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The Massachusetts Avenue Historic District is linearly conceived. L'Enfant planned Massachusetts Avenue as a transverse avenue crossing the city diagonally from the Eastern Branch to Rock Creek. The longest of the transverse avenues, it is roughly parallel to Pennsylvania Avenue and, like Pennsylvania Avenue, is 160 feet wide. In the years 1890 to 1930, Massachusetts Avenue between Scott Circle and Observatory Hill developed as an elegant boulevard lined by the sumptuous homes of some of the richest and most influential citizens of the United States.
In these years a remarkable degree of architectural quality, coherence and unity was achieved, creating a street façade unique in the city and perhaps in the nation. The Depression of 1929 destroyed the lifestyles of many of the families who built these great houses. Embassies, associations, foundations and clubs moved in. Today the character of the Avenue is that of an Embassy Row.
In the late 1880s and 1890s houses along Massachusetts Avenue were built of brick or combinations of brick and brownstone in the Queen Anne, Chateauesque, Richardsonian Romanesque and early Georgian Revival styles. Between 1900 and 1910 palatial residences designed in the eclectic Beaux Arts manner were erected as far north as the intersection of S Street and Massachusetts Avenue. These ranged from incisive, white limestone geometrically massed buildings in the Louis XV and XVI manner and Italian 16th century styles to neo-classical as well as buildings with 16th century northern European origins. From 1910 until the early 1930s, the Beaux Arts style of architecture continued to flourish along the Avenue. Construction has continued on a smaller scale up to the present day. |
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