Walking Washington, D.C.. Barbara J. Saffir
with this one for sheer, Gatsbyesque opulence,” says the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. The statuesque stone mansion was modeled after the Hôtel de Rothelin-Charolais in Paris. Ann Thompson Dodge, heir to the Dodge automobile fortune, commissioned it in 1931 as a wedding present for her daughter. Dodge died in 1970 at age 103, the same age as D.C. arts patron Rachel “Bunny” Mellon. They were two of the world’s wealthiest women.
Across W Street NW on the right is the 25-acre Mount Vernon campus of The George Washington University, whose main digs are downtown. When it was Mount Vernon Seminary, its famous grads included Ada Louise Comstock, a president of Radcliffe College, and the daughters and granddaughters of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The seminary morphed into Mount Vernon College and became part of GW in 1999. The campus hosts an annual French film festival and other public events.
On the next block to the right is the Embassy of Germany and ambassador’s residence. Designed in 1994 by Oswald Mathias “O.M.” Ungers, the stone residence uses patterns of squares “throughout the complex, with the windows, doorway and artwork—even the furniture and fireplaces—all demonstrating this harmony of design,” says Germany’s website. Visitors can catch a glimpse from the outside, and they typically are invited inside the compound during the European Union’s spring embassy tour.
Turn left on Reservoir Road NW. On both sides of the road by 44th Street NW is the Glover Archbold Trail, part of a network of wooded trails that crisscrosses D.C. It’s named for the parkland’s donors, banker Charles Carroll Glover and Anne Archbold, a Standard Oil heir, whose 1922 Tuscan-inspired villa lies northeast of the trailhead in the private, gated Hillandale community.
Just after the park on the left is the 8-acre Embassy of France, which was also part of Archbold’s 78-acre estate. Behind the metal-barred gate, the French sponsor wine tastings, movies, concerts, art exhibits, a Bastille Day celebration, and more. Its modern, white-marble campus was built in 1984.
Georgetown University starts across the street. Its medical school and hospital front Reservoir Road NW. Behind that, the rest of its camera-worthy campus stretches roughly a half mile.
Philip Johnson–designed Kreeger Museum
CODE BREAKERS: SINKING GERMAN SUBS
America’s future looked dreary during those first few months after Pearl Harbor was bombed. From January to March 1942, German U-boats sank 216 American ships off the East Coast, according to the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. But the tides turned after the workers at the Navy’s Nebraska Avenue complex broke the submarines’ Enigma-created ciphers. “We were able to sink or capture 95 German U-boats based on this type of information,” says the NSA’s Jennifer Wilcox. The U.S. Navy focused on the subs’ encrypted messages, while the U.S. Army, the British, and others worked on solving the Enigma ciphers of the German Army and Air Force, the NSA says. (A cipher changes individual letters, and a code changes entire words or phrases.) On Nebraska Avenue, roughly 3,000 of the 5,000 workers were WAVES, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. They worked 24/7 using 121 massive Bombe machines that replicated the typewriter-like Enigma enciphering machines used by the Germans. Some of the cryptanalysts also focused on Japanese codes. One of them was Agnes Meyer Driscoll, also known as Miss Aggie or Madame X. This pioneer cryptanalyst “broke a multitude of Japanese naval systems, as well as [being] a developer of early machine systems,” the NSA said when it inducted her into its Hall of Honor in 2000. Driscoll moved from the Navy to the NSA when it took over some of the military’s cryptologic duties. She’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
POINTS OF INTEREST
(Private) residence of the ambassador of Japan 4000 Nebraska Ave. NW, 202-238-6900, us.emb-japan.go.jp/jicc/index.html
NBC4 Washington and NBC News 4001 Nebraska Ave. NW, 202-885-4000, nbcwashington.com and nbcnews.com/meet-the-press
(Private) residence of the ambassador of Sweden 3900 Nebraska Ave. NW, 202-467-2600, swedenabroad.com
Department of Homeland Security 3801 Nebraska Ave. NW, 202-282-8000, dhs.gov
American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, 202-885-1000, american.edu
National Park Service’s Wesley Heights Trail Foxhall Road NW at Edmunds Street NW, 202-895-6000, nps.gov/rocr/index.htm
Kreeger Museum 2401 Foxhall Rd. NW, 202-337-3050, kreegermuseum.org
(Private) residence of the ambassador of Spain 2350 Foxhall Rd. NW, 202-452-0100, spainemb.org
(Private) residence of the ambassador of Belgium 2300 Foxhall Rd. NW, 202-333-6900, countries.diplomatie.belgium.be/en/united_states
Mount Vernon Campus of The George Washington University Foxhall Road NW and Whitehaven Parkway NW, 202-994-1000, gwu.edu/mount-vernon-campus
(Private) Embassy of Germany and residence of the ambassador 1800 Foxhall Rd. NW, 202-298-4000, germany.info/embassy
National Park Service’s Glover-Archbold Trail Reservoir Road NW at 44th Street NW, 202-895-6000, nps.gov/rocr/index.htm
(Private) Embassy of France 4101 Reservoir Rd. NW, 202-944-6000, ambafrance-us.org
Georgetown University Reservoir Road NW to Prospect Street NW (main entrance: 3700 O St. NW), 202-687-0100, georgetown.edu
ROUTE SUMMARY
1 Start at 4001 Nebraska Avenue NW.
2 Turn left on Foxhall Road NW.
3 Turn left on Reservoir Road NW.
CONNECTING THE WALKS
For Walk 2 (Forest Hills to Tenleytown), take the M4 bus on Nebraska Avenue NW about ½ mile to the Tenleytown-AU Metro station. For Walk 5 (Georgetown North), continue east on Reservoir Road NW to Wisconsin Avenue NW.
5 GEORGETOWN NORTH: SILVER SPOONS AND SPIES
BOUNDARIES: S Street NW, 27th Street NW, P Street NW, and 35th Street NW
DISTANCE: 2.5 miles
DIFFICULTY: Easy, except optional hilly cemetery walk
PARKING: Free Sunday street parking throughout D.C. unless otherwise marked; 4-hour meters by the library; and limited 2-hour free and metered spaces elsewhere; parking garages on Wisconsin Avenue NW
PUBLIC TRANSIT: Circulator bus and Metrobus 31 run along Wisconsin Avenue NW to several Metro stations.
Camelot lives. With its storybook row houses and mansions, narrow streets, and brick sidewalks, the historic district of Georgetown seems as magical now as it was when John F. Kennedy and his glamorous colleagues gravitated there in the 1950s. Now D.C.’s oldest neighborhood is home