door.21 Laughlin took on a highly involved role in the house’s execution, taking ownership of the garden design and interior decoration, and sketching his vision of the house for Pope to then refine and execute. His daughter said of her father’s architectural interests, “He really could have been an architect himself. He just liked to do it…used to draw things all the time. He had ideas about exactly the kind of house he wanted, and then Mr. Pope sort of put it together.” Laughlin would later assist with the design for the National Gallery of Art after Pope’s death, helping particularly with the floor of the rotunda, which is quite similar to the marble floor of the loggia in his own home.22

The house was officially completed in 1922, and Laughlin began filling it with the fine artwork he had accumulated over the course of the previous two decades as he moved from embassy to embassy. Between hosting lunches with many of his foreign friends in Washington, he also played an active role in the city’s artistic and historical communities, serving as regent of the Smithsonian Institution and a member of the American Federation of Arts, along with many other social and cultural organizations.

He did not live in the house long, however, before he was called back to diplomatic service as Minister to Greece in 1924, where he

served two years before resigning again, only to be named Ambassador to Spain three years later. There he remained until 1933, experiencing firsthand one of the country’s most turbulent times as it was shaken by civil war.

Laughlin finally retired and returned to Meridian House to be with his wife and two children. He had married Therese Iselin,23 daughter of New York banker Adrian Iselin, in 1912 while he was posted in Berlin, and together they had a daughter Gertrude and son Alexander, who died of pneumonia in 1935. While residing in the house, the family enjoyed friendships with the French ambassador and his family up the street, along with other diplomats in the area.24

Though Laughlin died in 1941 after living there for less than two decades, his treasured home and art collection remained in the family. Therese continued to live in the home until her death in 1958.

Gertrude, who had lived in the house since she was seven, held her

wedding reception there in 1937 when she married Rear Admiral Hubert Winthrop Chanler, a noted naval officer. She then moved to Geneseo, NY, but continued to visit the home from time to time with her eight children, especially while her husband was away at sea.

After the death of Gertrude’s mother, many of the furnishings were sold to an antiques dealer in Georgetown or moved to Gertrude’s home in Geneseo, and much of her father’s art collection was donated to the National Gallery of Art and other prestigious museums. Gertrude and the family hoped that a suitable customer would purchase the home and work to preserve its unique architecture. When Dr. Arthur Hauck, Executive Director of the Washington International Center an educational and diplomatic institution under the American Council on Education expressed interest in relocating his organization from downtown to Meridian House, the family was enthusiastic about the home being used for such purposes. Gertrude expressed in an interview in 1991 that, “We liked

the idea very much, because it was about the world and things in general. Others were interested too, such as a publishing company and the Russians. But we didn’t go for that, and finally Dr. Hauck managed to put it through, and we were very happy.”

Gertrude became an active partner of Washington International Center, supporting the organization through its evolution into Meridian House International and later, Meridian International Center. She served as a Meridian trustee for many years and made a substantial donation to start Meridian’s endowment. After her death, her children remained involved in the center’s work, at one point organizing an exhibition at Meridian of Laughlin’s Japanese art collection.25 Today, they continue to support Meridian through donations, and although a century has passed since construction began on Laughlin’s dream home, the family and its history remains very much tethered to the house’s contemporary purpose and preservation.

Excerpts from Gertrude Chanler’s 1973 address at Meridian House

“Of course we had all kinds of lovely parties there. My parents gave large formal dinner parties often, my mother continuing to do so after my father died. Sometimes when the Eugene Meyers next door and we had a dinner party the same night, some of the guests would get into the wrong house and not realize for a while their mistake.”

“I think that I grew to love the house more as I became aware of its beauty and perfection... And now it is a great satisfaction to have the house kept so wonderfully alive by all the activities that go on there. And to have it enjoyed by so many people. Also, I understand that those who work in the house are happy there, just as we were in the family, and it is wonderful that the house can be so useful and helpful to people from other countries. With few exceptions, the Latin inscription over the front door seems to have been very appropriate, and may it continue to be so, as long as the house stands.”

laughlin family

Irwin Laughlin traveling with his wife Therese and two children, Gertrude and Alexander.

Quo habitat felicitas, nil intret mali.

Where happiness dwells, evil will not enter.

gertrude laughlin chanler  Portrait of Gertrude Laughlin by Philip de László in 1919. The portrait still hangs in its original location in the dining room.

gallery

The gallery at the top of the entrance stairs contained little furniture: four antique benches, blue and white porcelain Chinese vases, a clock and barometer on opposite facing mirror-paneled walls, French torchères in the corners and a fine crystal chandelier, all of which remain in the room today. The only furnishings removed from the gallery were the two large sphinxes on either side of the doorway to the loggia, which mirrored those atop the entrance gate. On either side of the foyer doorway (not pictured) are mirrorpaneled walls that hide two coat closets.

dining room

To the right of the gallery is the dining room, a large room that occupies most of the west wing of the house. It was designed around the beautiful Flemish tapestry, which remains in the house today. Dated 1590, the tapestry depicts the legendary meeting between Alexander the Great and the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. An almost identical tapestry hangs in Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland. Chinese bridal lamps are placed on the wall to either side of the tapestry. To maintain the symmetrical appearance of the exterior, blind windows were placed on the outside of the tapestry wall. The dining room table could be extended to seat 30 or more.

library

The library was designed and decorated to serve as an intimate living room, with the elegant and abundant decor standing out more than the architecture. The room originally contained about 5,000 rare books, all of them bound in leather and organized according to a card catalog that Laughlin had devised. The books’ subjects ranged from collecting, art, architecture and furniture, as well as literature, including a rare first edition collection of Alice in Wonderland in six languages. The symmetry of the home again was paramount in this room, so fake book backs were placed on the door of the library to give the sense of being completely surrounded by book cases on all four walls. The library also featured a dictionary stand, considered the house s best antique, and a terracotta medallion of Louis XV (not pictured) was placed above the door to the adjacent drawing room.

drawing room

The Laughlins filled the drawing room with Louis XVI antiques and displays of collections. French and Italian paintings and drawings covered the walls, and a portrait of Mrs. Laughlin, now in the former breakfast room, hung over the mantel. The desk in this room was a 17th-century copy of a 16th-century desk owned by General Charles de Gaulle and can now be found on the second floor in the office of Meridian's President and CEO. The room also featured an antique piano that was later donated to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, of the Meridian House International's original affiliates.

loggia

The loggia, which links the major reception rooms and leads into the rear garden through tall glass doors, once again demonstrates the symmetry and the ornate work of the Louis XVI period. The Laughlins had the furniture in this room arranged in two distinct groupings, one facing the gallery and one facing out toward the beautiful patio and linden trees. The room includes four marble busts sculpted in France that represent the four seasons. Additionally, the room was always filled with large plants placed in Chinese planters and cachepots.

second floor

The second floor contained the family bedrooms, nurseries, two guest rooms, the valet s room and the sewing room. Servants quarters were divided between the third floor and basement, and Ambassador Laughlin s study was sectioned off in the basement as well. Today, these once heavily decorated and furnished rooms have been converted into offices and meeting rooms for Meridian staff. Facing garden View of the linden courtyard looking east toward the neighboring White-Meyer House. The linden trees were imported from Europe and are very expensive to keep up as they require special pruning each year, which costs about $9,000 annually plus an additional $2,100 every other year for various needs such as cabling and grafting new trees. They are planted in clay and require very little water, and in the spring and summer months provide a natural canopy over the entire courtyard.

DIPLOMACY A HISTORY, A PLACE, A MISSION

foyer, 1929

This foyer is very much as it was originally. Other than two large tapestries beside each staircase (not pictured) that have since been removed, much of the decor remains, including the wrought-iron and marble-topped tables, lighting fixtures and two statues near the top of the stairs that depict Pan, the Roman god of the wild, and Pomona, Roman goddess of fruitful abundance.

78 ' GROUNDS OF DIPLOMACY A HISTORY, A PLACE, A MISSION

foyer, 2018

A contemporary view of the Meridian House foyer, decorated with national flags for the 50th Anniversary of the Meridian Ball, which took place October 12, 2018. With the original furnishings, decor, and checkered-tile floor from when the house was first built, the foyer now welcomes leaders from around the world who come to participate in Meridian International Center programming. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

THE RISE OF MERIDIAN HILL ' 79

THE HOUSES TODAY

Meridian House

Preceding spread meridian house  South elevation detail, featuring balcony ironwork with the I.L. initials and the courtyard linden trees in full bloom. Three sets of arched French doors are separated by large, detailed columns along the rounded courtyard entrance. A Latin inscription mirrors that above the main entrance, reading, “Purior hich aer: late hinc conspectus in urbem,” which translates to “Purer here the air whence we overlook the city.” The quotation is also inscribed on a house at the top of Rome’s Spanish Steps. Photo by Catherine Ann Photography.

entrance court

The street entrance doors are decorated with two spherical door knobs accentuated by a detailed sunflower design and leaf base. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Facing

Front entrance of Meridian House. The entrance is partly masked by a high limestone wall along Crescent Place, which once was sealed by large wooden gates that have been removed. The 12’ 4” oak double doors are framed by an elaborate limestone archway topped with an oculus and keystone resembling a helmeted head that protrudes over the Latin inscription chosen by Ambassador Laughlin for the entrance. It reads “Quo habitat felicitas nil intret mali,” which translates, “Where happiness dwells, evil will not enter.” The entrance court is shaded by a line of linden trees just inside the wall. Photo by Michael and Carina Photography.

foyer

Two sculptures original to the house remain in the entrance foyer overlooking either side of the double red-carpeted staircase. The statue on the right is of Pan, Greek god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, and on the right is Pomona, Roman goddess of fruitful abundance.

Facing

Detailed floral ironwork, brass handrails and classic red carpeting distinguish the foyer’s grand double staircase, which leads from the ground level entrance doors to the main level of the house. The gold I.L. cipher at the landing appears throughout the house, including on the iron firebacks found in many of the fireplaces as well as on the rear balcony and window railings.

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Photo by Michael and Carina Photography.

gallery

The gallery is the first room entered from the main staircase and features many of the home’s original furnishings, including the antique clock and barometer on either side of the room, the French torchères in the corners, as well as the blue Chinese templar jars found on antique wrought-iron and marble-topped side tables. The only notable furniture that has been removed are the two sphinxes that once flanked the doorway into the loggia, which were donated to Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown. The room’s openness, made to feel even larger by the mirror-paneled walls, makes it an ideal reception area for guests with easy movement to the other rooms. Photos by Stephen Bobb.

Following spread

Above each of the four gallery doorways leading to adjacent rooms are vibrant, oval-shaped European paintings framed in decorative mouldings. All are original to the house and were part of Ambassador Laughlin’s collection.

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

gallery detail

The gallery is also marked by intricate details on the Corinthian columns, pilasters, trims and arches that embellish the room’s many doorways. The distinct wall color has been carefully maintained over the years, with support from the Laughlin family, as well as researchers who used a system of microphotography and chemical analysis to identify the exact shade during the 1995 renovations that required a substantial recoating. Photos by Stephen Bobb.

dining room

The formal dining room, furnished for a dinner with the Ambassador of Spain on February 28, 2018. The room occupies the southwest corner of the house, ideal for evening sunlight, and can be accessed from the gallery, loggia, rear courtyard and kitchen. Much of the room’s architectural ornament is understated so as not to distract from the room’s main element, the grand 16th century tapestry, which measures 11 feet high by 22 feet wide. The tapestry was donated to Meridian House International when it purchased the home in 1960 and has been the backdrop of many highlevel meetings and discussions, during both the Laughlins’ time in the house and after. Ambassador Laughlin's portrait by Philip de László hangs in its original location. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Following spread

Full view of the dining room tapestry, which depicts the legendary meeting of Alexander the Great and the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope.

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

library

Preceding spread

Front-facing wall of the library, which occupies the northeast corner of the main floor, where it receives soft morning light and contains four walls of distinct pale green bookshelves with gold trims that make it one of the most intimate rooms in the house. The walls curve at the corners to avoid harsh lines while also providing hidden cabinetry. For the sake of symmetry, false book backs were added to the doorway into the gallery, so that seamless rows of books remain uninterrupted around the entire room. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Above

Today, the library is filled with a refined collection of Americana, featuring about 900 books on the United States. It originally housed Ambassador Laughlin’s collection of about 5,000 rare books, mostly on art, furniture and architecture, that were organized with a card catalog he had created himself. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Facing

View from library looking toward drawing room, decorated for a wedding reception on June 16, 2018. The overdoor arch design is adorned with a terracotta medallion of Louis XV. Curtains have been drawn over the bookcases to conceal empty shelves. Photo by Michael and Carina Photography.

drawing room

View into the drawing room from the library, decorated for a wedding reception on June 16, 2018. Photo by Michael and Carina Photography.

Facing

Like the gallery and dining room, the drawing room features valuable 18th-century European paintings framed in decorative mouldings and installed by Ambassador Laughlin above each of the French doorways. The room, once decorated with a vast collection of antique furniture and art is now a main gathering place for high-level lectures, receptions and meetings. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

loggia

Above Angled view of the twelve-light, brass and crystal chandelier and detailed archway above one of the loggia doorways, which link the major reception rooms and rear courtyard, serving as a harmonious transition between the indoor and outdoor spaces. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Below Close up of the loggia chandelier, which is adorned with small brass statuettes. Photo by Jessica Latos.

Facing

View from the loggia into the drawing room. The doorways are flanked by candelabras original to the house. The room is distinguished by its curvilinear terrazzo floor pattern and accentuated by three arched French doorways that round out the room and seamlessly open up to the outdoor courtyard and gardens. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

loggia

Left

The loggia includes four original marble busts sculpted in France, which represent the four seasons. Photos by Stephen

Full view of the loggia looking through rear doors toward the linden courtyard behind the house. At the south end of the house, the loggia receives the most light, especially during the winter when the sun is at its lowest and its rays can reach more deeply into the house. In summer, the linden trees form a canopy that helps shield some of this direct light. Photo by Jessica

Bobb. Facing

Latos.

president’s office

Originally a guest room, the front room on the second floor now serves as the office of the President and CEO of Meridian International Center. Many of the furnishings, including the desk (not pictured) and the andirons, are original to the house. The striped sofa is an antique piece of furniture from the collection of Ambassador Henry White, generously gifted to Meridian by his great grandson Mr. William T. Bennett. The other rooms on this floor, once family bedrooms, as well as the third floor and basement that served as servants’ quarters, have also been converted into office space for Meridian International Center staff.

Photo (left) by Jessica Latos and photo (above) by Stephen Bobb.

White-Meyer House

entrance

The White-Meyer House is enclosed by a tall brick wall accented with limestone at its wrought-iron gate entrance. The 11-foot high gate features elegant curvature and handles. Photo by Stephen

Facing

Northwest view of the White-Meyer House entrance. A rounded concrete drive with limestone curbing travels from the entrance gate around a manicured terraced lawn with retaining wall to the carriage porch, which is shaded by a high balcony supported by four pairs of impressively tall columns. Photo by James Garrison.

Following spread

The front lawn is retained in part by an 11-foot brick wall with balustrade that faces the entrance and features a limestone fountain with a lion mask and a trough embellished with two fish sculptures.

Bobb.

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

ironwork

Intricate ironwork appears throughout the exterior of the home, particularly on the entrance gate, the windows and the front doors, which, when closed, are shielded by a castiron grill featuring a coat of arms with the Latin inscription, “Vix ea nostra voco,” which translates to, “I scarce call these things our own,” a motto that relates to the principle of stewardship. Photos by Stephen Bobb.

exterior

A HISTORY, A PLACE, A MISSION

The exterior is decorated with limestone entablatures and circular portrait plaques, with two on either side of the front balcony and two separating the three French doors of the rear terrace.

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Facing

The house is noted for its many tall windows, each with a limestone overtablet and scrolls to support a shallow overhang, as well as a wrought-iron balcony railing with a decorative plate at the center.

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

trim detail

The dining room is marked by a decorous frieze and pilasters that line the ceiling, walls and the pink and grey-veined marble mantel at the end of the room. In the 1987 renovation of the home, special care was taken to restore and recreate the fine detail. Photos by Stephen Bobb.

Facing

dining room chandelier

One of the most stunning features of the dining room is the dazzling thirty-light, brass-finished globe chandelier, which hangs from the original plaster sunburst at the center of the ceiling. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Following spread library and dining room

View of the dining room from the library. The rooms are starkly different in brightness and atmosphere but open up nicely into each other through French doors and sliding windows. The wood paneled walls of the library with bookcases all around evoke a sense of coziness and privacy while the large dining room receives the most natural light in the house. Together the rooms occupy the south side of the house, both opening onto the terrace through French doors. Photo by Arnold Kramer.

brass hardware

Left

The White-Meyer House incorporates several handcrafted brass details. Each of the mahogany French doors feature elegant brass handles and keyholes.

Center

Many of the lighting fixtures in the house today are original and were preserved in the 1987 renovation. Small fixtures such as this brass candelabra embellished with an eagle head can be found throughout the home. Photo by

Right

The main staircase was designed in the early 19th century English style, with cast-iron balusters that feature palmette and urn motifs, along with an elegantly curved wooden handrail that culminates at the bottom with a brass urn sculpture.

THE HOUSES

' 121

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Stephen Bobb.

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

terrace

The White-Meyer House terrace once boasted unmatched views of Washington before additional residential buildings were constructed to the south in the 1980s. The sunny patio area is made grand by the massive columns supporting a large rear balcony. Today, a pebbled path connects the loggia to the linden courtyard of Meridian House via a brick and iron gateway constructed between the two properties in the 1980s.

Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Grounds and Gardens

courtyard fountain

Angled view of the linden courtyard's marble fountain, which anchors the garden and adds to the thoughtful symmetry of the house. It was originally adorned with a bronze cherub that Gertrude Laughlin donated to the Pebble Garden at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown, but it has since been replaced with a similar statue, pictured here. The Meridian House garden was heavily influenced by Ambassador Laughlin's own planning and design, and serves as a serene extension of the indoor spaces. Today it is often used for outdoor receptions, recreational events and weddings.

Facing

linden grove

Full view of the fountain in autumn, looking south through the linden trees. Imported from Europe at the time of the house s construction, these trees have been meticulously maintained with yearly pruning over the last century, that today costs about $9,000 annually. New linden saplings have been occasionally planted to ensure the longevity of the grove, and there are plans to add five more in the spring of 2020. Photo by Jessica

Photo by Jessica Latos.

Latos.

Facing entrance fountain Decorative fountain at the entrance of Meridian House. An identical fountain can be found at the other end of the driveway, reflecting the symmetry that is central to the architecture of both the home and its gardens. Photo by Michael and Carina Photography.

statues

Above, left The courtyard fountain features a small statue at its center, depicting two children with a water jug serving as the spout. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Above, right Statue at the rear of White-Meyer House, just beyond the iron gate that connects the two properties. An identical statue was placed directly across from it in the Meridian House garden after the houses were joined into a single property in 1987 to represent the symmetry and unification of the homes. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Below, left Small statue of a child with a blanket found atop a pedestal in the linden courtyard. John Russell Pope was very deliberate in placing these sculptures and fountains throughout the gardens to ensure that the first focus would be on the nearby surroundings before wandering to the once grand view of downtown Washington. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Below, right Fountain head framed by a rosebush on the interior of the stone wall that encloses the Meridian House property.

garden

In the springtime, numerous species of colorful flowers, plants and trees begin to bloom, making Meridian House a popular venue for outdoor weddings, as well as indoor.

Facing

View of the Meridian House garden, adjacent to the linden courtyard. The manicured lawn features a stone path that leads around the side of the house through the garden to various hidden nooks decorated with small statues and vibrant landscaping. Photo by Michael and Carina Photography.

Following spreads winter at meridian

View of the west façade of Meridian House, with a snow-covered lawn.

winter lindens

View of the south façade of Meridian House from behind the courtyard fountain as a reception takes place inside in January 2019. In winter, the linden trees cast an eerie shadow over the courtyard with their knobby branches that have been pruned to ensure a full, uniform bloom come springtime.

by Jessica Latos.

GROUNDS

DIPLOMACY A HISTORY, A PLACE, A MISSION

Photo by Jessica Latos.

Photo

WHERE WASHINGTON MEETS THE WORLD

Washington International Center

At the end of World War II, the United States was truly a global power and found itself in a position to help facilitate international understanding and peace.

Responding to this impulse, the U.S. Department of State greatly expanded its international exchange programming, with a focus on inviting citizens from Germany and Japan to visit the U.S. and learn about American culture and democracy. As the number of international visitors to the country grew, the American Council on Education—a nonprofit higher education association behind the creation of such initiatives as the Fulbright scholarship program and UNESCO—recommended in 1949 that these visitors should receive a brief cultural orientation to American customs and institutions at the beginning of their travels in the country. They argued that “a foreign visitor’s understanding of the setting to which he comes is powerfully aided if a guided and welcoming hand is extended to him on his arrival.”1 The State Department accepted this proposal, and thus the Washington International Center was born.

From the beginning, the Washington International Center’s core function was educational. Believing that understanding other cultures and adjusting to new environments are educational processes,2 the Center developed privately administered orientation programs and similar services for international visitors invited by the U.S. government. Most were grantees under the International Cooperation Administration’s Technical Cooperation program and selected visitors under the International Educational Exchange Service program. All participants were adults, as no youth programs had been designed yet. They pursued short-term, focused programs of study, training and observation that would grow their professional skillsets in order to contribute to their country’s development. At the beginning of these programs, the Washington International Center, then based at 1720 Rhode Island Avenue Northwest, would extend a warm welcome to the visitors with a series of educational and cultural opportunities that allowed them to engage directly with American life and society.

The Center’s early services to visitors included regular weekly programming, such as an overview called “Introduction to the United States,” a five-day program of high-level lectures, discussions, films and tours that covered topics such as government and politics, the economy, health and welfare issues and civil liberties and race relations. Experts from the government, universities and the private sector led the discussions, and to complement these informative seminars, the Center maintained a library collection of notable books and articles on the American cultural and political landscape.3

In addition to these formal programs, the Washington International Center also became known for its citizen-to-citizen approach to cross-cultural learning. Every Tuesday featured an “Open House” program,

Preceding spread welcome to washington Meridian President and CEO Ambassador Stuart Holliday gives remarks at the September 2017 Welcome to Washington reception, a Meridian event that occurs two to three times a year to honor newly appointed ambassadors to the United States. Photo by Stephen Bobb. Facing introduction to the united states A group of African visitors mingle with American tourists on the steps of the National Archives building. These visitors were enrolled at Washington International Center for an orientation course as preparation for attending colleges and universities in various parts of the United States.

“Those who participate in ‘citizen diplomacy’ will gain the real satisfaction of helping to mold a little of the cement which may eventually make the foundations of the world order firm and enduring.”

—Robert B. Knapp, Assistant Director for Educational Programs, Washington International Center

sponsored by a different community organization each week, to offer a casual setting in which local residents would help welcome visitors and provide an opportunity for mutual exchange. Supported in its early days by more than 200 volunteers, nearly 900 host families and 300 local organizations,4 the Center was able to organize a broad array of logistical and hospitality services, including home stays, airport reception and information, appointments with government officials and frequent tours to art galleries, monuments and other Washington landmarks. The Center also became a hub for evening activities such as dance classes, concerts and film screenings, and frequently organized opportunities for visitors to attend community meetings and cultural events.

This combination of educational programming with socialization and cultural learning opportunities made the Washington Interna-

Embassy of Washington

As the U.S. government expanded its international exchange programming in the 1950s, the Washington International Center found itself overcrowded and overwhelmed. It was not long before the Center was forced to deny requests from government agencies for new international programming due to limited space.1 It was not uncommon for the Center’s activities to be occurring simultaneously in multiple buildings, and as the number of visitors grew, other groups and organizations were established to share in the responsibility of welcoming them, in similarly inadequate and disjointed spaces. By 1959, it was apparent that only by acquiring larger facilities could the Center effectively serve Washington’s international community and unite these various programming offices to create “a much-needed central information and referral office for foreign visitors in the Nation’s Capital.”2

Purchase of Meridian House

met, from cultural orientation and educational seminars to logistics such as housing and information. He wrote:

“In order more fully to realize its declared objective, the Center should undertake a substantially larger program of international and cultural events for foreign visitors, embassy personnel, and Americans interested in international affairs. A present void in the Nation’s Capital should be filled by providing an international cultural community center, offering facilities for conferences, concerts, art exhibits, and social events, which would facilitate the mingling of international guests and afford visitors the opportunity to meet local residents.”

tional Center stand out as a pioneering organization of people-to-people exchange and cross-cultural collaboration.

Described as a “window on America and a doorway to the community,”5 the Center paved the way for other organizations looking to provide similar services in different parts of the country. As a result of its success, visitors were increasingly referred to the Center by other government agencies and private organizations, and the Center soon found itself at capacity in its small offices downtown. In 1958 alone, it welcomed nearly 4,500 government-sponsored visitors and saw an attendance record of almost 23,000 people.6 It was at this point that the Center’s staff and leadership began to look for a more appropriate space, conducive to the growth they anticipated as Washington continued its evolution into a center of international affairs. The more spacious neighborhoods north of downtown seemed promising.

Just as the Washington International Center was faced with the challenges of its limited space, what seemed to be the perfect solution suddenly became available. Located a mile north of the White House, along one of Washington’s embassy rows, the luxurious French-style mansion of a former American ambassador seemed a harmonious choice for a center that would eventually welcome thousands of international visitors through its doors each year. There was much competition for Meridian House when it was put on the market, but the family of the late Ambassador Irwin Laughlin, having a long history in the international affairs of Washington, hoped that the Center would somehow acquire the funds to purchase their home.3

On October 24, 1959, Dr. Arthur S. Adams, president of the American Council on Education, submitted to the Ford Foundation a “Proposal for Strengthening the Washington International Center” that outlined the justification and plans for purchasing Meridian House and converting it into a functional office and programming space for a consolidated organization to serve the United States’ foreign visitors upon their arrival in Washington. Arguing that the value of these services was diminished by disjointed programs resulting from the lack of a large shared space, Dr. Adams laid out the vision for a single place at which incoming visitors—not only those sponsored by the government but also by international organizations, foundations and private institutions—could have all of their needs

With no shortage of staff and volunteers to support such an undertaking, the American Council on Education recommended that this more all-encompassing organization incorporate as a nonprofit, but only after it had secured the appropriate space for the expanded activities. The downtown offices were not only too small, but they also could not provide an atmosphere that evoked a sense of hospitality and warmth. A space like Meridian House would be much better suited in this regard, and as plans were made to purchase it, the Center’s staff and supporters agreed “that a commodious house with a warm and intimate home-like atmosphere and a garden, would be the most appropriate and useful facility.”4

The challenge, of course, was how to transition the home from a glamorous living space filled with antique furniture and fine artwork to a functional venue for entertaining and educating guests while supporting the day-to-day office work of the Center’s staff. The proposal laid out a detailed plan for the changes the Center would make to the house, which included installing new restrooms and drinking fountains and adding a fire escape and fire alarm system. The Center would purchase the house’s furnishings that were consistent with its architectural theme, such as the French torchères and tables, and move most office furnishings and equipment from the old space downtown. This renovation of Meridian House, as proposed to the Ford Foundation, was designed by architect Winthrop Faulkner.

Total expenses for the purchase of the house and its remodeling were estimated at a grand total of $480,195, with funds from the Center’s contract with the State Department to cover operational needs of the house beyond its renovation.5 The Ford Foundation soon accepted

meridian house international

A group of visitors ascend Meridian House’s front steps and enter through the house’s grand double-door entryway. The sign lists the original affiliates of the Meridian House Foundation, aside from the Governmental Affairs Institute, which was housed offsite.

this proposal, offering a grant of $500,000 to the American Council on Education for the purchase and renovation of the house, and just one year later, in February 1960, the Meridian House Foundation was incorporated.

Meridian House International

The Meridian House Foundation, incorporated as a nonprofit cultural, educational and scientific institution in the District of Columbia, embodied Dr. Adams’s vision for a centralized organization to facilitate the cooperation of the Washington International Center and similar groups. United in a shared building, the groups were overseen by a Board of Trustees made up of noted public figures, with Dr. Adams and former NASA Administrator James E. Webb serving as its first chairs. The Foundation’s Trustees believed that, “through a cooperative and coordinated approach to common problems, the many groups serving international visitors in the National Capital area can more effectively achieve the objectives for which each was established.”6 This vision was executed by Dr. Arthur A. Hauck, former president of the University of Maine and member of the American Council on Education, who worked closely with Gertrude Laughlin to acquire Meridian House and oversaw the Washington International Center as it was joined in 1961 with the Foreign Student Service Council, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Institute of International Education, the National Council for Community Services to International Visitors (COSERV) and the Governmental Affairs Institute, all administered by what came to be known as Meridian House International.

This newfound coordination of services saw an effective blend of private and government funding to support more enriching programs for the thousands of international visitors who began coming through the doors of Meridian House. As a newly formed center founded in a transformative period of the United States’ global engagement, Meridian remained flexible in its early years and welcomed other groups with similar missions to share in the use of its facilities.7 Open seven days a week, the center quickly evolved, with its Board of Trustees growing from seven members at the start to 21 by 1963 and its services expanding as new organizations joined the center.

In 1962, the Meridian House Foundation provided funds for the establishment of a downtown office of the Greater Washington Council of Organizations Serving International Visitors, a council composed of more than 55 independent nonprofit organizations whose missions revolved around the comprehensive and effective orientation of Washington’s foreign visitors. For many years, the Council operated the International Visitors and Information Service (IVIS), which, as an affiliate of Meridian, hosted a reception and information center near the White House for officially sponsored visitors, providing home hospitality, bilingual tour guides, translation services and assistance to delegates at international conferences. With multilingual staff and materials, it also maintained information desk centers at Dulles International Airport and the city’s visitor center, serving both international and American tourists.8

Another organization that formed out of the Greater Washington Council and took up residence at Meridian in 1965 was The Hospitality and Information Service, or THIS for Diplomats. Organized in 1961 at the request of the Office of the U.S. Chief of Protocol and sponsored by the spouses of the President’s Cabinet and of the Mayor of D.C., THIS maintained an office at Meridian until 2018, providing welcome and orientation services to foreign diplomats and their families in Washington. The volunteer group was notified by the U.S. Department of State of newly arrived diplomats, for whom they would host an “Introduction to Washington” program at Meridian every two months and offer tours, seminars and home hospitality. For diplomatic spouses, THIS organized programs on cooking, fashion and English language, as well as the Annual White House Christmas Party for children of diplomats, an event started by First Lady Jackie Kennedy. With funding

from the Meridian House Foundation, program fees and donations, as well as the support of 350 volunteers, THIS engaged well over 100 embassies in the 1970s, fulfilling its mission “to encourage a better understanding, greater rapport, and a closer relationship between the resident members of the Diplomatic Corps and the Washington community.”9

International Visitor Leadership Program

The scope of Meridian’s work grew dramatically in 1974 when the U.S. Department of State approved a proposal for Meridian House International to take over implementation of what was then known as the International Visitor Program (now the International Visitor Leadership Program; IVLP), the government’s premier professional exchange program, which offers current and emerging global leaders in a variety of fields the opportunity to experience the U.S. firsthand and to cultivate lasting relationships with their American counterparts. Launched in 1940, the IVLP works to strengthen U.S. engagement with other countries through short-term exchanges during which visitors meet American professionals in their field, visit U.S. public- and private-sector organizations related to their program theme and engage with American citizens in cultural and social activities. The IVLP, described by U.S. ambassadors as “one of

visitors at meridian house Meridian House International visitors take some time for reading and writing in the library.

Facing Visitors mingle on the entry staircase in the Meridian House foyer.

Following spread Visitors check in at reception in the Meridian House gallery and enjoy a coffee hour in the loggia.

the most effective foreign policy tools of American diplomacy,”10 brings more than 5,000 international visitors to the U.S. each year, all of whom are selected and sponsored by U.S. embassies across the globe.

As the IVLP grew beyond the government’s operational capacity, its implementation was outsourced to several nongovernmental organizations, including the Governmental Affairs Institute, one of Meridian House International’s founding members that operated in offices downtown. Its oversight of the program was later passed to the Visitor Program Service (VPS), which joined the Meridian coalition in 1975. VPS was already 25 years old at this point, having been founded in 1950 as the first nonprofit organization to offer contracted IVLP programming services after World War II.11 VPS staff members would receive information about visitors’ personal and professional interests from the U.S. embassies overseas that sponsored them, and then would tailor immersive nationwide programs to provide global context to the visitors’ fields of study and educate them about the strengths and weaknesses of American democracy. Similar to the approach of the Washington International Center, programs consisted of formal meetings and lectures coupled with more informal exposure to U.S. cultural, ethnic and geographic diversity through the hospitality of thousands of volunteers across the country. The

ethos behind each program lay in promoting the awareness and international understanding that is vital to effective leadership and inspiring “both today’s and tomorrow’s leaders.”12

Receiving about 40 percent of the U.S. State Department’s grant program for foreign visitors, VPS designed programs for visitors of all ages, ranging from young political and cultural leaders to midlevel professionals in government, business and academia to some of the highest ranking and influential leaders in their country. In 1967, Meridian organized future British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s trip to Washington and other cities across the U.S. over a 45-day visit during which she met with American politicians, attended sessions at various companies and participated in a weekend stay on an American farm.13 Other future heads of state who passed through Meridian’s doors in its early years of administering the IVLP include Anwar Sadat, Helmut Schmidt, José Sarney de Araújo Costa and Indira Gandhi.

The National Council for International Visitors (NCIV) also partnered with the State Department to serve IVLP participants and was a Meridian affiliate from its early days when it was called COSERV, a much smaller organization. Developed as a national network of organizations working to create opportunities for IVLP participants to meet and exchange ideas with American citizens in nearly 100 cities, NCIV provided professional and hospitality services and maintained organizational standards across its network to present a fair and balanced view of American life and institutions.14 It also hosted regional and national conferences to promote networking and problem solving among its member organizations and address major trends in the international exchange field. NCIV remained with Meridian for several decades before it moved into its own facilities. It is now known as Global Ties U.S., and helps coordinate the work of more than 80 community-based organizations around the country with which Meridian regularly collaborates on IVLP programs today.

guest book

First page of the Meridian House Foundation guest sign-in book, with the foundation’s affiliates listed. The guest book features signatures from such notable figures as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, His Majesty King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

a visit from the first lady

First Lady Rosalynn Carter meets with international visitors in the Meridian House library.

The Jova Decade

One of Meridian’s most defining decades took place under the leadership of Ambassador Joseph John Jova, who during his 34-year career in the diplomatic service was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Honduras (1965-1969), U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States (1969-1974) and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico (19731977). As President of Meridian House International for 12 years, Ambassador Jova built upon the momentum generated over the previous two decades by Meridian’s dedicated staff, volunteers and leadership to steer the organization toward a more unified, mission-driven future as a premier diplomacy center in Washington.

When Jova was named president after his retirement from the Foreign Service in 1977, Meridian was overseeing five growing affiliate organizations and found itself poised to further expand its services and its role as a “center for international activity.”15 And so, Meridian began creating its own, original programs emphasizing the importance of two-way international exchange and cultural diplomacy. This new vision saw Meridian House as “a doorway to the United States for thousands of international visitors, and a window to the world for Americans.”16

One of the new initiatives of the Jova decade was the World Affairs Studies Program, implemented in 1977 to convene international visitors and foreign diplomats in discussion with American pol-

jova and bush Meridian President Joseph John Jova and then U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush greet each other at a conference on refugees at Meridian House on March 24, 1983.

icymakers, educators, business professionals and civic leaders on pertinent topics of global importance. The program’s inaugural speaker was Dr. Henry Kissinger in July 1977, and it continued to bring in such honored guests as George H.W. Bush in 1978, Argentinian President General Alejandro Lanusse in 1979, and British Ambassador Sir Antony Acland in 1989. More than 100 ambassadors spoke at Meridian over the course of 12 years as part of the program, examining topics ranging from the evolution of diplomacy to immigration reform to foreign trade. The nonpartisan discussions were generally off-therecord, which encouraged greater collaboration and “frank and honest exchange between the participants and speakers on topics which might not be addressed in the same manner through public channels.”17

In addition to these open dialogues, Meridian had since its founding underscored the value of culture as a shared language to strengthen international understanding. One of its original affiliates, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, had briefly carried on this aspect of the center’s work but, after its demise, Meridian’s cultural programming was reduced to providing tours of Washington’s museums and galleries and broad overviews on American culture for visitors. Seeking to diversify and add depth to its work in this sphere, Meridian embraced the idea of two-way cultural exchange, so that not only would the center introduce American culture to international visitors, but it would also provide a space where Americans could learn about cultures from around the world.

To do this, Meridian established a public exhibition series, beginning with the display of a 100-foot tapestry of the conquest of Mexico by Leslie Tillett in 1978, which was part of a nationwide Mexico Today Symposium that featured seminars, performances and exhibitions in six American cities, offering Americans and foreign visitors alike the chance to engage with Mexican history and culture. More symposia followed to spotlight Japan, Belgium, Scandinavia and Egypt, which brought in such honored guests as Egyptian First Lady Jehan Sadat.18 Meridian participated in all of them, making a name for itself in the national arts and culture circuit. In 1982, Meridian was national coordinator of the year-long celebration of the centennial of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Korea, and hosted an exhibition celebrating the bicentennial of diplomatic and commercial relations between the U.S. and the Netherlands. This exhibition also included an inaugural ceremony for the Queen Beatrix postage stamp at the request of the Dutch Ambassador, who had chosen Meridian House as the venue for its elegance and reputation as “neutral ground.”19 Meridian’s achievements in the cultural world earned it funding from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts which ensured its continued success.

Prominent artists featured across Meridian’s early exhibitions included Picasso, Tamayo, Henri Lartigue and Henry Moore, along with several artists famous in their own countries and emerging artists as well. Notable speakers and guests participated in Meridian’s cultural programs as well, such as the Fifty Years of Babar event, a birthday celebration for the French storybook character. The exhibition won national awards for creative project design and more than 10,000 young people came to see 200 original watercolors and to hear Babar stories read by Barbara Bush, Colleen Nunn and other civic leaders.20 But perhaps one of Meridian’s most memorable exhibitions was one with a personal touch. To commemorate Meridian’s 25th anniversary, an exhibition of 18th- and 19th-century Japanese prints and artifacts from the collection of Irwin Laughlin was organized with support from Gertrude Chanler and her son Oliver.21 The

exhibit not only highlighted Japanese cultural diplomacy but also celebrated the elegant home that makes Meridian’s cultural work possible.

Meridian grew in other ways, too, during the Jova decade. Its school outreach programs reached thousands of inner-city and suburban school children with seminars, exhibitions and cultural presentations. Meridian also received a grant to administer the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program, a high-profile initiative that selects Americans to teach English in Japan and conducts cross-cultural training.22 Additionally, Meridian began implementing programs to help refugees and new immigrants understand American traditions and customs, along with several new programs for the center’s growing constituencies, which now included corporate representatives, government agencies and the public.

These new and successful initiatives spurred internal development as well: more donor relations and corporate campaigns were established, and the budget saw an increase from $5 million to $14.2 million by the end of the 1980s.23 The full-time staff went from 75 to 115 under Jova’s leadership, an unprecedented leap in an organization that was originally driven primarily by volunteers.

All of this growth had a discernible impact on Meridian House, and while its exquisite French architecture and antique artwork certainly elevated Meridian’s sophistication and appeal as a diplomatic center, it did present limitations. The home, built as a single-family household, was not intended for the daily commotion of hundreds crossing through its doors. These numbers did not even account for nearly half of Meridian’s staff, as the VPS offices were still located downtown. Resolved to unite Meridian and its affiliates under one mission with a central campus to welcome all its visitors, Jova and his staff could hardly ignore the stately, spacious mansion next door. “I think it’s so logical to defend that, just so logical—two Russell Pope houses put together,” Jova said.24 And so, with determination, urgency, and a $3 million capital campaign, Meridian House soon became one-half of Washington’s first intercultural campus dedicated to the spirit of global leadership, cultural exchange and diplomacy.

“I often look back, not on the beginning but later on at Meridian House, and I say, ‘You know, sometimes I think I’m accomplishing more for the nation in this than I accomplished even as Ambassador.’”

—The Honorable Joseph John Jova, President of Meridian House International (1977–1989)

campus master plan

Master plan for the union of Meridian House

House into a

campus,

Meridian House to the west and the White-Meyer House and its additional lot to the east. Meridian House International purchased White-Meyer House in 1987 and hired the architectural firm Archetype to oversee its renovation and conceptualize the unification of the two homes.

The Campaign for Crescent Place

While Meridian House International had grown into a bustling diplomatic center, the White-Meyer House next door had fallen into a state of uncertainty. Owned by the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, it had been leased for 15 years to the Antioch School of Law for use as its library and administrative offices. But in 1986, after years of financial challenges, the school was forced to close, and its former campus had been left to the housing market and—due in part to Antioch Law’s lack of funding for maintenance—in need of repairs.1

Meanwhile, Meridian was facing the opposite problem. Despite the spaciousness of the mansion it occupied, the organization had expanded beyond the operational capacity of its space. Only three of its five divisions were actually located in Meridian House; the others, including its largest division, the Visitor Program Service (VPS),

were still housed in rented space downtown. In 1986, there was an urgent realization that if Meridian was to increase its effectiveness and undertake new initiatives, it would need an additional building, and preferably one close by.

The sudden availability of White-Meyer House seemed nothing short of a stroke of luck. The addition of another classic Pope residence to Meridian’s campus would “consolidate all major activities and thus lead to centralized operations, more efficient management, and cost effectiveness,”2 and its renovation would help spur the redevelopment of Meridian Hill, which since the 1960s had been on the decline. The character of the house, too, with its colorful history as a gathering place for some of Washington’s most influential figures during the time of the Whites and Meyers, would blend seamlessly into Meridian’s mission. As “sister houses,”3 Meridian House and

White-Meyer House would unite all of Meridian’s wide-reaching programs to form a stunning campus commensurate with the caliber of its guests and international visitors. Though VPS’s downtown offices had such distinguished neighbors as the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Brookings Institution, it was, according to Ambassador Jova, “not like the bang you get from going into the portals of either Meridian or the White-Meyer. I think you can’t help but gasp and I’m sure [the visitors] feel, ‘Ahhh! I am indeed a guest of the U.S. government.’”4

Purchase of White-Meyer House

Though it seemed the perfect fit, the Meyer Foundation did not immediately sell White-Meyer House to Meridian. The house was instead put on the market for $3 million for about a year to see if anyone else would bid more for it. The city considered it for use as the mayor’s residence, and it was also proposed as an embassy or luxury apartment building. In the end, Meridian won out against these other options, with the Meyer Foundation agreeing that Meridian’s activities would be “a perfect use” for the mansion.5

Still, Meridian needed to raise the money to go through with the sale and renovation project. Its nonprofit status meant that Meridian could buy for lower than the market price, but even so, the purchase would not be possible without support from a large and wealthy donor base. And so, at a State Department reception in September 1986,6 Ambassador Jova announced the Campaign for Crescent Place, Meridian’s first-ever capital campaign, with a $2.8 million goal to acquire, renovate and refurbish White-Meyer House.

The primary focus of the campaign was to target and solicit major gifts from trustees, counselors, corporations, foundations and special friends of Meridian. The campaign included several gift opportunities, which set aside rooms to be named in honor of those who contributed toward their refurbishment. At one point Meridian even offered to name the entire house after whoever would donate $1 million.7 Much of the campaign’s success was driven by its six leadership committees, with Mr. Roberto Goizueta, Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, serving as National Chairman of the campaign, along with a group of distinguished Honorary Campaign Chairpersons from diverse sectors, including five former Secretaries of State.

With these levels of support and publicity, Meridian surpassed its goal, managing to raise more than $3 million to go toward the $2 million acquisition of White-Meyer House and its estimated $1.3 million renovation. As the numbers lined up, the settlement process for the purchase of the house unfolded in the early summer of 1987.

Money from the sale went toward the Meyer Foundation’s education and community grants, and Meridian began anticipating the room for growth that the new addition would offer. But it would not be for another year and half, after an unexpectedly long renovation process, that Meridian would finally be able to move in and reap the benefits of its hard-earned campaign.

The Renovation

With the sale of the house finalized and VPS to be its main occupant, all attention was turned toward how to convert the somewhat run-down mansion into suitable office and event space for the thousands of visitors that would soon enter through its doors. With 19,800 square feet to work with, the building would double Meridian’s space for programs, offices and exhibitions, as well as land for construction of additional buildings to the east of the house if needed. The renovation would not be cheap, with construction cost estimates at $1,352,647, but with its unprecedented campaign donations and financing from American Security Bank and First American Bank,8 Meridian was determined to do it right.

To carry out the restoration, Meridian hired architects Belinda Reeder and Cy Merkezas, a wife-husband duo who founded the Washington-based architectural and engineering firm Archetype. The pair approached the project with a thoughtful vision, wanting to both preserve the detail and prestige of Pope’s work while also modernizing it to include architectural elements of the contemporary era. As Reeder explained, “I’m an architect living in 1987 and the things I design should be a statement of this culture. That’s the real challenge—that you show homage and honor to the original architect, but at the same time, that when people see a building 50 years from now, they’ll want to honor what was done in 1987.”9

With a competent team directing the project, the renovations got underway in mid-1987. Originally, the work did not involve much more than scraping and painting and adding offices into the existing floor plan. But in December that year, with the remodeling one-third of the way through, a severe fire broke out, damaging much of the main floor. It started in the early morning in the library, which had just been redone; the room’s freshly oiled wood paneling was “like a tinderbox.”10 The probable cause was a short circuit resulting from electrical wiring that had been worked on, and the room was quickly engulfed. Fortunately, the room’s closed doors acted as a fire barrier between the empty drawing room to the east, but the dining room suffered, a third of its plaster destroyed. While the flames were largely contained to this part of the house, it was the

and White-Meyer

three-acre international

with Crescent Place to the north, Belmont Street to the south,

white-meyer house fire. 1987

The White-Meyer House library saw the most damage from the fire, which was likely started by a short circuit and quickly engulfed the freshly oiled wood paneling of the library walls. The renovation project was already one-third of the way complete, but the fire set it back to square one and escalated costs.

heat of the fire that seemed to do the most damage. According to the firefighters, the heat was so intense that if the fire had lasted any longer, the whole house would have exploded.11 The entrance hall saw most of the heat damage, its chandelier melted and soot everywhere, and the plastic that was covering the stair carpeting melted all the way up to the second floor.

The fire set the renovation process back to square one, but fortunately the house was insured. And though the loss of some of the original architecture was dispiriting, the fire did present a few silver linings in opportunities to improve upon Meridian’s original plan. For instance, the installation of new audiovisual equipment had not been considered as it would have required the removal of portions of the wall that were later damaged in the fire. The aftermath of the fire also exposed a structural fault in the dining room ceiling that was previously unknown, and so the restoration team was able to add

new plywood to reconstruct it.12

Many key details were saved, such as the fireplaces, and great care was taken to restore architectural detail along the ceiling frieze, one of the house’s most distinct features. By the end of the remodeling process, Meridian had restored the main floor to its original state of elegance and refinement and converted the other three floors into functional office and conference rooms that reflected a “fresh architectural presence, the third after Pope and Platt.”13 A generous grant from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation enabled Meridian to refurbish the house’s public rooms on the main floor to serve as the center’s primary exhibition space, known as the Cafritz Galleries. Though the main floor was left largely unfurnished to allow for flexible program activities, two large portraits from the house’s earliest period remained: the Henry White portrait by Léon Bonnat, on loan from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, still hangs in the stair hall, and a portrait of Madame Victoire by Jean-Marc Nattier, donated to Meridian by White’s daughter-in-law Mrs. John Campbell White,14 once hung in the drawing room and can now be found on the second floor.

The exterior saw improvements as well, with the terrace fully restored and a parking plaza and gazebo constructed on the east garden, where the Meyers’ tennis court once was. The lot, designed with grass-cell paving to allow the natural ground to peek through, addressed neighborhood complaints of overflowing cars on the street.15

The renovation was completed in late 1988, and White-Meyer House was at last ready for its new occupants. The total cost of the project came in at about $5 million, much higher than originally projected due to the fire, but Meridian’s determination not to do the job on the cheap, as well as the continued energy behind the campaign that generated several more private donations, sustained its completion. In his Washington Post review of the home’s renovation, Benjamin Forgey wrote:

“The rooms are wonderfully light and airy again; walking through them is a pleasure. Of course, something always is lost in such conversions: The subtle echoes of history, the texture of private lives, the flavor of occasions when the Whites or the Meyers would entertain Washington’s powerful in these rooms. But something is gained, too … These once-private rooms now make a good setting for first-time visitors to this country.”

In 1990, the renovation won the American Institute Award for Excellence, and Meridian and Archetype received praise in the press for their efforts to repair the home. The next challenge would be

how to incorporate the refurbished home into Meridian’s already well-established campus in order to elevate and centralize its work and mission.

A United Campus

The purchase of White-Meyer House suddenly made Meridian the owner of a three-acre city block. For more than seven decades the two houses had, despite their proximity to each other, remained separate entities, divided both by their surrounding walls and distinct architectural presences, “the White-Meyer’s airiness and relaxed authority playing against the Laughlin’s Parisian urbanity.”16 But now they were two halves of an international campus visited daily by government officials, diplomats and other leaders from around the world, many of whom were seeing Washington for the first time. When Archetype designed the renovation of White-Meyer House, they also created a campus master plan to support long-term visions for current and future expansion. With visitors moving between the houses, there needed to be a clear pathway that seamlessly combined the two properties. The architects toyed with several ideas, including a bridge or covered corridor to connect the properties above ground, as well as an underground corridor that would allow for indoor travel between the houses. None of these proposals were considered for very long as they would be too distracting, and it was better to “let the houses speak for themselves while linking them by the simplest of means.”17

This preference for simplicity led Archetype to devise a plan for an arched gateway in the brick wall separating the White-Meyer terrace from the Meridian House linden courtyard. The iron gateway design repeats the geometric motifs of Pope’s architecture18 and features a large circle with four lines crossing through it, meant to represent the four Washington meridians, one of which gave Meridian House—and the organization stewarding it—its name. The new link between the properties was further accented by the placement of two identical statues, both original to Meridian House—one in the Meridian House garden facing the gate, the second on the other side of it on an axis to represent the unification of the two homes.

To celebrate the joining of the two houses, the center held a public celebration that recognized all those who contributed to the campaign and made the purchase and renovation of White-Meyer House possible. Gertrude Chanler, former resident of Meridian House and Meridian Trustee, had donated a significant sum to the campaign and was pleased to see the homes brought together. She wrote to Ambassador Jova shortly after the celebration, “It was so

perfect having that archway in the wall and made the ‘new’ house seem much closer. You should be so proud and happy to have accomplished the union of the houses and I am sure you are, as it really is your crowning achievement.”19

The addition of White-Meyer to Meridian’s campus signified far more to Meridian’s future than merely extra space. It also grew Meridian’s role as a steward of historic architecture, a responsibility that marks Meridian “with a uniqueness not often found in the nonprofit world”20 and inspires it to bring such a uniqueness to its work.

The renovation of White-Meyer and creation of a campus master plan prompted a reflection on historic preservation’s place in Meridian’s overarching mission, and ignited, as Benjamin Forgey put it in The Washington Post, “a desire on the client’s part to do as well by the superb if by now rather shabby rooms in the house next door.”

gateway between the houses Gateway constructed during the White-Meyer House renovation to join it with the Meridian House property. The iron gate features a large circle with four lines crossing through it, meant to represent the four Washington meridians. Photo by Jessica Latos.

Restoring Meridian House

With White-Meyer House freshly renovated and serving its new occupants well, Meridian House seemed to show more clearly the effects of time. Since the 1920s, little work had been done on the house apart from office remodeling when it was purchased in 1960 and routine maintenance. By the mid-1990s, more than 70 years of exposure had eroded the concrete exterior of the house, and layers of dirt and grime had piled up. Leaks in the French windows caused interior damage, and the wiring, plumbing and heating and cooling systems had never been formally updated. Interior artwork had suffered, too: gaping holes could be seen in the dining room tapestry and every seam needed resewing.

On top of this architectural deterioration, Meridian was coming to terms with how insufficient its office spaces had become, particularly as the staff grew and programs expanded. In a normal week, it was “not unusual to find Meridian House being used for an orientation for Russian lawyers, a briefing for a newly appointed American Ambassador, a mask-making workshop for grade-school students, an introduction to Washington for diplomats, a seminar on the Middle East peace process, a tour of an exhibition for a senior citizens group, or a dinner for a member of the President’s Cabinet.”1

To continue to support such a diversity of activity, Meridian would need to reconfigure how to best use the 45 rooms of Meridian House to serve continued growth, as well as ensure the long-term preservation of a historic mansion that was beginning to suffer from the damaging effects of time. And so in 1993, the Meridian Board of Trustees voted to conduct a mass upgrade of the building to keep up with programmatic challenges for decades to come, and at the same time restore the house to its original architectural integrity and charm.

The Campaign for Meridian House

As with the White-Meyer renovations, restoring Meridian House would not be cheap. Not only would construction and refinishing costs add up, but to conduct an entire overhaul of the building would mean relocating staff to a temporary office space nearby for at least several months. Fundraising for such a project would require nothing short of another capital campaign.

Fortunately, the success of the Campaign for Crescent Place had established a broad network of donors already invested in the future of the Meridian campus, and so when the Campaign for Meridian House was launched in 1993, the Meridian development staff was in relatively familiar territory. The campaign, which took place as

renovation contract signing

renovations got underway in January 1994, had a $1.8 million goal, with ambitious plans to complete the restoration by the 26th Annual Meridian Ball in October 1994.2 The campaign found quick success, reaching the $1 million mark in July 1994, with another half million raised one month later. Meridian sent out quarterly newsletters to the campaign’s donors to update them on the status of the renovations. Some of the largest donations came from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, the Mary and Daniel Loughran Foundation, and philanthropist Marvin Breckinridge Patterson. The entire Meridian development staff also contributed to the campaign, demonstrating the staff’s commitment to the campus and its preservation.3

By July 1995, the campaign had reached its $1.8 million goal. It also received contributions in the form of furnishings and décor, such as a splendid silk Kayseri rug from His Royal Highness Prince Sultan bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, a friend of then Meridian President Ambassador Walter Cutler, who succeeded Jova and had served as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia earlier in his career.4 Another trustee, Mary David, supported the restoration project by getting Time-Life Books to donate volumes on American history to supplement the library.5 These gifts accentuated the beautified spaces and demonstrated the commitment of Meridian’s friends and trustees who make its historic preservation work possible.

Repairs and Renovations

With Belinda Reeder and Cy Merkezas of Archetype again serving as lead architects and Henry Handler of Oak Grove Design as contractor, renovations quickly began as funds were raised. The first repair to be addressed was the house’s concrete exterior, which had seen significant depreciation after decades of exposure to the elements and the city’s changing air quality. To ensure its longevity, the renovation team restored the exterior features to a stable and protected state by replacing concrete and reinforcement bars in affected areas. It also completely waterproofed the outside walls to protect against further weathering. To stop leakage through the damaged French windows, the crew filled cracks in the plaster and refinished the frames. A makeshift workshop was set up in the drawing room to repair the windows and wooden doors, with carpenters using a joinery technique that has become increasingly rare.6

Interior renovations were largely focused behind walls, as one of the most pressing needs was updated air conditioning and electrical systems to accommodate new technologies and more efficient office work. With the new central air condition system installed, heavy window units added in 1960 that had affected the structural and archi-

tectural character of the building were removed, and windows on the third floor that had been reduced in size to accommodate these units were restored to their original size. Outdated lighting was replaced with energy-efficient, compact fixtures commonly used in the 1990s, and the elevator was restored, still running on direct current as it did when it was connected to the same power system as the trolley cars that once traveled up and down 16th Street.7

Once the new electrical and plumbing systems were installed, the walls needed to be replaced and returned to their original appearance. To do this, great care and effort were taken to match as precisely as possible the colors and finishes used on the walls by John Russell Pope when the house was built. This involved a system of glaze over paint that was popular in 18th-century Europe. Researchers used microphotography and chemical analysis to reproduce the original colors in the foyer, dining room, drawing room and loggia. These rooms were completely repainted in a highly technical manner that involved applying a bright base coat and then covering it with two layers of glaze to give off an almost translucent, subtle color.8 Fortunately, the library’s striking green walls only needed touching up, even after 70 years, and its paint surfaces, along with those in the gallery, were chemically cleaned and restored. The entire repainting was supported by Glidden Paint, which had estimated that the project would need more than 1,200 gallons.9

The restoration of the house’s formal rooms, overseen by the Meridian House and Grounds Committee with support from noted Washington interior designer Robert Waldron, removed decades of dirt and grime that had built up. Workers refinished the parquet floors and replaced the most seriously damaged areas. As furnishings were acquired from Meridian’s network, the rooms seemed to come to life again. As a Washington Times review of the renovation commented, “Over a mantel in the drawing room, a portrait of Mrs. Laughlin looked down on the proceedings with an expression of beneficence.”10

Just as the walls needed colorful restoration, the house’s signature artwork had grown dim and diluted, most notably the great tapestry in the dining room. Having been in place since its original installation in the 1920s, it was now riddled with holes and loose seams, every one of which desperately needed to be resewn. This would require a tedious and delicate process that could only be completed by an expert. Meridian brought in Julia Dippold, a textile conservator from Baltimore, who then embarked on a 10-month project of repairing and reinstalling the tapestry to the condition it had been in when Ambassador Laughlin designed his dining room around it. After carefully removing the tapestry, being sure to save the hundreds of tiny tacks with wooden molding that had held it in place for more

From left, Meridian House Operations Director Marla Chanin Tobar, Meridian President Ambassador Walter Cutler, architect Belinda Reeder of Archetype and contractor Henry Handler of Oak Grove Design sign the contract for the renovation of Meridian House on January 7, 1994.

than 70 years, Dippold used a cleaning process that involved special vacuums and brushes and repaired the holes and tears. Once restored, the reinstallation presented its own meticulous challenges. A muslin sheet was hung to serve as a liner while the tapestry was placed on the wall using fabric fasteners in a slow and steady process that would ensure the weight did not stretch the tapestry. At last the tapestry was back in its original position, with Dippold’s work praised for its having “brought to life the tapestry’s original detail and beautiful colors.”11

The ornate, wooden chandeliers and lights on the main floor, carved with intricate, artful designs evocative of 18th-century France, were brought to the cafeteria where they hung on low racks to be

regilded and rewired. Ambassador Cutler lent his office to the restoration project, allowing it to be converted into a workshop for the original brass hardware, handcrafted in Paris, which was polished and restored.12 Funding also came through for various painting restorations, including the Gertrude Laughlin portrait, which was rehung in its original place above the dining room mantel.

Revitalized Workspaces

As much as the renovation was about returning Meridian House to its original splendor and artistic quality, engineering efficient office spaces was of equal priority. Much of the basement and upper floors had been underutilized, not yet designed for use by Meridian’s now over 100-person staff. To solve this problem, Archetype re-envisioned the workspaces, focusing primarily on the second and third floors where Meridian employees had been working in cramped and inadequate offices for much too long.

One of the first tasks was to construct the metal framing and installation of walls and ceilings for more appropriately sized offices. In one office, a dropped ceiling that had been installed in Ambassador Laughlin’s painting studio during the 1960s remodeling was removed. This opened the space to its original dome shape, adding volume to one of the smaller rooms in the house.13 By adjusting linen closets to hold filing cabinets, storage capacity was increased by more than 50 percent,14 and previously underused space was repurposed as coffee kitchens, powder rooms, and a staff conference room to fully meet the needs of Meridian’s hardworking team.

Restored to Architectural Heights

After over a year of construction, repairs and fundraising, the Meridian House restoration project was completed in the spring of 1995. The mansion that had originally cost $350,000 to build in 1920 was now worth $8 million15 and, despite its classic architectural style, looked almost brand new. The renovations came in under budget, and many praised the result, including Sarah Booth Conroy, who wrote in The Washington Post that, “Diplomats and socialites of the past 70 years would perceive the renovated Meridian House as a familiar grande dame with a subtle and successful facelift.”

The house officially reopened with a reception on April 14, 1995, in honor of those who donated to the Campaign for Meridian House. Staff were finally able to move back in and found themselves in awe of what had been accomplished. “People’s eyes light up when they walk inside,” Judi Baldwin, Meridian’s rental manager, said. “They fall in love with Meridian House.”16

tapestry repairs

Textile conservator Julia Dippold, hired to oversee the restoration of the dining room tapestry, along with National Gallery expert art handler John Poliszuk and his assistant, carefully remove the tapestry, saving the hundreds of tiny wooden tacks that had held it in place since its original installation in the 1920s.

at the meridian Meridian House featured on the front page of the Washington Home section of The Washington Post after undergoing major renovations in 1995 that restored the home to its original architectural grandeur and revitalized office and program spaces.

Meridian Today

After the success and expansion of the Jova decade, Meridian was poised to solidify its role and mission in an increasingly globalized world in the post-Cold War era. International exchange programming was no longer a novice attempt by the United States to build stable foreign relations in the wake of a devastating war; it was the new norm for countries who were recognizing the value of soft power and cross-cultural learning to advance their diplomatic initiatives in the global environment. Meridian, which had been at the center of this work from the beginning, was now playing a pivotal part in paving the way for the new diplomacy.

In the 1990s, Meridian embraced this role with more clarity and purpose. After decades of serving as an umbrella organization for various affiliate groups, Meridian House International’s flagship programs had taken root in Washington’s foreign affairs scene with the World Affairs seminar series and educational outreach programs, and in the national and global arts circuit with traveling cultural exhibitions. These activities complemented those of the International Visitor Leadership Program run by the Visitor Program Service (VPS), the diplomatic engagement carried on by The Hospitality and Information Service (THIS), and the orientation services provided by the Washington International Center and the International Visitors and Information Service (IVIS). Together they worked toward a holistic approach to global engagement and cross-cultural understanding, an approach that, along with the elegance and sophistication of its two homes, made Meridian a one-of-a-kind center for those with a vested interest in collaboration and communication on a global scale. As The Washington Times declared, “There is no other organization like it in the world.”1

To capitalize on this momentum and more effectively position itself in the world of international affairs, Meridian House International voted in June 1992 to change its name to Meridian International Center and further unite its programs and affiliates. VPS became the Professional Exchanges Division to be more fully incorporated into Meridian’s brand while continuing to implement the IVLP. The work of the Washington International Center and IVIS was absorbed into Meridian’s overarching mission, and THIS continued to operate out of Meridian House as an affiliate until recently.2

With this new structure and centralized identity, Meridian was able to increase the effectiveness of its services under the leadership of Ambassador Walter Cutler, who served as Meridian’s president for 17 years. Cutler’s diplomatic background and connections, along with the generosity of Meridian’s network and Board of Trustees and the dedicated work of its 120 staff members and over 1,200 volunteers nationwide, saw the organization through the Meridian House renovation, the success of Meridian’s traveling exhibition series, the promotion of educational outreach through the International Classroom Project, and in the early 2000s, the establishment of the GlobalConnect Division (previously the New Business Office) to carry out high-level government grants for customized exchange programs.

Facing social secretaries  From left, The Honorable Ann Stock, Chair of the Meridian Board of Trustees and former White House Social Secretary under President Bill Clinton, shares an embrace with The Honorable Deesha Dyer, former White House Social Secretary under President Barack Obama in the Meridian House dining room at Meridian’s annual Social Secretaries Reception in 2015, which honored Dyer’s recent appointment.

Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

The organizational and programmatic shifts of the 1990s and 2000s have enabled Meridian to redefine public diplomacy in three key areas: global leadership, collaboration and culture. These pillars had guided Meridian’s work from the beginning but are especially relevant to today’s challenges—the contests between globalization and isolationism, authoritarianism and democratic governance, and polarization and societal and political unity. Meridian remains steadfast in its belief that international cooperation and the strength of relationships across borders and cultures remain essential for global security and prosperity. With 60 years of experience in connecting people across borders, sectors and cultures, Meridian is well positioned to shape the next generation of global relationships by continuing the diplomatic and collaborative efforts that have defined the spirit of Meridian House and White-Meyer House for the last century.

Leadership

The complex challenges and opportunities of tomorrow require leaders who have global insights, cultural context and collaborative networks. A core tenet of Meridian’s work today and for the past 60 years is the belief that leaders who have these qualities and assets can produce better outcomes for their countries and the world at large. By partnering with the U.S. government, businesses and the diplomatic community on a wide array of exchange and training programs, Meridian works to develop the next generation of global leaders who are empowered to create change in their fields and societies.

Every year Meridian hosts 4,000 emerging leaders from around the world for exchange and training programs through the

International Visitor Leadership Program and other government-led initiatives, on topics ranging from women’s economic empowerment to global entrepreneurship and countering violent extremism.

Alumni of these programs include over 170 current and former Heads of State, such as U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Today, Meridian continues to be the largest partner of the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs on the IVLP and joins in celebrating 80 successful years since the program was established in 1940.

Meridian also partners with other government agencies on custom exchange and training programs, several geared toward youth.

Meridian piloted and launched the inaugural Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative (YLAI), created during the Barack Obama Administration to empower as many as 250 Latin American and Caribbean entrepreneurs to transform their societies and contribute to economic development and prosperity, security, human rights and good governance in the hemisphere. The Pan-Africa Youth Leadership Program (PAYLP) brings students from across Africa to the U.S. for a three-week cultural exchange program focused on community engagement. The U.S. Congress – Republic of Korea National Assembly Exchange Program, which Meridian has implemented since 1997, facilitates cultural and educational exchange between American and Korean university students and young professionals interested in U.S.–Korea relations and legislative processes. These programs and hundreds more over the last six decades have underscored Meridian’s role as “a place where global leaders gather, future leaders are found, and international collaboration thrives.”3

engaging international leaders

Above

Georgian Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze (center), Foreign Minister of Georgia David Zalkaliani (left), and Ambassador Stuart Holliday, Meridian President and CEO (right), listen to questions posed by attendees of a roundtable business briefing in 2018.

Center

From left, former Italian Ambassador to the U.S. Claudio Bisogniero, Meridian President and CEO Ambassador Stuart Holliday and former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Federica Maria Mogherini walk through the Meridian House gardens in 2014. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

Below His Excellency Zhang Yesui, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China (left); Governor James Blanchard, former Governor of Michigan and former Chair of the Meridian Board of Trustees (center); and Janet Blanchard, founding member of the Meridian Global Leadership Council (right) at the 3rd Annual Chinese New Year Celebration hosted at Meridian in January 2013. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

“Meridian is a place where global leaders gather and where future leaders are found.”

—Governor James Blanchard, former Chairman of the Meridian Board of Trustees

Above William Rogers, Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, at the Meridian Ball in the early 1970s.

Below Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State during the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford Administrations, meets with guests at a Meridian event in the 1970s.

Secretary of State Visits through the Decades

Meridian has worked closely with the United States Department of State since Washington International Center first opened in downtown Washington in 1959. As the largest implementing partner on the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, many of Meridian’s visitors have had the opportunity to hear from the Secretary of State, and Meridian has been honored to welcome nearly every Secretary of State through its doors since the John F. Kennedy Administration.

Above Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, visits Meridian House.

Below, left Former Secretary of State John Kerry addresses visitors at a Meridian International Center event.

Below, center Colin Powell, Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, visits Meridian House.

Below, right Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at Meridian’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2010.

emerging leaders, then and now

Left

Young international visitors take a cigarette break under the shade of the linden trees in the Meridian House courtyard in the early 1960s.

Right

Visitors on the summer 2018 cohort of the Pan-Africa Youth Leadership Program (PAYLP) enjoy a break before the program’s closing reception in the linden courtyard.

Following spread

A participant in the 2013 Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program (IYLEP) poses at the top of the Meridian House entrance staircase.

WHERE WASHINGTON MEETS THE WORLD

Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

Collaboration

Global leaders would be able to accomplish nothing, however, without space for meaningful collaboration. Meridian is that space—a powerful platform to connect government, business and diplomatic leaders who can exchange perspectives and accelerate collaboration on a range of global issues. From trade and national security to technology and healthcare, Meridian convenes dialogues between leaders across borders, parties, industries and cultures, closing the gaps between them. Meridian’s neutrality and nonpartisanship promotes open discussions that make progress and cooperation among leaders of diverse backgrounds possible. In today’s polarized society, these dialogues are essential to achieve consensus leading to sustainable, mutually beneficial solutions to shared global challenges.

In 2018, Meridian launched the Meridian Center for Diplomatic Engagement (MCDE). Today, MCDE works with the public and private sectors to create high-level policy discussions, workshops and trainings that provide ambassadors and the diplomatic community opportunities to build key relationships, while exchanging perspectives on the political, social and economic dynamics driving business and U.S. government policies. MCDE does this through “Welcome to Washington” receptions that recognize newly appointed ambassadors and connect them with government and business leaders in D.C., as well as the Insights lecture series and Diplocraft programs that provide diplomats with key political and cultural context on a range of topics. Two signature annual events, the Global Leadership Summit and Diplomacy Forum, convene around 200 high-level policymakers, corporate leaders and diplomatic representatives to delve into global issues and regional cultures. A year after it was established, MCDE reported that 95 percent of the diplomats it had engaged since its launch agreed that Meridian enhanced their ability to perform effectively in their fields. 4

Meridian’s councils also provide a space for collaboration between sectors. The Meridian Corporate Council connects business leaders with diplomats and government officials through roundtable discussions and other events to advance dialogues on trade relations and economic development around the world. As James Rosebush, former chief of staff to Nancy Reagan, once said, Meridian is “one of the best corporate buys around. For companies that have markets abroad, it’s a good way to get better acquainted with the diplomatic community…For companies interested in expanding trade, it’s made in heaven.”5 The Meridian Global Leadership Council and Rising Leaders Council offer similar opportunities to their networks of leaders and advisers in Washington and around the country through salon dinners, usually hosted by an ambassador or global luminary, and panel discussions and cultural events that examine the intersections of diplomacy and a variety of fields with international relevance. These councils, along with MCDE, often coordinate with each other and with Meridian’s exchange and training programs to facilitate collaboration with the thousands of international leaders that enter Meridian’s doors each year.

In an increasingly interconnected world where leaders come in all forms, collaboration cannot occur solely between diplomats or between government representatives; all who are impacted by a shared challenge must work together toward solutions. Meridian, with its sophisticated yet intimate space, has built upon the success of such flagship programs as the World Affairs series to make further strides in promoting this most necessary collaboration. In the words of Ambassador Walter Cutler, “it provides an oasis for people to talk, think and exchange views in the middle of a busy capital.”6

accelerating collaboration

Above General John Nicholson, U.S. Army Retired – Commander of American and NATO Forces in Afghanistan (2016-2018) speaks at a keynote lunch on December 6, 2019, as part of the Forum on Defense and Diplomacy in Afghanistan at Meridian International Center.

Below Meridian

Photo by Kristopher Tripplaar.

President and CEO Ambassador Stuart Holliday gives welcome remarks at the luncheon before the 2017 Diplomacy Forum on Japan, which explored the importance of soft power and cultural diplomacy in strengthening U.S.–Japan relations. Photo by Kristopher Tripplaar.

fireside chats, then and now

Left Ambassador Joseph John Jova (right), who served as president of Meridian International Center during the 1980s, speaks with guest Mr. Willy Desaeyere, a member of the Belgian Parliament, in the Meridian House library.

Right

The Honorable Carlos M. Gutierrez (left), former U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Chairman of the Meridian Board of Trustees, speaks with current U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross at a Meridian event in February 2018 that briefed more than 75 ambassadors and senior members of the diplomatic community on recent tariffs that had been imposed on China. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

WHERE WASHINGTON MEETS

dining room discussions, then and now

Left

Foreign visitors gather around the Meridian House dining room table for a discussion. The table is original to the house, belonging to the Laughlin family and able to seat 35 when extended.

Right

The Meridian Corporate Council meets with His Excellency Francisco Santos Calderón, Ambassador of Colombia, to discuss the future of U.S.–Colombian economic relations on January 23, 2019. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Culture

Since its inception, Meridian has understood the value of the arts and culture as a shared language that can connect people around the world. From one of Meridian’s original affiliates, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, to the traveling exhibition series it launched under Ambassador Joseph John Jova, culture has always been central to Meridian’s global engagement work. In a geopolitical environment trending toward isolationism, sustaining the various avenues of cross-cultural exchange has become more important than ever.

To ensure the long-term continuation of its cultural work, Meridian established the Meridian Center for Cultural Diplomacy (MCCD) in 2014. MCCD is recognized as one of the leading cen-

ters in the United States that employs culture as a tool of diplomacy and cross-cultural understanding. MCCD works in partnership with the U.S. Department of State, American embassies abroad, as well as the diplomatic community in Washington to develop and curate exhibitions, exchanges and cultural programs that range from film screenings to mural arts projects to hip hop music performances. Meridian’s cultural programs have reached millions of people in more than 260 cities in 60 countries since 1978. In 2019, Meridian formed a Cultural Diplomacy Leadership Council, a platform and network that brings together cultural leaders from the top cultural institutions, including the Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society to strengthen the role of arts and culture in diplomacy.

MCCD’s art exhibitions, usually organized in partnership with American embassies, spotlight diplomatic and cultural relations between the U.S. and countries around the world to generate positive impressions of both countries and encourage the continued promotion of important alliances. Many are hosted in the beautiful, airy rooms of White-Meyer House’s Cafritz Gallery. Meridian’s recent Great and Good Friends exhibition in Bangkok celebrated 200 years of U.S.–Thai relations and reached nearly 120,000 people, and Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn attended its opening.

MCCD also specializes in cultural performance programs and events, in Washington and around the world. For a decade, Meridian has annually joined with the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China to celebrate the Chinese New Year with an evening of Chinese cultural performances, artwork and cuisine. One of the MCCD’s largest ongoing programs, implemented in partnership with the U.S. State Department’s Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the Next Level traveling hip-hop diplomacy program, which seeks to bring American hip-hop to other countries through delegations and workshops led by talented American artists. The program builds on the legacy of the State Department’s Jazz Ambassadors, which included greats such as Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington, who traveled the world in the 1950s to connect with people through music—a successful initiative that Meridian later honored with the Jam Session exhibition in 2008.

During a time of rising global tensions, these programs are important to bring cultures together through shared interests, create positive impressions of the United States, and help dispel common misperceptions. Meridian’s cultural programs frequently intersect with those in the collaboration and global leadership pillars of its mission, as none can be truly effective tools of diplomacy without the others.

MEETS

exhibition catalogs Covers of recent exhibition catalogs that Meridian has hosted at its campus and around the world in partnership with the U.S. government and embassies.

early exhibition

Ranasinghe Premadasa, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and Meridian President Joseph John Jova viewing the art of Anthony Sum at an ASEAN art exhibition in Meridian House in April 1983.

art diplomacy, then and now

Left Guests view the work of Sanjiv Mendis, an 11-year-old Sri Lankan artist at an ASEAN art exhibition held at Meridian House in 1983.

Right Guests at the opening reception of Meridian’s 2018 photo exhibit Where Every Girl Can Learn and Lead: The Story of Malala Fund admire the artwork that showcased a locally led girls’ education initiative in Nigeria. Photo by Chuck Kennedy.

Above past forward

Past Forward: Contemporary Art from the Emirates was the first major touring exhibition of Emirati artwork and featured over 50 paintings, photographs, sculptures, video installations and other media by 25 Emirati artists. Launched in May 2014, out of a partnership between Meridian International Center and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, Past Forward’s two-year tour showcased the creativity radiating throughout the Emirati art scene to audiences in Washington, D.C., Texas, California, Washington, Michigan, Illinois, and Kentucky. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

Center the wild swans  Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, and Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, visit a 2010 exhibition held in the Cafritz Galleries of White-Meyer House called The Wild Swans: Original Artworks by Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark that featured the Danish Queen’s decoupage and costumes for a film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s wellknown tale by JJ Film in Copenhagen.

Below a tale of two seas

Guests mingle in White-Meyer House library at the exhibition A Tale of Two Seas: From Dilmun to Bahrain in November 2015. The exhibition debuted the bilateral cultural relations between the United States and Bahrain, with a signed Memorandum of Understanding between Meridian and the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

Facing metropolis now!

Metropolis Now! A Selection of Chinese Contemporary Art was inspired by a desire to provide Americans with a sense of modern China through the medium of art. This 2009 exhibition chronicled the significant changes taking place in China as it has experienced rapid urban growth and the impacts of globalization. The sculpture pictured here is called Ants a stainless steel piece crafted by Chen Zhiguang, who uses ants as a subject for most of his works.

jazz diplomacy

Left

Grammy award-winning jazz musician, Esperanza Spalding, performs at Meridian for a 2008 event celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month and the world tour of Meridian’s Jam Session exhibition. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

Right

Legendary jazz musician Dave Brubeck performs on April 11, 2008, at White-Meyer House at an event honoring his legacy and the role of jazz in sharing American culture across borders. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

WHERE WASHINGTON MEETS

nowruz

Cultural performance at the Nowruz springtime celebration hosted at Meridian in partnership with the Ambassadors from the Embassies of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Photo by Stephen Bobb. Facing diplomacy forum on india Deepak Ram on the bamboo flute and Nistha Raj on the violin perform outside the Meridian House drawing room at Meridian’s Diplomacy Forum on India in 2017. Photo by Stephen Bobb. Following spread chinese new year celebration

Fashion show performance at the 2013 Chinese Lunar New Year Celebration at Meridian House. For the past nine years, Meridian has partnered with the Chinese Embassy to host an annual celebration featuring cultural performances, Chinese art and cuisine, with remarks from the Ambassador of China.

Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

The Meridian Ball

None of Meridian’s leadership, collaboration or cultural initiatives would be possible without the generosity of its extensive network of supporters and donors. They gather each year at the Meridian Ball, a glamorous fundraising event that truly capitalizes on the richness and splendor of Meridian’s two mansions. By bringing together this network of leaders in government, business, the diplomatic corps and the arts, the Meridian Ball showcases, with tasteful extravagance, the value of cross-sector collaboration and leadership.

Since the first Meridian Ball in 1969, the event has withstood changes of presidential administrations, times of national and economic crisis, and societal upheaval—and is still one of the few Washington events where diplomats, government and business leaders from across parties, borders and backgrounds set aside differences and forge relationships that catalyze collaboration. As an annual celebration of cultural exchange, diplomacy and U.S. global leadership, the Ball is intentionally nonpartisan.

Before the Ball was established as a yearly event, many embassies limited their social interactions and entertaining to either Capitol Hill or business associations. The Meridian Ball kicked off the intertwining of the diplomatic community with all pockets of Washington society. Today, with approximately 30 embassies hosting intimate pre-Ball dinners, they play an active role in the celebration of diplomats’ relationships with U.S. government, business and cultural leaders.

The Ball remains a fundamental part of Meridian’s relationship with the diplomatic community. Over the years, this relationship has continually strengthened as Meridian works closely with the foreign embassies in Washington on programs and training to increase collaborative engagement with the public and private sectors. While retaining traditions that were started in its first year—from all former First Ladies serving as Honorary Chairs since Mrs. Patricia Nixon, to the pre-Ball dinners at embassies across Washington and a lively dance reception at Meridian House—the Ball has also adapted to changing times. It has met increasing demand over the years by adding the White-Meyer House Dinner, Young Professionals Committee and the Meridian Global Leadership Summit. The latter precedes the Ball to form a full day of programming that highlights Meridian’s mission to strengthen engagement between the U.S. and the world through diplomacy, global leadership and culture.

This unique social event finds members of Congress of opposing parties on the dance floor, ambassadors from every corner of the globe huddled in conversation and corporate executives catching up with cabinet secretaries in what is truly neutral territory. It is not so far off from the sophisticated dinner parties and soirées that were regularly hosted in the homes by the families who first lived in them.

All of Meridian’s programs, in fact—from its immersive leadership exchanges and practical professional convenings to its colorful cultural exhibitions and this elaborate annual gala—seek to both honor and build upon the legacies of the two homes that make Meridian’s work unparalleled in the world of cross-sector and cross-cultural collaboration. John Russell Pope could not have foreseen what purpose his side-by-side creations would come to share, but there is little doubt that the architect who made a mark on the character of the U.S. in the 20th century would be pleased that his sister houses continue to contribute to the country’s path forward in the globalized age of the 21st century. And while Meridian’s work will evolve over the next 60 years along with the changing landscape of diplomacy and global engagement, it will always remind us of the enduring vision of Ambassadors Henry White and Irwin Boyle Laughlin, and their treasures on Meridian Hill.

meridian ball invitations  Invitations and programs to the Meridian Ball across five decades. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

meridian ball, 1969

Scenes from the first annual Meridian Ball, which featured dancing in the Meridian House gallery and a belly dance performance at one of the pre-Ball dinners. The first Ball was chaired by Jane Sloat Ritchie, who later chaired the 50th Meridian Ball in 2018, demonstrating the event’s emphasis on tradition.

Following spreads

meridian ball today

Guests mingle and dance on the White-Meyer terrace and linden courtyard during the 2017 and 2019 Meridian Balls, respectively. Photos by Stephen Bobb.

“Meridian is the last ball of its kind. It is a survivor of a bygone era, a vision of Washington less as it is today and more as it would like to imagine itself: elegant, serious, sophisticated and united for important issues and causes.”

—Roxanne Roberts, The Washington Post

familiar faces

Above, left Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his wife Maureen with Joseph Reed at a Meridian Ball in the 1990s.

Above, right American journalist Bob Schieffer and his wife Patricia at the 1996 Meridian Ball. Center, left American attorney Togo West and his wife, lawyer Gail Berry West, at a Meridian Ball in the 1990s.

Center, right

Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sandra Day O’Connor at the 2005 Meridian Ball.

Below, left Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband at a Meridian Ball in the 2000s.

Below, right Actress Kerry Washington at the 2009 Meridian Ball.

50th meridian ball

Above

Inaugural Meridian Ball Chair Jane Sloat Ritchie poses at the step-and-repeat outside the 50th Anniversary of the Meridian Ball. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Center

Guests enjoy the 50th Meridian Ball on the dance floor in a tent set up in the Meridian House gardens. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Below

Former Meridian President and CEO Ambassador Walter L. Cutler and his wife, photographer Didi Cutler, dance in the Meridian House drawing room at the 50th annual Meridian Ball. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

Following spread

The Meridian House entrance decorated with lights and a step-and-repeat photo area for the 50th Meridian Ball. Photo by Stephen Bobb.

WHERE WASHINGTON MEETS

Former Meridian Board Chairs

Dr. Arthur S. Adams 1960

The Honorable James E. Webb 1960 – 1962

Mr. George M. Elsey 1963 – 1967

Mr. Philip Larner Gore 1968 – 1972

The Honorable John S. Hayes 1973 – 1974

Mr. Luis F. Corea 1975 – 1978

The Honorable Frank N. Ikard 1979 – 1982

Mr. William F. McSweeny 1983 – 1986

Mr. Daniel J. Callahan III 1987 – 1990

Maj. Gen. J. Michael Dunn 1991 – 1994

The Honorable Clayton Yeutter 1995 – 1997

Mr. Ardon B. Judd Jr. 1998 – 1999

Mrs. Colleen Nunn 2000-2001

The Honorable James R. Jones 2001 – 2009

The Honorable James J. Blanchard 2009 – 2014

The Honorable Carlos Gutierrez 2014 – 2019

The Honorable Ann Stock 2019 – Present

Former Meridian Presidents

Dr. Arthur A. Hauck

The Honorable Andrew H. Berding

The Honorable Arthur L. Richards

Dr. Robert L. Thompson

Robert G. Cleveland

The Honorable Joseph John Jova

The Honorable Walter L. Cutler

The Honorable Stuart W. Holliday (current)

Current Meridian Board of Trustees

The Honorable Ann Stock Chairman

Robert Abernethy

Michael Allen

Celeste Mellet Brown

Megan Beyer

The Honorable Dwight Bush

Sean C. Cahill

Joe Daly

Theresa Fariello

Dr. Andrea Giacometti

The Honorable Kathryn Hall

The Honorable Walter L Cutler President Emeritus

The Honorable Stuart W. Holliday President and CEO

The Honorable Israel Hernandez

Tom Higgins

The Honorable Fred P. Hochberg

Roy Kapani

Bradley L. Knox

Bonnie Larson

Randi Levine

The Honorable Andrew Maloney

Steven J. Quamme

Lisa Ross

Mr. William F. McSweeny Trustee Emeritus

Deborah T. Ashford, Esq. Counsel

Notes

THE RISE OF MERIDIAN HILL

The Washington Meridian

1. Fred A. Emery, “Mount Pleasant and Meridian Hill,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 33/34 (1932): p. 194.

2. Stephen R. McKevitt, Meridian Hill: A History (Charleston, SC: The History Presd, 2014).

3. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., “Porter, David,” Dictionary of American Biography (New York, NY: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1943), p. 84.

4. Ibid.

5. David F. Long, Nothing Too Daring: A Biography of Commodore David Porter 1780-1834 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1970), p. ix. Long rebuts previous biographies of David Porter by Archibald Douglas Turnbull and David Dixon Porter that gloss over Porter’s role as an early American imperialist.

6. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., “Porter, David,” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889).

7. Long, Nothing Too Daring p. 180.

8. Archibald Douglas Turnbull, Commodore David Porter 1780-1843 (New York, NY: The Century Co, 1929), p. 242.

9. Long, Nothing Too Daring p. 180. Long suggests that Porter proposed the Washington Meridian as a “first meridian for the United States” in 1816, but it is unclear whether he was a pioneer of the idea or simply joined in support of it when he settled in Washington.

10. Turnbull, Commodore David Porter p. 247.

11. David Dixon Porter, Memoir of Commodore David Porter of the United States Navy (Albany, NY: J. Munsell, 1875), p. 265.

12. Turnbull, Commodore David Porter p. 256-261.

13. Johnson and Malone, Dictionary of American Biography, p. 84.

14. As quoted in Long, Nothing Too Daring, p. 274.

15. Ibid, p. 284.

16. Porter, Memoir of Commodore David Porter p. 411-412.

17. Long, Nothing Too Daring p. 320.

18. As quoted in Long, Nothing Too Daring, p. 285.

19. Kim Prothro Williams, Mrs. Henderson and the Making of 16th Street, Paper Prepared for the National Historic Roads Conference (July 2010), p. 9.

20. As quoted in Williams, Mrs. Henderson and the Making of 16th Street, p. 9.

21. Ibid, p. 10. Many of the street names in the Meridian Hill subdivision were later changed when they neighborhood was more fully incorporated into the city plan.

One Woman’s Vision

1. Mikaela Lefrak, “What’s With Washington/Why Are There Nearly 50 Houses Of Worship On 16th Street?,” WAMU 88.5 American University Radio, NPR, September 26, 2019. https://wamu.org/story/19/09/26/why-are-there-nearly-50houses-of-worship-on-16th-street/.

2. Sue A. Kohler, “Early Residents of Meridian Hill,” Washington Renaissance: Architecture and Landscape of Meridian Hill (Washington, DC: Meridian House International, 1989), p. 5.

3. Kim Prothro Williams, Mrs. Henderson and the Making of 16th Street, Paper Prepared for the National Historic Roads Conference (July 2010), p. 3

4. Ibid, p. 4.

5. “Thousands Get Last Look at Historic Henderson Castle,” The Washington Post, January 16, 1949, p. M14.

6. As quoted in Marion King Schlefer, “Washington’s Italianate Park on Meridian Hill,” Washington Renaissance: Architecture and Landscape of Meridian Hill (Washington, DC: Meridian House International, 1989), p. 30.

7. Williams, Mrs. Henderson and the Making of 16th Street p. 3.

8. As quoted in Williams, Mrs. Henderson and the Making of 16th Street, p. 12.

9. Ibid, p. 22.

10. Ibid, p. 17.

11. Ibid, p. 19.

12. Kohler, “Early Residents of Meridian Hill,” p. 7. While the new house was constructed, the MacVeaghs leased the “Pink Palace” at 2600 16th Street, another of Mrs. Henderson’s famous commissions known for its Venetian architectural style.

After Mrs. MacVeagh gifted the new home to her husband, they hosted a reception and ball for President William Taft’s daughter Helen, with Mrs. Henderson and Henry White among the many notable guests in attendance.

13. Williams, Mrs. Henderson and the Making of 16th Street, p. 27.

14. “New Diplomatic Home, Former Senator Henderson to Add to Group,” The Washington Post, January 24, 1909, p. CA-1.

15. As quoted in Williams, Mrs. Henderson and the Making of 16th Street, p. 13.

16. Ibid.

17. Steven Bedford, John Russell Pope: Architect of Empire (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), p. 129.

18. Schlefer, “Washington’s Italianate Park on Meridian Hill,” p. 30.

19. Ibid, p. 29.

20. Kohler, “Early Residents of Meridian Hill,” p. 12. Katharine Meyer Graham also confirmed in an interview at Meridian International Center on September 16, 1997, that her parents had purchased Henderson Castle “to protect themselves,” though it is unclear what she meant by this. She did not mention its demolition.

21. Fred A. Emery, “Mount Pleasant and Meridian Hill,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society Washington, D.C. 33/34 (1932): p. 197.

22. Lefrak, “What’s With Washington/Why Are There Nearly 50 Houses Of Worship On 16th Street?” WAMU.

An American Architect

1. Steven Bedford, John Russell Pope: Architect of Empire (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), p. 12.

2. James Garrison, Mastering Tradition: The Residential Architecture of John Russell Pope (New York: Acanthus Press, 2004), p. 17.

3. Bedford, John Russell Pope p. 24.

4. Ibid, p. 36.

5. Garrison, Mastering Tradition, p. 13.

6. Herbert Croly, “Recent Works of John Russell Pope,” The Architectural Record vol. 29, no. 6 (June 1911): p. 442-514.

7. Bedford, John Russell Pope p. 30.

8. Ibid, p. 7.

9. Garrison, Mastering Tradition, p. 21

10. Bedford, John Russell Pope, p. 7.

11. Sue A. Kohler and Jeffrey R. Carson, “1500 I Street,” Sixteenth Street Architecture (Washington: The Commission of Fine Arts, 1978), p. 100.

12. As quoted in Bedford, John Russell Pope, p. 7.

Diplomacy and Design

1. Sue A. Kohler and Jeffrey R. Carson, “1624 Crescent Place, N.W., the White-Meyer Residence,” Sixteenth Street Architecture (Washington: The Commission of Fine Arts, 1978), p. 351.

2. Steven Bedford, John Russell Pope: Architect of Empire (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), p. 59.

3. James Garrison, Mastering Tradition: The Residential Architecture of John Russell Pope (New York: Acanthus Press, 2004), p. 88.

4. Kohler and Carson, “1624 Crescent Place, N.W.,” p. 359.

5. Garrison, Mastering Tradition, p. 88

6. Henry White, Henry White to Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White, June 14, 1910 from Library of Congress, Henry White Papers, 1812-1931 Box 9. White's quote about Mrs. Henderson states: "Mrs. Henderson came on the lot yesterday when I was taking Mrs. Hay up there and 'visited with' us for a brief period. She says interest in the neighborhood has increased since we began to build and she seemed generally chirpy and cheerful..."

7. October 14, 1910 from Library of Congress, Henry White Papers, 1812-1931 Box 9.

8. John Russell Pope. John Russell Pope to Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White, February 21, 1910, from Library of Congress, Henry White Papers, 1812-1931 Box 19.

9. Garrison, Mastering Tradition, p. 90.

10. Garrison, Mastering Tradition, p. 89.

11. Steven Bedford, “John Russell Pope and Meridian Hill,” Washington Renaissance: Architecture and Landscape of Meridian Hill (Washington, DC: Meridian House International, 1989), p. 17.

12. Garrison, Mastering Tradition, p. 90. The John Singer Sargent portrait of Mrs. White is part of the Corcoran Collection, and was given to the National Gallery of Art for display after the Corcoran Gallery of Art was dissolved in 2014. The portrait has also been on display at the National Portrait Gallery.

13. Jewell Fenzi and Elizabeth Moffat White, Interview with Elizabeth Moffat White, 1988, from Library of Congress, Manuscript/Mixed Material, p. 83. Mrs. White married Henry White’s son, John Campbell White, also a career diplomat. They sold the Crescent Place house in 1934 due to the high taxes and upkeep.

14. John Taylor Boyd, Jr, “The Residence of the Honorable Henry White,” Architectural Record Vol. 42, no. 5 (November 1917): p. 404-406.

15. Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913), p. 388.

16. T.H. Buckler, “White, Henry,” Dictionary of American Biography, Allen Johnson, ed. (New York, NY: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1943), p. 101.

17. Allan Nevins, Henry White: Thirty Years of American Diplomacy (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1930), p. 29

18. As quoted in Nevins, Henry White, p. 28.

19. Mrs. White’s mother has a distant relation to Gertrude Chanler-daughter of the Whites’ neighbor Ambassador Irwin Laughlin-who married Hubert Winthrop Chanler, grandson of John Winthrop Chanler, Mrs. White’s uncle.

20. Nevins, Henry White, p. 33.

21. Buckler, Dictionary of American Biography p. 101.

22. As quoted in Nevins, Henry White p. 102.

23. John Hay, remarks at Dinner in honor of The Honorable Henry White, L.L.D. on his return to the United States after his distinguished service as American Ambassador to France, January 11, 1910 from Library of Congress, Henry White Papers, 18121931, Box 102.

24. Nevins, Henry White, p. 312.

25. Ibid, p. 334-335.

26. As quoted in Nevins, Henry White p. 338-339.

27. Ibid, p. 348.

28. Kohler and Carson, “1624 Crescent Place, N.W.,” p. 375.

29. Fenzi and White, Interview with Elizabeth Moffat White, 1988, p. 59. Henry White had been living in a small house at 1221 21st Street during World War I and later at 2139 R Street while he lent his Crescent Place home for the Joffre mission and then leased it to Senator Peter Goelet Gerry.

30. Nevins, Henry White, p. 494. White was active in the planning of the Washington Cathedral throughout his time in Washington, not just in his later life.

31. As quoted in Nevins, Henry White p. 492-493.

32. Kohler and Carson, “1624 Crescent Place, N.W.,” p. 377.

33. Ibid, p. 378.

34. Ibid, p. 376.

35. As quoted in Merlo J. Pusey, Eugene Meyer (New York, NY: Knopf, 1974), p. 248.

36. Kohler and Carson, “1624 Crescent Place, N.W.,” p. 356. The Meyers rented 1624 Crescent Place from John Campbell White from 1927 until 1934 when they purchased it.

37. According to her autobiography, Katharine Graham had insisted during her parents’ renovation of the Crescent Place house that her fireplace surround be rather plain in contrast to the others in the house, something that is easily seen in the office that her former bedroom serves as today.

38. Meridian House International, “1624 Crescent Place, NW,” from the Meridian Archives, p. 2.

39. Walt Cutler and Katharine Graham, An Interview with Katharine Graham, September 16, 1997, from the Meridian Archives, p. 2-3.

40. Pusey, Eugene Meyer p. 193.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid. Katharine Graham referred to the White-Meyer library as “the only cozy room in the house!” in her 1997 interview with Ambassador Walter Cutler at Meridian International Center.

43. Chalmers M. Roberts, The Washington Post: The First 100 Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), p. 225.

44. Katharine Graham, Remarks at a Dinner at White-Meyer House on November 30, 1988, from the Meridian Archives, p. 3.

45. Agnes E. Meyer, Out of These Roots: The Autobiography of an American Woman (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, Little, Brown & Co, 1953), p. 167.

46. Kohler and Carson, “1624 Crescent Place, N.W.,” p. 378.

47. “Our History | Meyer Foundation,” www.meyerfoundation.org (Eugene and Agnes Meyer Foundation), accessed February 7, 2019, http://meyerfoundation. org/about-us/our-history.

48. “What We Do,” www.meyerfoundation.org (Eugene and Agnes Meyer Foundation), accessed January 10, 2020, https://www.meyerfoundation.org/what-we-do/.

49. Katharine Graham, Personal History (New York, NY: Vintage, February 24, 1998). Graham also wrote that when she was very young, her father would sit her on his lap and ask if she would be his secretary one day, giving her little reason to believe he would ever put her in charge of the family business.

50. Kohler and Carson, “1624 Crescent Place, N.W.,” p. 377.

51. Ibid.

52. As quoted in Pusey, Eugene Meyer, p. 397.

53. Kohler and Carson, “1624 Crescent Place, N.W.,” p. 378.

54. Cutler and Graham, An Interview with Katharine Graham, p. 2. Graham expressed dismay at Mr. Trump’s plans to convert the Mount Kisco property into a golf course.

The French Connection

1. Henry White, Henry White to Irwin Laughlin, November 27, 1913, from Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, Irwin B. Laughlin Papers, 1878-1944, Box 22.

2. Sue A. Kohler and Jeffrey R. Carson, “1630 Crescent Place, N.W., Meridian House,” Sixteenth Street Architecture (Washington: The Commission of Fine Arts, 1978), p. 383.

3. White, Henry White to Irwin Laughlin, November 27, 1913. White encouraged Laughlin to purchase two “shacks” across from the Meridian House property and demolish them, as he feared their price would soon go up.

4. Irwin Laughlin, Irwin Laughlin to Leland Harrison, March 18, 1931, from Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, Irwin B. Laughlin Papers, 1878-1944, Box 12.

5. Joan Sayers Brown, “Meridian House: A Distinguished French Townhouse in Washington,” Southern Accents 1983, p. 104.

6. Matlack Price, “’Meridian House’ Residence of Irwin Laughlin, ESQ., Washington,” The Architectural Record, Vol. 51, no. 2 Part One (August 1929): pp. 223, 226

7. Sarah Shafer, Oliver Chanler, Alex Chanler and Gay Chanler, Interview with Oliver, Alex, and Gay Chanler, April 16, 1991 from the Meridian Archives, p. 13. Oliver and Gay explained that their mother, Gertrude, daughter of Ambassador Laughlin, realized the sphinxes were part of set and wrote to those in charge at the Palace of Versailles when she was selling furniture from the house, letting them know that she had the sphinxes and believed they belonged to the Petit Trianon. They responded saying it was “impossible because they disappeared during the revolution and they hadn’t been seen since and they could never have gotten to the United States.” Gertrude then took them to Geneseo. Oliver said he later visited the Petit Trianon to see the matching sphinxes: “There were four approaches to this kind of music pavilion and there were two sphinxes at each approach, representing the different seasons...Two of them were gone from one of the approaches. When we went there in 1959, they had some really peculiar looking sphinxes that had nothing to do with the others at all. It seemed obvious to us that the missing ones were at Geneseo.”

8. Kohler and Carson, ”1630 Crescent Place, N.W., Meridian House,” p. 383.

9. Shafer, Interview with Oliver, Alex, and Gay Chanler, p. 10. Ambassador Laughlin had created the card catalogue himself and would “work pretty hard” to keep track of the books he collected. The Chanler children explained that many of Ambassador Laughlin’s books were about collecting art, furniture and heraldry, as well as rare books from the 16th and 17th centuries. He apparently had the whole collection of the first edition of Alice in Wonderland in six languages. The Chanlers thought there might be a record of the library collection at Sotheby’s but this was never confirmed.

10. Ibid, p. 15. Gay Chanler guessed that the turtles were brought to the house from Rock Creek Park but was not sure, and then thought they might have been tortoises, not box turtles. She said she used to go out in the garden to look for them and their nests.

11. Ibid, p. 17.

12. This table was donated to Meridian House International when it purchased the home in 1960 and used for meetings and conferences. It remains in the house today, though it is no longer in the dining room and is often moved to accommodate space for large receptions and programs.

13. Gertrude Chanler and her children disagreed on the number of servants during their respective interviews. Gertrude said there were about 10, but the children thought there were 15 to 20. The number likely fluctuated over time.

14. Irwin Laughlin, Letter to John Russell Pope, January 16th, 1933 from Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, Irwin B. Laughlin Papers, 1878-1944, Box 19.

15. Irwin Laughlin, Letter to Edwin Davis, June 13, 1929, from Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, Irwin B. Laughlin Papers, 1878-1944, Box 12. Laughlin wrote to Davis that he “had nothing less than a shock” when he discovered the angles put on the corners of his outdoor entrance gates were of steel rather than copper as he had specified.

16. Gertrude Chanler, Remarks made by Gertrude Chanler about Meridian House May 1973, from the Meridian Archives, p. 1-2.

17. Kohler and Carson, ”1630 Crescent Place, N.W., Meridian House,” p. 411.

18. Irwin Laughlin, Telegram from Irwin Laughlin to Henry White, September 25, 1911, from Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, Irwin B. Laughlin Papers, 1878-1944, Box 22.

19. Kohler and Carson, ”1630 Crescent Place, N.W., Meridian House,” p. 411.

20. Henry White, Letter from Henry White to Irwin Laughlin, December 22, 1918, from Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, Irwin B. Laughlin Papers, 1878-1944, Box 22.

21. Kohler and Carson, ”1630 Crescent Place, N.W., Meridian House,” p. 411.

22. Sarah Shafer and Gertrude Chanler, Interview with Gertrude Chanler, March 12, 1991, from the Meridian Archives, p. 31-32. Gertrude said the builders of the National Gallery were unsure of how to design the floor of the rotunda, but that her father “showed them how.” She also said Laughlin and Pope had maintained a close friendship.

23. Gertrude said that many years before her parents had met, they were in 1888 involved in the same near-accident while traveling by sea to Europe (Irwin Laughlin’s first trip to Europe). Therese had been young at the time and going to Europe with her family, and their ship was “having trouble.” Irwin’s ship had been called to come rescue, but the issue was resolved before it got there. Irwin mentioned the incident in his diary.

24. Sarah Shafer, Interview with Oliver, Alex, and Gay Chanler, p. 6. Alex and Oliver discussed their parents’ friendship with French Ambassador André Lefebvre de La Boulaye and his family. His son Francois also became the Ambassador from France and was a guest at the Meridian Ball during his time in Washington. Oliver had attended as well and said he greeted the Ambassador, who had told him, “‘You know your grandmother spanked me when I was a little boy upstairs on the top floor.’” Oliver later explained, “It seemed so incongruous to see this really swell-looking guy talking about being spanked by my grandmother! Apparently he and Uncle Alexander had been driving their little mechanical cars around, and they’d been told not to go into the section where the staircase was, because it was dangerous. My grandmother came up and caught them both on the edge of the staircase in their little cars, so they were both spanked. But it was a funny little memory of his.”

25. Sarah Shafer, Interview with Gertrude Chanler, p. 3.

WHERE WASHINGTON MEETS THE WORLD

Washington International Center

1. American Council on Education, A Proposal for Strengthening the Washington International Center, submitted to the Ford Foundation by Arthur S. Adams on October 24, 1959, from the Meridian Archives, p. 1.

2. Ibid.

3. “Introduction to the United States: A Program for International Visitors,” Washington International Center of the American Council on Education, 1959, from the Meridian Archives.

4. Meridian House Foundation overview, January 25, 1963, from the Meridian Archives, p. 2.

5. Robert B. Knapp, “Washington’s Window on America,” reprinted from D.C. Libraries: July, 1956, Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 1.

6. American Council on Education, A Proposal for Strengthening the Washington International Center, p. 4.

Embassy of Washington

1. American Council on Education, A Proposal for Strengthening the Washington International Center, submitted to the Ford Foundation by Arthur S. Adams on October 24, 1959, from the Meridian Archives, p. 6. The Washington International Center had had “limited experience with visitors sponsored by the United Nations, World Health Organization, and other agencies,” but because the U.S. Department of State was its primary partner, it had to deny many request from these agencies in the 1950s due to space limitations.

2. Ibid, p. 7.

3. Sarah Shafer and Gertrude Chanler, Interview with Gertrude Chanler, March 12, 1991, from the Meridian Archives, Oral Histories, p. 16-17.

4. Arthur S. Adams, Letter from Arthur S. Adams to Joseph E. Slater, October 16, 1959 from the Meridian Archives.

5. Ibid.

6. Meridian House Foundation overview, January 25, 1963, from the Meridian Archives, p. 3.

7. Ibid, p. 2. The document states, “Other groups whose purposes are related to those of the Foundation are welcomed at Meridian House and may request the use of its facilities.”

8. Patricia Ann Johnson, ed., Meridian House International: A Decade of Excellence, Meridian House International, 1989, from the Meridian Archives, p. 10.

9. Ibid, p. 11.

10. As quoted in Johnson, ed., Meridian House International: A Decade of Excellence, p. 13.

11. Ibid, p. 6.

12. “Welcoming the World: Meridian House International,” Meridian House International, n.d., from the Meridian Archives, p. 5.

13. Ibid, p. 2.

14. Johnson, ed., Meridian House International: A Decade of Excellence p. 13.

15. Ibid, p. 3.

16. “Welcoming the World: Meridian House International,” Meridian House International, n.d., from the Meridian Archives, p. 2. "Doorway to the United States and window on the world," (or similar) was Meridian’s tagline until the 2000s. It was changed to “Advancing Effective Global Leadership” for a time and now is “Stronger at home when globally engaged.”

17. Johnson, ed., Meridian House International: A Decade of Excellence p. 5.

18. Ellie Trowbridge and Joseph John Jova, Interview with Joseph John Jova, President, MHI, June 17, 1992, from the Meridian Archives, Oral Histories, p. 15. Jova explained that Meridian had tried to get Anwar Sadat, an alumnus of the International Visitor Leadership Program, to come for the exhibition but was not able. Instead his wife came, which Jova said, “was better, perhaps, and she was wonderful and we became friends, we're still friends.” Jova also accompanied Mme. Sadat on two other stops of her visit, in Houston and Los Angeles.

19. Ibid. Full quote from the Dutch Ambassador: “This [Meridian House] will be neutral ground, we won't like the idea of doing it at the Post Office, they probably don't like the idea of doing it in The Netherlands Embassy, we'll have that ceremony at Meridian House.” The exhibit featured a miniature construction of the Dutch village Maduradam.

20. “Welcoming the World: Meridian House International,” p. 8.

21. Shafer and Chanler, Interview with Gertrude Chanler p. 3.

22. Johnson, ed., Meridian House International: A Decade of Excellence p. 3.

23. Ibid. p. 16.

24. Trowbridge and Jova, Interview with Joseph John Jova, p. 11.

The Campaign for Crescent Place

1. Ellie Trowbridge and Joseph John Jova, Interview with Joseph John Jova, President, MHI, June 17, 1992, from the Meridian Archives, Oral Histories, p. 10. When the Antioch School of Law closed, its mission and curriculum, which promoted public interest advocacy, were eventually adopted by the University of the District of Columbia’s law school. According to Jova, the White-Meyer House had been "misused" by Antioch Law, as the school had "gone through tough times." It had also been affected by the 1968 riots, he said.

2. “Meridian House International: Campaign to Acquire and Renovate 1624 Crescent Place," Meridian House International, 1986, from the Meridian Archives, p. 2.

3. Sarah Booth Conroy, “Meyer Mansion is Sold,” The Washington Post, August 9, 1986.

4. Trowbridge and Jova, Interview with Joseph John Jova p. 5.

5. As quoted in Conroy, “Meyer Mansion is Sold.” Then Meyer Foundation Chairwoman Mallory Walker gave this quote.

6. “Meridian House announces plans for expansion,” The Washington Times Capital Life, September, 19, 1986. The campaign was announced publicly on June 18, 1987, with a press conference. At that time the campaign goal was only $2.8 million.

7. “Meridian House International: Campaign to Acquire and Renovate 1624 Crescent Place,” p. 19.

8. Ibid.

9. As quoted in Randy Rieland, “Making Old Homes New Again,” The Washingtonian October 1987.

10. Trowbridge and Jova, Interview with Joseph John Jova p. 12.

11. Ibid.

12. “The Renovation of the White-Meyer House at 1624 Crescent Place, Northwest,” Meridian House International, 1987, from the Meridian Archives, p. 40.

13. Benjamin Forgey, “Meridian Hill: More Stately Mansions,” The Washington Post, November 12, 1988.

14. Joseph John Jova, Letter from Joseph John Jova to Mrs. John Campbell White, August 19, 1988, from the Meridian Archives, Mrs. John Campbell White donor file. Mrs. White agreed to donate the portrait to Meridian upon her death.

15. Forgey, “Meridian Hill: More Stately Mansions.”

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. “The Renovation of the White-Meyer House at 1624 Crescent Place, Northwest,” p. 30.

19. Gertrude Chanler, Letter from Gertrude Chanler to Joseph John Jova, September 23, 1988, from the Meridian Archives, Gertrude Chanler donor file.

20. Patricia Ann Johnson, ed., Meridian House International: A Decade of Excellence, Meridian House International, 1989, from the Meridian Archives, p. 23.

Restoring Meridian House

1. “The Renovation of Meridian House at 1630 Crescent Place, Northwest: January 1994-December 1994,” Meridian International Center, 1995, from the Meridian Archives, p. 6.

2. “Campaign and Renovation Proceed on Schedule,” Renovation Update: News from the Campaign to Preserve Meridian House, Meridian International Center, September 1994, from the Meridian Archives. Though renovations continued through the end of the year, they did not prevent the 1994 Meridian Ball from being hosted at Meridian House.

3. “Campaign Reaches $1,513,555.81,” Renovation Update: News from the Campaign to Preserve Meridian House, Meridian International Center, November 1994, from the Meridian Archives.

4. “Campaign and Renovation Proceed on Schedule,” Renovation Update September 1994. Other gifts included an oriental rug donated by Meridian Trustee Bob Waldron for use in the reception gallery and new plants for the house that would be maintained with funds from the Jeanne Yeutter Memorial Fund in memory of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter's late wife, who had served on the Meridian Board of Trustees and was chairman of its House and Grounds Committee. These gifts were later removed from the main floor spaces due to the need for flexibility in event setup.

5. “The Renovation of Meridian House at 1630 Crescent Place, Northwest,” p. 44.

6. “Campaign Reaches $1 Million Mark! $680,000 Needed to Reach Goal,” Renovation Update: News from the Campaign to Preserve Meridian House Meridian International Center, July 1994, from the Meridian Archives.

7. Sarah Booth Conroy, “At the Meridian,” The Washington Post, April 13, 1995. The Meridian House elevator has also been rumored to be the oldest working elevator in Washington, but there is little evidence to support this claim.

8. Ibid.

9. “Campaign and Renovation Proceed on Schedule,” Renovation Update September 1994.

10. Laura Outerbridge, “Meridian’s Grand New Look,” The Washington Times, April 18, 1995. The portrait of Mrs. Laughlin has since been moved to the family's former breakfast room, now called the Chairman's Study.

11. “Campaign Reaches $1,513,555.81,” Renovation Update November 1994.

12. “The Renovation of Meridian House at 1630 Crescent Place, Northwest,” p. 62.

13. “Campaign Reaches $1 Million Mark! $680,000 Needed to Reach Goal,” Renovation Update, July 1994.

14. “The Renovation of Meridian House at 1630 Crescent Place, Northwest,” p. 39.

15. “Campaign and Renovation Proceed on Schedule,” Renovation Update, September 1994.

16. “Campaign Surpasses $1.8 Million Mark,” Renovation Update: News from the Campaign to Preserve Meridian House Meridian International Center, July 1995, from the Meridian Archives.

Meridian Today

1. Siobhan McDonough, “Global Outreach is at Home Here,” The Washington Times November 6, 1992.

2. Meridian International Center brochure, n.d., from the Meridian Archives, Publications. It is unclear at what point the Washington International and the International Visitors and Information Service were no longer identified as distinct divisions of Meridian, but based on various brochures and promotional materials,

it appears to coincide with Meridian's name change in 1992. Also, while the Visitor Program Service did become the Professional Exchanges Division around this time, this new division name may not have been made immediately public and was changed for internal structural reasons only at the time. No Meridian brochures from the early 1990s identify the Professional Exchanges Division.

3. Janet Donovan, interview with Natalie Jones, “The Social Secretaries,” Hollywood on the Potomac August 9, 2019. This quote has been commonly used in promoting Meridian's brand and mission, but was originally said by Governor James Blanchard, former Chair of the Meridian Board of Trustees.

4. Meridian Center Diplomatic Engagement, Diplomat Survey Results (Washington, D.C.: Meridian International Center, 2019) Meridian polled 47 members of the diplomatic community from July 24, 2019 to August 8, 2019.

5. Deborah Baldwin, “Art for Politics’ Sake,” Common Cause Magazine, September/October 1986. Meridian's corporate engagement has strengthened considerably since this time, with now more than 50 members on its Corporate Council.

6. McDonough, “Global Outreach is at Home Here.”

IMAGE CREDITS

For images not credited in captions, credits can be found below. a = above, b = below, l = left, r = right, c = center

p. 12-13 National Park Service p. 14 © David B. King, April 23, 2006, https://www. flickr.com/photos/bootbearwdc/133899170 p. 15 Pierre Charles L'Enfant and Thackara & Vallance, Philadelphia, 1792, from Library of Congress p. 17 U.S. Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland p. 18 Photographed 1861, from Library of Congress p. 19 Columbia Historical Society, General Photograph Collection p. 20 A.G. Gedney and A.L. Barber and Co., 1867, from Library of Congress p. 21 Harris & Ewing, 1913, from Library of Congress p. 22-23 D.C. Public Library Commons p. 24 l 1910-1935, from Library of Congress p. 24 r Original source unknown, reprinted in the Washington Renaissance exhibition, Meridian International Center, 1989, from the Meridian Archives p. 25 l 1922, from Library of Congress p. 25 r Harris & Ewing, 1923-1945, from Library of Congress p. 26 Paul J. Pelz, architect, Jules T. Crow, and Mary F. Henderson, 1898, from Library of Congress p. 27 National Archives, Identifier 6087981 p. 28 from the Library of Congress p. 29 National Park Service p. 30 1911, from Library of Congress p. 31 Originally printed in The Federal Architect, 1935, from Library of Congress p. 33 a National Park Service p. 33 b © Sean Pavone, 2016 p. 34 l & r John Russell Pope, The Architecture of John Russell Pope vol. 2, 1924-1930 p. 35 a & b Archetype, 1987, from the Meridian Archives p. 36 John Russell Pope, from the Meridian Archives p. 38 Léon Bonnat, 1880, Corcoran Collection, portrait photographed by Stephen Bobb p. 39 John Singer Sargent, 1883, Corcoran Collection p. 40 & 41 Original source unknown, reprinted in Allan Nevins, Henry White: Thirty Years of American Diplomacy, (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1930) p. 42-43 Meridian Archives p. 44 William Orpen, 1919, Imperial War Museum Collections p. 46 1907, from Library of Congress p. 48 & 49 Original source unknown, from the Meridian Archives p. 50 Katharine Meyer yearbook photo, courtesy of the Madeira School p. 51 Original source unknown, from the Meridian Archives p. 52 & 53 all John Russell Pope, The Architecture of John Russell Pope vol. 2, 1924-1930 p. 54-55 Arnold Kramer, 1988, from the Meridian Archives p. 56 & 57 all John Russell Pope, The Architecture of John Russell Pope vol. 2, 1924-1930 p. 59 John Russell Pope, from the Meridian Archives p. 60-61 Drix Duryea for The Architectural Forum 1929, from the Meridian Archives p. 62 Philip de László, 1912, Meridian Collection p. 63 Philip de László, 1916, Meridian Collection p. 64 Bain News Service, from Library of Congress p. 65 Philip de László, 1919, Meridian Collection p. 66-78 all Drix Duryea for The Architectural Forum 1929, from the Meridian Archives p. 118-119 Arnold Kramer, Archetype, 1988, from the Meridian Archives p. 127. b, r Meridian Archives p. 128 Meridian Archives p. 136-141 all Meridian Archives p. 142 Adams Studio Custom Photography, from the Meridian Archives p. 143 Meridian Archives p. 145-146 Adams Studio Custom Photography, from the Meridian Archives p. 144-148 all Meridian Archives p. 150 Archetype, 1987, from the Meridian Archives p. 152 Archetype, 1987, from the Meridian Archives p. 154 & 156 Meridian Archives p. 157 Cover of The Washington Post Style section, April 13, 1995, from the Meridian Archives p. 161 a Courtesy of the Government of Georgia p. 162-165 all Meridian Archives p. 170 & 172 Meridian Archives p. 174 & 176 © Nick Sebastian, 1983, from the Meridian Archives p. 175 Meridian Archives p. 178 c & 179 Meridian Archives p. 188 & 189 Meridian Archives p. 194 all Meridian Archives