Category Dumbarton Oaks
Elizabeth Hoyt & Gladys Rice, Landscape Gardeners
What happened to the landscape gardening firm of Hoyt and Rice? Why didn’t the two mentees of Beatrix (Jones) Farrand, Charles Sprague Sargent and the staff at the Arnold Arboretum ever start their planned business together? While a footnote in the story of the landscape of the British Embassy, Washington, one wonders if the partnership […]
Henry Adams and Lady Lindsay in Washington
Within the intersecting circles of the story of the British Embassy, Henry Adams is the center point in its early history. His beloved home across from the White House brings together several elements of this Landscape of a Washington Place: the Embassy’s first landscape gardener (Elizabeth Sherman Hoyt, later Lady Lindsay); Beatrix Jones (later Farrand […]
Plan of the Embassy Gardens and Maps of the Area
For reference to earlier and future posts, here is a master plan of the entire grounds of the Ambassador’s Residence: And for the points of interest in the story of the landscape of the British Embassy, including Normanstone Park and Normanstone Drive, Oak Hill Cemetery, Dumbarton Oaks, the Naval Observatory, Rock Creek Park: At the […]
The Second World War as Seen in the Embassy Landscape
The transformation of Washington during the Second World War can be seen in structural changes at the British Embassy. Quickly assembled wartime additions to the Lutyens Chancery were erected in 1940. When those proved inadequate for the burgeoning staff’s needs, property was leased throughout the city and land bordering the Embassy’s service road and Observatory […]
Elizabeth Lindsay at the End
After leaving Washington and diplomatic life, Elizabeth Lindsay was to finally have a home and garden entirely of her own making. She initially intended to stay in New York for only a while before following Sir Ronald to England. But with the outbreak of war, the condition of her own health and unspecified “family problems,” […]
The End of the Lindsay Era and the Beginning of the War Years in the Embassy’s Gardens
Ronald Lindsay retired from the British Ambassadorship in Washington and set sail for England on 30 August 1939, landing just after war was declared on Germany. Elizabeth Lindsay never saw her husband again. His work and failing health confined him to his country for the duration. He died in 1945 and was buried next to […]
The Aftermath of the Royal Garden Party
Ronald Lindsay’s tenure as Ambassador to the United States finally came to an end in the summer of 1939, following the King and Queen’s trip to Washington and then on to New York. Lady Lindsay, exhausted from the preparations and attending criticism of those events, struggled to pack up from the Ambassador’s Residence, her main […]
The Royal Garden Party
Ambassador Ronald Lindsay was commanded to hold a garden party for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on 8 June 1939, followed the next day by a morning reception for British subjects, and then a dinner, all at the Washington Embassy. These were to be the Lindsays’s last, but by far their most public and […]
The Embassy Gardens and Dumbarton Oaks
With the ridge of Clifton Hill between them, the British Embassy and Dumbarton Oaks have a shared legacy and stories, the memory of which has nearly been lost over the years. The original 19th-century estates of both sites were once part of the same Royal land grant, the Rock of Dumbarton. Before each gained renown, […]
Lindsay’s Groundwork for the Gardens
With the return of the diplomatic corps and the beginning of the fall social season of 1930 in Washington, the press was filled with reports of the new British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. The Ambassador’s Residence had already been put to work: the first large party to be held there was that August for 600 […]
Landscape of a Washington Place 
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