The residence, built in 1928, was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens as the British Embassy in Washington and the Ambassador's residence and was planned to incorporate both the Embassy offices and the Ambassador's house. It soon became apparent that more office space was needed and in the late 1950s the offices were transferred to the new building next door. The original offices are now used as apartments for staff and offices for the British Council and UK Trade & Investment.

Lutyens' residence and his chancery offices have undergone numerous alterations. Changes began at the design stage. In the Lutyens' office section, the ends of the wings form peculiarly tall pavilions to frame the composition, their curious proportions accentuated by the kind of apex-mounted chimney stacks which Lutyens used in his country houses.

Although this proportion may seem characteristic, the original presentation drawing shows the wings as one floor lower. During the period before the house was built, it was discovered that inadequate provision had been requested for staff quarters, so the two upper storeys are additions. The central gates which Lutyens designed to serve his chancery offices have been taken out of use for both traffic and security reasons, while the grander ceremonial gates to the U-shaped drive to the residence are opened only when there are large official receptions at the house.

The present building on Massachusetts Avenue, built of red brick with stone dressings and high roofs crowned with tall chimneys, suggests an English country house of the Queen Anne period; this is how the British architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944) conceived the design over 60 years ago. His many fine works include the Viceroy's House in New Delhi and the Whitehall Cenotaph in London, and he built and planned over 300 houses and buildings in Britain, Belgium, East Germany, France, Hungary, Italy and South Africa. The British Ambassador's residence is the only example of his work seen in the United States.

Lutyens was commissioned for the work and first visited the site and America in 1925. He was already heavily involved in the design and construction of the Viceroy's palace and offices in New Delhi, but between 1925 and 1927 completed 68 sheets of drawings for the Washington house, returning only in 1928 to see the foundation stone laid. The work was carried out in association with a Washington architect, Mr. F. H. Brooks, by the Harry W. Wardman Construction Company.

The architectural features of the British Embassy residence building and the clear-cut simplicity and boldness of Lutyens' design with its echoes of Williamsburg and Wren are of great interest to architectural historians. The Washington Embassy is in some way a scaled down version of the Palace in New Delhi with many similar features and fittings such as door handles, mirrors, columns and high ceilings, but it also recalls the exquisitely proportioned country house in the ideal domestic setting of an English country garden from which Lutyens' fame originated. Lutyens always insisted on materials and craftsmanship of the highest quality. The red bricks used on the exterior of the house are of non-standard size, and were hand made in Pennsylvania to resemble those used in Tudor times in Britain. The limestone used in contrast was quarried in Indiana.

The site available to Lutyens occupies four acres below the Observatory summit of the long Massachusetts Avenue hill. The house faces south to take advantage of the view, and is partly hidden from Massachusetts Avenue by the U-shaped office building, designed on a small scale in keeping with a residential neighbourhood. As the site slopes steeply upwards from the narrow frontage on Massachusetts Avenue, the house is higher than the offices; attention is drawn from the street to the importance of the building at the rear by two stone lions and by the tall Lutyens brick chimneys, with stepped down crowns and bearing the Royal cypher, which dominate the roof line of the foreground buildings.

The residence is joined to the original offices by a bridge forming a porte-cochere to the main entrance, which is concealed behind the offices. Over the bridge is the Ambassador's library. Lutyens draws attention to the importance of this room and of the partly concealed entrance through the use of large octagonal lamps bearing massive bronze crowns and other imposing external decoration visible only from close quarters as the Visitor turns the corner of the original office block.

Lutyens knew that his residence was not only an official building but also the home of a succession of Her Majesty's Representatives, each of whom would bring their personal possessions and their personalities to the interior decoration and atmosphere of his structure. The last major redecoration of the residence took place under the guidance of Lady Meyer, wife of Sir Christopher Meyer, who was Ambassador from 1996 to 2003. New bathrooms were put in, the bedrooms redesigned and the reception rooms redecorated. Some of the paintings were removed for conservation and a new selection hung.

Lutyens may never have suspected that the Embassy would grow to the extent that within a few years his offices would become inadequate to house the staff, but his design for the residence remains supremely functional and comfortable, as well as impressive. There can be no doubt of this in the minds of the thousands of visitors and guests who attend official functions and enjoy this unique house as well as the fortunate Ambassadors and their families who live in it.

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