The Office of the Secretary of State is meant to evoke an 18th century drawing room.
Photographer: Durston SaylorSee Inside the Most Lavish Rooms in Washington, D.C.
Take a tour through the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the US Department of State, which rival—and perhaps surpass—the interiors of the White House.
When the State Department Extension was completed in 1960, it was intended to fulfill a number of uses, one of which was to house a reception area for the US Department of State. “They planned it as a space to invite dignitaries and entertain at a scale that was very important for the time period,” says Virginia Hart, curator and director of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the US Department of State, a job that entails maintaining the rooms and exhibiting their collection of more than 5,000 furnishings and decorative arts objects.
There was just one problem. “When they opened in 1961, the buildings were largely unfurnished—and provided via General Services Administration (GSA) schedules,” Hart says. “It was the same furniture you’d see in an airport.” When Mary Caroline Herter, the wife of Secretary of State Christian Herter, saw the original rooms, she declared that “she had never been so mortified in her life” at the thought of playing host in the surroundings.