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Embassy Row
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about Embassy Row in Washington, DC. See Embassy Row (disambiguation) for additional uses.
Embassy Row is the informal name for a street or area of a city where embassies or other diplomatic installations are concentrated. Perhaps the best-known of these is in Washington, D.C., capital of the United States. Washington's Embassy Row lies along Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., and its cross streets between Thomas Circle and Ward Circle, although the vast majority of embassies are found between Scott Circle and Wisconsin Avenue.
Considered Washington's premier residential address in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Massachusetts Avenue became known for its numerous mansions housing the city's social and political elites. The segment between Scott Circle and Sheridan Circle gained the nickname "Millionaires' Row."
The first embassy on Embassy Row, and still one of the most prominent, was the British Embassy, directly adjacent to the United States Naval Observatory. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens to combine the offices and the residence of the ambassador, resembling an English country house in the Queen Anne style of architecture.
The street began to lose its elite lustre in the 1920s, and some neighborhoods east of Scott Circle decayed as the Great Depression caused many to sell their homes. Fashionable living also shifted from Massachusetts Avenue to 16th Street NW. But the main impetus for the strip's recharacterization was the rise of the United States in the aftermath of World War II. Nations competed to build or maintain grand residences to represent their nation's significance in the capital of the new superpower, and the expansive old estates proved well-suited for use as embassies (and also as lodges of social clubs).
Washington's Embassy Row culture once mirrored the exclusivity of its residences. Since the early 1990s, however, many embassies have begun to sponsor public events to promote business and cultural interests of their countries.
Except where specified, the following nations have diplomatic facilities on Massachusetts Avenue NW.
Two streets which connect to Massachusetts Avenue are home to major diplomatic enclaves as well. New Hampshire Avenue, NW (north of Dupont Circle) is home to the embassies of Argentina, Belarus, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea,Grenada, Jamaica, Namibia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Slovenia, and Zimbabwe (the embassies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also located on New Hampshire, but farther south, near the Watergate complex).
International Drive NW, north of Observatory Hill in Cleveland Park is home to the legations of Antigua and Barbuda, Austria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Israel, Jordan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, Slovakia and Swaziland. The People's Republic of China is also constructing a new embassy in this area, using all Chinese workers under tight security, likely to prevent espionage by the U.S. government.
Additionally, a substantial number of embassies and chanceries are located within one or two blocks of Massachusetts on cross streets, particularly R, S, and 22nd Streets NW near Sheridan Circle, and along Kalorama Road and 34th Street NW in the Kalorama district. The Embassy of New Zealand is on Observatory Circle.
Embassies can also be found on other major roads, often in clusters. Among these are several Caribbean nations, which share facilities on New Mexico Avenue NW, and a diverse collection on Wyoming Avenue NW.
- United States Department of the Treasury list of Addresses of foreign embassies and consulates in the U.S., maintained for the International Trade Data System intiative
- Washington Embassy Row tour on embassy.org
- Embassy Row Graphical Map
