US Embassies of the Cold War

Blog overview

‘US Embassies of the Cold War: the Architecture of Democracy, Diplomacy and Defense’ is a new first-of-its-kind, large format, photo-driven architecture book by David B. Peterson highlighting the fourteen most significant midcentury modern American Embassies built during the Cold War. This blog series will delve into a selection of Embassies from the book, offering readers a preview into how architecture was used as a powerful form of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War with embassies designed to express the American ideals of a progressive, democratic society.

Dublin by John Johansen, 1957

By David B. Peterson

February 15, 2024

 Designed in 1957 and opened to the public on St. Patrick’s Day 1964, John Johansen’s US Embassy in Dublin was the last of the midcentury modern embassies to be constructed under the State Department’s modernist initiative — and it was almost never built. By the early 1960’s, the embassy program had come under increasing political …...

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Oslo & London by Eero Saarinen, 1955 & 1956

By David B. Peterson

February 8, 2024

Eero Saarinen’s involvement in the modernist embassy program is a rare instance of continuity across a significant change of leadership in the Foreign Buildings Office that began under the Eisenhower administration. Saarinen’s design for Oslo exemplifies the International Style minimalism of the program in its early stages. His design for London demonstrates the shift towards …...

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Athens by Walter Gropius, 1956

By David B. Peterson

February 1, 2024

As one of the key modernist enemies of the Nazi Party, the selection of Walter Gropius to design the US Embassy in Athens was a pairing of architect with location that was rich with Cold War significance. In 1919, Gropius founded the Bauhaus, which quickly became an epicenter of the modernist movement in Germany’s Zwischenkriegszeit …...

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New Delhi by Edward Durell Stone, 1954

By David B. Peterson

January 25, 2024

Edward Durell Stone’s US Embassy in New Delhi was among the most widely celebrated of any of the modernist projects built by the State Department during the Cold War. Frank Lloyd Wright hailed Stone’s design, describing it as “one of the finest buildings of the last 100 years, and the only embassy to do credit …...

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The Hague by Marcel Breuer, 1956

By David B. Peterson

January 18, 2024

On March 3, 1945, Allied forces undertook an aerial bombardment of the Nazi-occupied Hague. The bombs missed their strategic military targets, landing instead in the historic heart of the city. The sophisticated Hôtel Paulez, which had stood at the intersection of Lange Voorhout and Korte Voorhout since the 1880s, was completely destroyed in the bombing. …...

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Rio de Janeiro and Havana by Harrison & Abramovitz, 1948 and 1950

By David B. Peterson

January 11, 2024

Following the Second World War, the United States embarked on a decades-long building program to construct foreign embassies in 25 countries around the world in an effort to contain the threat to democracy posed by the Soviet Union and communism. After the Soviet Union successfully conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1949, surprising the international …...

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