17 June rides under scented linden rows The Washington Star captured the open-air salon atmosphere of the street in August 1923 31 “Have you ever driven the length of Massachusetts Avenue on a night in early June when the lindens were in bloom, and wondered what that faint, sweet, delicate, haunting, intriguing fragrance might be?” The writer described the new Union Station by the Capitol and the houses of congressmen, socialites and the embassies she passed traveling westward But mostly she eulogized Mass Ave’s miles of American lindens She even reported “a distinct feeling of disappointment” when she first saw Berlin’s famed Unter den Linden Mass Ave’s trees were better “No thoroughfare of the old world can boast of lindens in such number or such perfection ” Embassy Row is born Many other American grand avenues were eroded in the 1930s But in the capital, a generation of high-ranking foreign visitors had been drawn to Mass Ave’s European-style palaces and tree allées As the Great Depression changed the original owners’ lifestyles, many sold their establishments to foreign governments Others sold them to private associations Generally, the new occupants used these venues for similar purposes 32 Some embassy and institutional transfers: 1923 • Chile (2305 Mass) 1923 • Riggs Bank (1913 Mass) 1928 • Egypt (2301 Mass) 1929 • Czech Republic (2349 Mass) 1932 • Sulgrave Club (1801 Mass) 1934 • Brazil (3000 Mass) 1940 • Iranian legation (2315 Mass) 1949 • Chinese Comm. Corp (2311 Mass) 1949 • American Red Cross (15 Dupont Circle) 1950 • Cosmos Club (2121 Mass) Fig. 28 “The small bell-shaped blossoms growing in the clusters are . . . often . . . not discernible until one approaches close to the tree. Glancing up, one discovers . . . a light green canopy from which hang suspended small creamy blossoms in clusters,” continued the Washington Star article written in 1923.
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