The Abandoned Iranian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue

Someone left flowers at the fence.

In March 2026, as American warplanes struck targets across Iran and diplomats scrambled toward a ceasefire in Islamabad, small bouquets and pre-revolution Iranian flags began appearing outside a pair of abandoned buildings on Massachusetts Avenue NW. The buildings at 3003 and 3005 have been locked and silent for 46 years. No one has worked inside them since April 10, 1980, when 14 Iranian diplomats and their families boarded a British Airways jumbo jet at Dulles with less than two hours to spare before President Carter’s expulsion deadline.

Now, for the first time since 1979, American and Iranian officials are sitting across a table from each other. The ceasefire expires April 22nd. And someone is leaving flowers at the fence on Embassy Row.

This is the story of those two buildings.

Baist real estate map of Massachusetts Avenue and 30th Street NW, 1919. Library of Congress.

A Pacifist Builds a Mansion from Revolutionary-Era Bricks

Before this address belonged to Iran, it belonged to a man who believed no nation should go to war without asking its people first.

In March 1932, the novelist Kathleen Norris published an open letter in the Evening Star thanking a former congressman and diplomat named Alanson B. Houghton for proposing something radical: that no country should be able to declare war without first putting the question to a public vote. He was not some fringe idealist. He was the president of Corning Glass Works, a company he had tripled in size. He served as a congressman from New York, then as U.S. Ambassador to Germany under Harding (1922-25), and to Great Britain under Coolidge (1925-29).

And in 1934, he built himself a house at 3003 Massachusetts Avenue NW.

The Evening Star described it on May 12, 1934, under a headline that tells you everything about the man’s taste: “DWELLING ON MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE BUILT OF OLD BRICK FROM HISTORIC BUILDINGS.”

He didn’t want new bricks. He wanted bricks with a past. The walls of his Georgian Revival mansion were built from salvaged material: bricks from Clouds Mill near Alexandria, standing since 1785; bricks from a century-old mill near Laurel, Maryland; and bricks from the demolished Metropolitan Hotel, which had stood for 80 years at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street. He literally built his Washington home from the bones of the city’s own history.

The house sat on a half-acre triangular lot, 260 feet along the avenue and 220 feet along 30th Street NW. It had more than 40 rooms, eight bedrooms, a 38-by-24-foot library hung with tapestries, a Georgian wall-fountain with a blue-tiled goldfish pool, and an air conditioning system (still a novelty in 1934). A semicircular driveway swept in from the avenue behind a double hedge of English box. The gardens were designed by landscape architect Rose Greely. Interior decoration was handled by Schuyler and Lounsbery.

The architect was Frederick H. Brooke, a detail worth pausing on. Brooke was also the on-site architect for the British Embassy directly across the avenue, designed by the legendary Sir Edwin Lutyens. Houghton, who had served as ambassador to Britain, deliberately built his house to echo the embassy he once walked through every day: blank niches, urns, tall chimneys. Two buildings on opposite sides of the street, designed by the same architect, one for the British Crown and one for the man who represented America there.

By November 1937, the Evening Star reported that he was hosting the Episcopal bishop-elect of Washington for a dinner meeting of the St. John’s Church Men’s Club. 3003 had become what it would remain for decades: a gathering place for Washington’s elite.

Houghton died on September 15, 1941. He never knew what would become of his house.

The Day Persia Became Iran

Here’s one of those coincidences that makes you wonder if addresses have their own sense of timing.

On March 22, 1935, Persia officially changed its name to Iran. On the same day, the country purchased a building next door to the mansion Houghton had finished just one year earlier. This was 3005 Massachusetts Avenue.

Persia’s diplomatic presence in Washington had been bouncing around for decades. The first Persian minister arrived in 1888. The legation moved from building to building, starting on 18th Street NW. By 1905, Gen. Morteza Khan was the new minister. By 1913, society columns were reporting on American women attending receptions at the Persian legation. In 1921, the Persian minister was hosting luncheons featuring “only Persian dishes.”

But when Persia became Iran, the country wanted a permanent home on Embassy Row. They found it at 3005.

At some point after Houghton’s death in 1941, Iran also acquired his mansion next door, turning it into the ambassador’s residence. We haven’t been able to pin down the exact date of that purchase, but by the 1960s and 1970s, the ambassador was living and entertaining at 3003 while the chancery operated out of 3005.

Then, on January 5, 1958, the New York Times announced something new: “Iran to Build New $1,000,000 Embassy in Washington.” The article included an artist’s rendering of a modernist chancery to be built adjacent to the existing embassy. The architects, Howard S. Patterson and Francis Keally of New York, had spent six weeks in Iran studying the country’s architecture before drawing a single plan. The result was a one-and-a-half-story brick and stone structure with a pointed arch entrance that Patterson called “typically Iranian,” delicate columns, “exquisitely colored” native tiles and mosaics, and an octagonal, glass-walled room through which visitors could observe the gardens.

The old building at 3005 would become “a secondary building.”

Artist’s rendering of the new Iranian Embassy chancery, designed by Howard S. Patterson and Francis Keally. New York Times, January 5, 1958. The Patterson and Keally design for the new Iranian chancery, colorized. The modernist building featured a pointed arch entrance, Persian tiles and mosaics, and an octagonal glass-walled garden room. (AI-generated) Architectural rendering of the future Iranian Embassy

By January 10, 1964, Iran’s confidence was on full display. A full-page advertisement in the New York Times declared: “Politically Stable, Economically Sound, Progressive and Democratic: IRAN, Land of Hope and Opportunity.” It featured photographs of the Shah, Empress Farah, and the Karaj Dam. The contact address at the bottom: “Office of Press and Information, Embassy of Iran, 3005 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington 8, D.C.”

Two buildings. One country. Everything was about to split in half.

New York Times full-page advertisement for Iran – January 10th, 1964

The Double Life

For the next 17 years, 3003 and 3005 led a double life. Inside: the most extravagant parties Washington had ever seen. Outside: fury.

Inside: Zahedi’s Legendary Embassy Parties

Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi’s second tour in Washington (1973 to 1979) turned the compound into something out of a novel. Dom Perignon flowed. Caspian Sea caviar was piled high. Guests formed conga lines through the long halls of the residence and danced on tabletops. Barbara Walters would later call it “the number one embassy when it came to extravagance.”

Ambassador Zahedi greets Nancy Howe at the Iranian embassy’s celebration of the Shah’s birthday, October 28, 1975. Washington Post.

The parties were legendary. On October 28, 1975, the Washington Post’s Jeannette Smyth reported that Zahedi had thrown a birthday celebration for the Shah attended by 1,300 of his “most intimate friends.” Traffic was backed up for seven blocks, all the way to Sheridan Circle. The food included stuffed peacock, pomegranates, and figs. Guests included Barbara Walters (who arrived on the arm of OAS Ambassador Alejandro Orfila), WRC anchorman Glenn Rinker, and Nancy Howe, First Lady Betty Ford’s aide. A handwritten note from Richard Nixon was on display.

“This puts (Egyptian President) Anwar Sadat’s little do at Anderson House to shame,” said one party-goer.

A signed photograph of Nixon, dated June 5, 1975, attested to Zahedi’s loyalty: “To His Excellency Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi, To whose loyal friendship over the past 22 years, in bad times as well as good, I shall always be grateful. Richard Nixon.”

By 1977, the Shah’s birthday party drew more than 2,000 guests. The traffic delay on the avenue lasted two hours. The D.C. police chief had to issue a public statement.

London decorator Michael Szell redesigned the chancery’s interior at Zahedi’s request. An Iranian artisan was flown to Washington to create a mirrored mosaic ceiling in what became known as the Mosaic Room. According to WETA’s Boundary Stones, “staff would light the room with candles, and the ceiling would glitter like stars.”

Outside: Student Protests and a Bomb on the Sidewalk

While champagne corks popped inside, the scene on the sidewalk was very different.

On January 24, 1962, about 40 Iranian students staged a three-hour “sit-in” in the reception lobby at 3005, chanting for the resignation of Prime Minister Ali Amini and demanding freedom for Mohammed Mossadegh. Police backed a patrol wagon to the front entrance. An embassy official threatened to have them arrested. They left shortly before 5 p.m., retreated a block away, and set up a legal picket line. The embassy declined to comment.

On December 15, 1970, more than 75 students hiked from Baltimore to the embassy, protesting death sentences allegedly given to five of their countrymen who had tried to leave Iran without passports. Their signs read “STOP KILLING IRANIAN STUDENTS.” Two were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Ambassador Dr. Aslan Afshar held a brief news conference and said he could not confirm the students’ allegations. He called them “professional agitators.”

And on May 13, 1978, the Washington Post reported that an “incendiary device” had been discovered at about midnight in front of the chancery. The cylindrical metal device was about seven or eight inches long, similar in appearance to a tennis ball can, with wires protruding from it. An Army bomb disposal unit was called in. A dog trained to detect explosives was sent to the scene. No suspects were identified. No notes were found. The Secret Service disarmed it at about 1 a.m.

The Revolution Comes to Massachusetts Avenue

The Iranian Revolution arrived on the avenue in fast motion across the first five months of 1979.

For the first time, Iranian student protesters march without their paper masks, January 5, 1979. Previously, masks protected them from identification by SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police. Washington Post.

On January 6, 1979, about 150 Iranian students returned to the streets of Washington, marching from the White House to the Islamic Center at 2551 Massachusetts Avenue NW, chanting “Down, down, down with the shah!” and “Death to the shah!” They dragged an effigy “smashed by the Iranian people.” But something was different this time. For the first time, the protesters were not wearing paper masks.

The masks had been their trademark for years, a form of protection from SAVAK, the Shah’s dreaded secret police. Now, one demonstrator named Mohammed Roshanaei explained, savoring the irony, agents of SAVAK were the ones wearing masks, “to protect themselves from future retribution from the shah’s opponents.”

When the students reached the Islamic Center, their progress toward the embassy was blocked by about 40 D.C. police carrying riot sticks. No arrests were reported. But traffic along the avenue was backed up for several blocks as motorists slowed to watch.

At one point, a demonstrator tried to hand a leaflet to two well-dressed women in a passing Mercedes. The driver rebuffed the offer, shouting that she did not want “Communist literature.”

“We are not Communists,” the young student protested. “We believe in God.”

Less than a month later, on February 3, 1979, more than 75 supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were arrested in front of the embassy. Fifty-six men and 20 women were charged with blocking the sidewalk. The Washington Post’s Paul Valentine described it as a “peaceful, wordless and strangely slow-motion protest” that clogged rush hour traffic along the avenue. Police threw a heavy guard around the ornate building at 3005, just west of Rock Creek Park on what had long been one of the most prestigious stretches of Massachusetts Avenue.

Inside, things were moving even faster. Military officers took control, ousting the charge d’affaires and restoring the Shah’s portrait in the lobby. Zahedi had “returned to Washington yesterday from Morocco, where the shah has been officially ‘vacationing'” during the turbulence in Iran.

Outside, the remaining protesters sat in silence on the sidewalk, huddling together to stay