Ambassador
The Residence
As late as the reign of Louis XV the Faubourg Saint-Honoré was a bucolic suburb. It was here in 1710 that the King’s Chancellor, Henri François d’Aguesseau, acquired a tract of land which included the present site of the American Embassy Residence. Ten years later he built a house, and subsequently the property passed through a series of owners. In 1836, Baroness Michaela de Pontalba, born in New Orleans and married to a descendant of a French noble family with land in Louisiana, purchased the property. By 1842, she had demolished the d’Aguesseau house and commissioned the architect Ludovico Visconti to design a new one for the site. Construction of the Residence, which the Baroness de Pontalba would occupy for the rest of her life was finished in 1855. Her heirs sold the property to Baron Edmond de Rothschild in 1876. He hired Felix Langlais to substantially renovate, enlarge and embellish the Residence, leaving only Visconti’s gatehouse and portals intact, but following much of the H-shaped ground floor plan.
During the Second World War, the house, then owned by Baron Maurice de Rothschild, was requisitioned by the Germans as an officers’ club for the Luftwaffe. After the war, it was rented out to the British Royal Air Force Club, and then to the U.S. Government. In 1948 the American Government purchased the building, primarily for the U.S. Information Service. These offices were moved to the Hôtel Talleyrand, off place de la Concorde, as restoration was completed in 1971 during the tenure of Ambassador and Mrs. Arthur K. Watson. The restoration project was supervised by the Foreign Buildings Operations in Washington and Maurice Pascaud, a specialist in French eighteenth and early nineteenth-century architecture.
This decisive effort towards restoration of the historic structure continues to be repeated in smaller steps today. Decisions continue to be made based upon historic precedent rather than personal taste. Many donors have contributed generously to furnish and enhance the Residence and gardens.
Over the years, the Ambassadors and their spouses have worked to preserve and restore this Residence which is inextricably linked to French and American history.