The British Are Coming: The British Legation Moves to Connecticut Avenue
Although William Stewart and Curtis Hillyer had already built their mansions as a statement of the future respectability of Dupont Circle, it was not until the arrival of the British Legation in the southern part of the neighborhood that the area north of Shepherd’s Row would finally start to be viewed as a desirable location.
With the increase in the importance of Washington, DC, both as the center of the federal government and as a town growing in global political and cultural influence after the Civil War, Britain’s minister to the United States since 1867, Sir Edward Norton, believed that it was now imperative to have an impressive and permanent legation building in Washington.
The British Legation had been leasing a house at 1525 H Street Northwest just to the east of St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square. The Prussian government had already purchased its own legation building on Fifteenth S…
