aster of the beau geste, the self-
taught architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, chronicler in stone of
the houses, monuments and palaces that embody the
pathos of the modern British 20th century global empire,
designed one masterpiece in America. The British Embassy
on Massachusetts Avenue occupies a very generous
suburban lot. But, the Embassy's architecture evokes the
monumental aspects of his masterwork, the Vice-Regal
Palace in New Delhi, now the Republic of India Presidential
Palace, and the domestic elements of Middleton Park, built
for the Earl of Jersey, an imposing residence near Oxford,
which I made a reverent visit to years ago.
Wandering the grounds in the late 1960s of Mrs. Joan
Whitney Payson's Greentree estate which she shared with
her brother, Jock Whitney, at Manhasset, New York, I came
upon her orchid greenhouse. Her resident orchid expert
M
The Chancery under construction, dating from approximately 1928.
The Architecture of Diplomacy © Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
HYLAND
