United States Of America Embassy

The United States of America Embassy on Grosvenor Square is a purpose-built embassy designed by the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and built between 1957 and 1960. Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall served as executive architects in the United Kingdom, with F.J. Samuely as structural engineers. The gilded aluminium eagle sculpture is by Theodore Roszak.

The building is constructed of reinforced concrete clad in Portland stone on the front and side elevations and in concrete on the rear elevation. It follows a symmetrical U-shaped plan with a raised ground floor. The central main entrance leads to a lobby flanked by large halls on either side housing the visa section and library. The main lobby gives access to rooms on both sides and leads through to a single-storey rear block of offices. Separate entrances to the Consular and former Information Sections are located on the north and south sides, each with its own lobby and stair. The basement originally contained a café and auditorium, now altered, while the upper floors contain cellular offices.

Exterior

The Embassy occupies the west side of Grosvenor Square with shorter return elevations to the north and south. To emphasise its three-dimensional qualities, Saarinen set the building back from the street line, separating it by a stone-faced well in the form of a glacis. The long, tripartite main façade comprises twenty-two bays with a central five-bay entrance, a tall recessed ground floor of in-situ cast concrete supported on cruciform columns, four upper floors, and a set-back attic storey. This composition represents a modern reinterpretation of a Greek temple raised on a podium with a peristyle base and entablature-like top storey. The north and south elevations are thirteen bays wide with three-bay central entrances.

The ground floor has tall windows with gilded cruciform mullions and transom lights. The façades consist of load-bearing pre-cast concrete panels faced in Portland stone using an ingenious system of invisible jointing. These panels form a monumental grille in an off-set chequerboard pattern, within which are set gilded aluminium windows with deep mullions and quasi-saw-tooth profiles. The rear elevation follows the same pattern but is clad in pre-cast concrete. The fenestration alternates paired narrow opening lights with fixed glass panels.

The upper floors are carried on a giant concrete diagrid floor of intersecting diagonal concrete beams which transfers the load to the cruciform columns beneath. The exposed ends of the diagrid enable the façade to overhang the column line. Saarinen's application of this constructional form, which was invented in the 1920s, was of unusual sophistication in 1950s Britain, demonstrating the technological prowess then associated with the United States. This is one of the building's principal features, expressed both externally and internally throughout the ground floor. The diagrid is echoed in details such as the gilded pressed-metal parapet, cog-wheel window motifs, and exposed beam ends.

The building is surrounded by a gilded cruciform balustrade with matching lamp standards flanking the main entrance. The thirty-five-foot gilded aluminium eagle is by the noted Polish-American sculptor Theodore Roszak. Saarinen's original proposal had been for a representation of the United States Great Seal.

The architectural interest diminishes at the rear elevation, which continues the façade treatment of the front but clad in concrete. The two wings are linked by a lower single-storey block with service bays beneath.

Interior

Internally, special interest is largely confined to the ground floor public spaces: the main entrance and central lobbies, passport office, and former library, which have gilded cruciform columns and exposed diagrid ceilings. The former information service and consular lobbies and stairs on the north and south sides respectively also feature exposed diagrid ceilings.

The most notable area is the central lobby, which is clad in white Greek Pentelicon marble with travertine floors, some of which have been replaced. The stairs to the north and south lobbies have gilded cruciform balusters. The offices are and always were of little distinction and have been much altered. The ambassadorial rooms have been refurbished in a traditional style. The basement restaurant contains some relocated 18th-century and later features, reputedly salvaged from demolished houses in Grosvenor Square.

Historical Context

Until the 20th century, London embassies occupied former town houses, and many still do. Purpose-built premises emerged with the grand Dominion headquarters or 'empire houses'. In post-war London, with America leading the way, embassies became specialised office buildings with a wider range of functions than before. Besides publicly accessible spaces, they included reception rooms, consular sections, military and security offices, restricted access offices, the ambassador's office, and other spaces such as cafés, meeting rooms, and libraries. The United States Embassy was Britain's first modern embassy, followed by New Zealand House built between 1959 and 1963.

The United States connection with Grosvenor Square began in 1785 when the first Minister to the Court of St James, John Adams, rented Number 9. After that, consular functions took place in various buildings: Great Cumberland Place, Piccadilly, Portland Place, Grosvenor Gardens, and in 1938 at new premises at Number 1 Grosvenor Square, formerly the Canadian High Commission. During the Second World War, when General Eisenhower's headquarters were set up at Number 20, the Square became known as 'Little America'. The gardens were replanned in 1947-8 in memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose Grade II listed statue by W. Reid Dick stands in the centre.

From 1954 to 1960, the United States carried out a global embassy-building programme as part of its Cold War strategy. Grosvenor Square was the obvious location for a new United Kingdom embassy—or properly Chancellery, since it was not intended as an ambassadorial residence. In 1955, a competition was held limited to eight entrants. The winning entry was by Eero Saarinen. The building was constructed between 1957 and 1960 with some modifications to the original design, assisted by Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall as United Kingdom executive architects. It also housed the United States Consulate and United States Information Service.

Other embassies built during this formative era included Athens, built between 1956 and 1961 by Walter Gropius; The Hague, built between 1956 and 1959 by Marcel Breuer; New Delhi, built between 1954 and 1958 by Edward Durrell Stone; and Oslo, built between 1955 and 1958, also by Saarinen. The London embassy was the largest and most expensive built and the only one for which a competition was held. As such, it embodied the special relationship that had developed between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Design and Reception

Numerous demands and constraints beset the United Kingdom competition. From around 1925, the Grosvenor Estate had imposed a neo-Georgian aesthetic on new buildings in the Square with a master plan to replace 18th-century houses with nine-storey blocks. The post-war United States approach to embassy design deliberately abandoned overt classicism, now evocative of totalitarianism, and sought to harmonise its new buildings with the locality yet be distinguishably modern, American, and open to the public, providing facilities such as a library where people could learn about America.

While the United States was exempted from the Grosvenor Estate constraints, the competition brief sought a design 'which would engender good will through distinguished architectural quality'. While ruling out 'stylistic copies', it required 'an appropriate visual relationship to the other three sides of Grosvenor Square'. Portland stone was the specified cladding material.

In Saarinen's own words, his design 'anticipate(d) the changes that will occur there when the three sides of the square will be in nine storey pseudo-Georgian buildings. The square is in transition, and our building is built for the future. The mass and general cornice height, the silhouette, conform to those of the future buildings'. However, while the north side had been largely rebuilt to the Grosvenor Estate plan, the remainder was never realised in that form.

Reception was mixed, sometimes hostile. Modernists saw it as a compromise, particularly for the Georgian allusions of the symmetry and fenestration, while traditionalists thought the monumental form at odds with the Georgian setting. Few liked the façade, which was seen as too energetic and fussy—described as 'jazz rhythms added to the Georgian melody'. The gilding, in contrast with the white stone, was seen as superficial and gaudy. Saarinen had envisaged that the stonework would weather to black and white, an effect he admired, but anti-pollution laws thwarted that objective.

Despite this, aspects of the building were almost universally applauded. Reyner Banham, for example, said 'the building abounds in details whose consistency and logic bespeak a standard of professional competence that few buildings in Britain can rival'.

The Architect

Eero Saarinen, born in 1910 and died in 1961, was the son of the eminent Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, who emigrated to the United States in 1923. Eero studied architecture at Yale University, which was firmly rooted in the French and American Beaux-Arts tradition. He belonged to what is now regarded as the 'second generation' of the Modern Movement, which sought to move architecture beyond modernism's more stifling precepts such as form-follows-function.

He is best known for iconic masterpieces such as the General Motors Technical Centre in Michigan, the remarkable Trans World Airlines centre at John F. Kennedy Airport, Washington Dulles Airport, and the Memorial Gateway in St Louis, as well as furniture design including the famous 'tulip' and 'womb' chairs. The London embassy was one of only three buildings he designed outside the United States, alongside the United States Embassy in Oslo and the East Terminal at Ellenikon Airport in Athens, completed posthumously in 1963.

While achieving acclaim and success in his lifetime—he was one of the most prolific architects of his generation—Saarinen's perceived lack of a signature style and overt historicism, most acute at the London Embassy and the Morse and Stiles Colleges at Yale University, attracted criticism from orthodox modernists. Nonetheless, in 1962, after his untimely death at the age of 51, Saarinen was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects, its highest tribute. A renewed interest in 'Midcentury Modernism' in the 1990s has led to recognition of Saarinen's unique skill in adapting his own modernist vision to each individual client, project, and context. He is universally acknowledged as a master of mid-20th-century modernism.

Significance

The United States Embassy is designated for its special architectural interest in the strongly-articulated design and dynamic façades, well-detailed stonework, and consistency of detail. Of particular note is the innovative application of the exposed concrete diagrid—an intelligent combination of structural expression and decorative motifs which provides cohesion to the whole and illustrates Saarinen's principles of marrying form to structure and interior to exterior, as well as his close involvement in detail and execution. Eero Saarinen is an outstanding figure in 20th-century architecture and design, and this is an early example of a modernist yet contextual approach to design in a sensitive urban location. Internal interest is largely confined to the ground-floor public spaces.

The building also has special historic interest for its strong associations with Grosvenor Square, the home of the first United States Ambassador and the nerve centre of the American Armed Forces in Great Britain during the Second World War, witnessed by W. Reid Dick's statue of General Eisenhower erected in 1947 and other monuments. It was Britain's first modern embassy and has international significance as the apotheosis of the United States post-war embassy-building programme. Of all the United States embassies built during this period, this was the only one for which a competition was held, such was its status. Its design exemplifies the United States post-war mission to 'engender good will' in host nations through buildings of architectural distinction commissioned from some of the world's leading architects, which harmonised with their surroundings yet were distinguishably American and accessible. It embodied the special relationship that had developed between the United States and the United Kingdom while becoming the target for anti-United States sentiment, most famously in the 1968 anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.