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Millionaires’ Row Grand mansions built for Gilded Age plutocrats are the nucleus of the capital’s embassy district BY DONNA EVERS

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capital where they could create a stir simply by owning an opulent house and throwing lavish parties (while lobbying for their railroads, coal mines, and factories back home). American aristocrats like Henry Adams and John Hay, installed around Lafayette Square, viewed the palatial new homes as the epitome of nouveau riche excess. Luckily, however, there happened to be a crop of stellar young architects in Washington at the time, including many who had trained at the prestigious L’École des Beaux Arts in Paris. The houses they were commissioned to design, grounded in elegant European traditions, were nothing short of brilliant. Among the new millionaires was Thomas Walsh, an Irish immigrant who struck gold in Colorado and then Thomas Walsh’s 60-room mansion was described as “neo-Baroque” but had many Art commissioned one of the Nouveau features. The Indonesian government purchased it in 1951 for $335,000 – a fraction of its original cost – and later added a new wing. largest houses ever built in Washington at 2020 followed suit, convinced that paved streets Massachusetts Ave. NW (now the Indonesian and gas lines would soon follow. They were Embassy). Richard and Mary Townsend, who right. When these ambitious businessmen possessed two Pennsylvania railroad fortunes, began building their mansions in the midst built a copy of Versailles’ Petit Trianon at 2121 of a wasteland, a local publication described Massachusetts Ave. NW (now the Cosmos the scene as follows: “Everywhere there are Club). Gas and coal magnate Clarence Moore, superb residences looking out upon fields of who later perished on the Titanic, had Jules red clay and weeds, and flanked on either side Henri de Sibour, a graduate of the École in Paris, design a perfectly balanced Beaux Arts by shanties ...” The new neighborhood caught on, and by creation at 1746 Massachusetts Ave. NW that 1900 it had already been dubbed “Millionaires’ later became Embassy of Uzbekistan. Edward Hamlin Everett, who invented Row.” Captains of industry from Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, many of whom the crimped bottle cap for Coca Cola, asked couldn’t break into the closed society of New George Oakley Totten Jr., another École York and Newport, moved to the nation’s student, to design his magnificent home off mbassy Row symbolizes the height of Washington elegance, but it wasn’t always that way. In the 1880s, much of the area west of Dupont Circle was marshland used as a city dumping ground. When the city’s first mayor, the notorious Boss Shepherd, bought property there, speculators

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Sheridan Circle at 1606 23rd St. NW (now the Turkish Ambassador’s residence). A few steps away, the Alice Pike Barney House on Sheridan Circle later became the Latvian Embassy; Mrs. Barney’s father got rich distilling whiskey, and she had Waddy B. Wood design an Art Nouveau haven to serve as a salon for artists and musicians. At 2315 Massachusetts Ave. NW, George Oakley Totten Jr. created another beautiful Beaux Arts pile, which the Embassy of Pakistan now occupies. Next door (2311 Massachusetts Ave. NW) is the classic masterpiece Nathan C. Wyeth designed for New York financier Gibson Fahnestock, now home to the Embassy of Haiti. At 3000 Massachusetts Ave. NW, a fine Roman palazzo built by the heir of the McCormick reaper fortune (currently the Brazilian Embassy residence. Its designer, John Russell Pope, was also responsible for the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art. The majestic British Embassy (3100 Massachusetts Ave. NW) was the creation of Sir Edwin Lutyens, who built it on ground donated by famed Washington builder Harry Wardman. As a teenager, Wardman, who was born into poverty in England, stowed away on a ship to America and made a fortune building numerous townhouses, apartment buildings, and hotels throughout Northwest Washington. The Great Depression signaled the end of the Gilded Age in Washington. Many of the colossal homes’ owners lost their fortunes. Embassies were the only buyers who could still make use of the vast ballrooms and servants’ quarters. Even the indomitable Wardman went bankrupt. The era of great mansion building is long gone, but we continue to enjoy the legacy of dozens of beautiful buildings that are part of the capital’s unique landscape and storied diplomatic life.

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