Existing comment:
Historic Site, Washington, DC
Indonesian Embassy/Walsh-McLean Mansion
2020 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Tycoon/philanthropist Thomas Francis Walsh built this 60-room, neo-Baroque mansion in 1903. An Irish immigrant who as a young man had struck it rich mining gold in Colorado, Walsh (1850-1910) brought his wife, Carrie Bell Walsh, and children to Washington in 1897 as the U.S. capital grew in influence. He hired New York architect Henry Andersen to design a suitably impressive place to entertain Washington's elite during the winter social season. Daughter Evalyn (1886-1947) married Edward Beale McLean -- heir to the Washington Post fortune -- and famously owned the Hope Diamond. The Republic of Indonesia purchased the building in 1951 for its Embassy. It has exercised superb stewardship of it since.
Listed in the DC Inventory of Historic Sites, 1964, and the National Register of Historic Places, 1973 |