The district includes, at its center, the grand neo-Classical Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park) with an important array of grand Beaux-Arts style mansions, foreign legations, and large apartment buildings framing either side of it…

Emily MacVeagh purchased land from developer Mary Foote Henderson (1841-1931), who actively engaged in transforming Meridian Hill into an elite residential and diplomatic community. The MacVeagh House, built in 1911 by architect Nathan C. Wyeth…

The Warder-Totten House is the only structure designed by the firm of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1866) remaining in DC. Commissioned in 1885 by American businessman Benjamin Warder (1824-1894) at 1509 K Street NW, the building was razed in 1923…

Meridian Hill Park, also known today as Malcolm X Park following a 1969 speech by activist Angela Davis, is a distinguished example of landscape design. The hilly, twelve-acre park with its Beaux-Arts design elements is notable for its elaborate…

The Inter-American Defense Board headquarters, located at 2600 Sixteenth Street NW, is a monumental Venetian late Gothic Revival residence constructed in 1905 as part of socialite and developer Mary Foote Henderson’s (1841-1931) plan to create a…

Park Tower illustrates the significant effort expended at the beginning of the twentieth century to develop Sixteenth Street as a prestigious avenue; this was a fashionable address for congressmen, professionals, and other notables during the…

Like Meridian Hall and several other mansions in the Meridian Hill Historic District, this building was part of Mary Foote Henderson's plan to beautify the area. She commissioned renowned architect George Oakley Totten, Jr. to design this building,…

The congregation of this local church was organized in 1906, yet the vision for the religious building expanded through a desire for a national Baptist Church. Original designs included a prominent statue of Roger Williams, Puritan minister,…

Built between 1921 and 1923 by John Russell Pope, Meridian House is an 18th-century French-style mansion, built for Irwin Boyle Laughlin, an American diplomat and an heir of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company fortune. With his fine collection of…

Meridian Hall, like several other mansions in the Meridian Hill Historic District, was commissioned by Mary Foote Henderson, who was the guiding force behind the development of the area as an enclave of embassies and mansions. She advocated for the…