I knew going up 16th Street would be slow. I have published seven posts, and have traveled only about one and a half miles from our start.

We are now at the intersection of 16th and W (to the east) and Florida Ave (to the west). We start a fairly steep upward climb. On our right is Meridian Hill Park, which runs one very long block to Euclid on the north and reaches to 15th Street to the east. The park was in part formerly the home of a large home built in the early 1800s and, for a while, the residence of John Quincy Adams after he left the presidency. The house burned down, and in the early 20th century, the land was sold to the federal government for the construction of a 12 acre urban park. More on this later.

Do you remember why this is called Meridian Hill Park? When Washington was laid out in the 1790s, 16th Street, going straight north from the White House, was proposed to be a prime meridian, the longitudinal line from which all longitudes would be measured.  It never really worked out, and Greenwich became the internationally recognized prime meridian in the 1880s. But the name remained.

On the west side of 16th Street, in 1889, Mary Foote Henderson, and her husband, former Missouri Senator John Henderson, built a brownstone “castle” with 30 rooms, including a 100 foot ballroom, which became a centerpiece of Washington society. The castle is no longer there, demolished about 1950, and  replaced in the 1970s by about 100 expensive townhouses. But the walls of the estate still exist.

They lead to Crescent Place and the home of the Meridian International Center, which actively does something (in addition to renting space for weddings and the like), but I really am not sure what. Their expansive facilities include two enormous houses designed by John Russell Pope (we have spoken of him before, architect of the Jefferson Memorial, Archives, National Gallery, the Masonic Temple on 16th and much more). One of these houses, visible from 16th Street, was the home of Eugene Meyer, former Washington Post editor and father of Katharine Graham.

Soon, we are beyond the Meridian International Center, about one third of the way up the hill  and onto a block containing four multifamily buildings facing the park.

The Envoy and the Diplomat are rental properties, with studio and one bedroom apartments. The Envoy, originally Meridian Mansions, was opened in 1918 with large apartments for permanent residents and hotel rooms. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes was a resident, as was author Frances Parkinson Keyes. In later years, it became one of the first fully racially integrated residential buildings in the city. In 1979, the building was completely gutted and rebuilt.

The Henderson was a small apartment house redone and greatly expanded in 2017. The Art Deco Park Tower, built as a rental in 1929, is now a 90 unit condominium.

The building next to the Park Tower is the most interesting, a mansion built to house an embassy.

After building the Castle, Mary Foote Henderson bought up almost all the surrounding land. This included the land where the John Russell Pope mansions, the land where the beaux art French Embassy was built, and even the land that is now Meridian Hill Park (where she wanted a replacement White House to be built).

On the design of the embassy, she worked with long time French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand. There is, by the way, a monument to him in Rock Creek Park, along Beach Drive.

Of course, the building is no longer the French Embassy.  It has been several things, including, for a while, the Embassy of Ghana, and has recently been purchased by the Turkish AK Party (that is Erdogen’s party) for its American offices (sounds odd, no?).

The last building we will look at will be the Dorchester, at the corner of 16th and Euclid. A large apartment house opened in 1941 with almost 400 units, it was once the home of a U.S.Naval Officer named John F. Kennedy. A client of mine wanted to convert the Dorchester to condominiums as one of the first such conversions in Washington.  I told him the building was too complicated and that I didn’t want to be involved. He was surprised at that, I am sure.  That was probably 40 years ago. It is still a rental.

We will save Meridian Hill Park itself for another day. It will be Part 9.