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4 FOXHALL AND BEYOND: THE HIGH LIFE, HIGHER ED, AND U-BOATS

BOUNDARIES: Nebraska Avenue NW, 42nd Street NW, Reservoir Road NW, and Foxhall Road NW

DISTANCE: About 2.7 miles

DIFFICULTY: Easy

PARKING: 2-hour free and metered street parking along the route; Metro recommended

PUBLIC TRANSIT: At start: Metrobus M4 runs from the Tenleytown-AU Metro Station to Nebraska Avenue NW. At end: Metrobus D6 runs along Reservoir Road NW to the Dupont Circle Metro Station.

What an eyeful. This beautiful stroll, most of it along gardenlike Foxhall Road NW, rolls downhill past the homes of diplomats and other bigwigs. One of the honchos who used to live there was David Lloyd Kreeger, a former chairman of Government Employees Insurance Company. Luckily for art and architecture lovers, his modern-style mansion, about midway through this trek, is now a museum. The walk starts near American University (D.C. native Goldie Hawn’s alma mater), passes The George Washington University’s lesser-known Mount Vernon Campus (Boston Celtics coach Arnold “Red” Auerbach is a GW alum), and winds up at Georgetown University (President Bill Clinton is its most famous grad). The most private stop is the most historic: the building that now houses the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is where the U.S. Navy broke secret codes during World War II.

 Start at 4000 Nebraska Avenue NW, the private residence of the ambassador of Japan since 1977. Behind the taupe fence surrounding this 12-acre estate is a flat-roofed concrete and stone home with picture windows. It overlooks a traditional Japanese garden and a teahouse that seems to float on a pond.

 Next door at 3900 is the ambassador of Sweden’s 1923 Spanish-style home. The Nordic diplomat and his Asian neighbor both have tennis courts.

 Across the street at 4001 Nebraska Avenue NW are the NBC television studios. The public can’t visit, but it’s cool to see where Meet the Press is taped. It’s the longest-running TV show in history. NBC is also where the Muppets’ Kermit the Frog debuted and where the second of the four Nixon-Kennedy debates was held. They were the nation’s first televised presidential debates.

 NBC’s next-door neighbor at 3801 is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS was created from 22 diverse federal departments and agencies in 2002. It chose a very historic home: the Mount Vernon Seminary, the first school of higher education open to women in D.C. The school moved there in 1917. In 1942, the U.S. Navy took over its Georgian Revival dorms and classrooms, so the school moved to Foxhall Road NW. By the end of World War II, more than 5,000 civilians and soldiers worked at the Navy’s communications security section (OP-20-G) breaking Japanese and German codes, according to the National Security Agency (NSA).

 Across Massachusetts Avenue NW is American University, which was chartered by Congress in 1893. Alice Paul is a three-time graduate of American University and the Washington College of Law, the school says. Paul wrote the original Equal Rights Amendment, founded the National Women’s Party, and played a key role in securing women’s right to vote. These days the school is home to WAMU, American University Radio, a member of National Public Radio.

 At the end of American University, turn left onto Foxhall Road NW. Walk past tall oak trees and vintage brick, Tudor, and fieldstone homes for six blocks. On both sides of the road at Edmunds Street NW are entrances descending to the Wesley Heights Trail. Managed by Rock Creek Park, this ivy-covered stream-valley trail links Battery Kemble and Glover Archbold parks.

 A bit farther down this shady, two-lane road on the right is the walled residence of Spain’s ambassador. This contemporary-style brick building was built in 2003 by Pritzker prize–winning architect José Rafael Moneo.

 Across the street is the Kreeger Museum. David and Carmen Kreeger jointly amassed their modern and African art collection, which includes works by Monet, Picasso, and Van Gogh, the museum says. “I never bought art as an investment,” said David, GEICO’s former chairman. “I bought it for love, and I was lucky.” Washington is lucky that the Kreegers chose Philip Johnson to design their modern, travertine home. When he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the group called him “one of architecture’s most potent forces.” He designed the home in 1963, and it became a museum in 1994.

  Downhill on the right is the wooded estate of Belgium’s ambassador. While mansions are almost commonplace here, “few can compete with this one for sheer, Gatsbyesque opulence,” says the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. The statuesque stone mansion was modeled after the Hôtel de Rothelin-Charolais in Paris. Ann Thompson Dodge, heir to the Dodge automobile fortune, commissioned it in 1931 as a wedding present for her daughter. Dodge died in 1970 at age 103, the same age as D.C. arts patron Rachel “Bunny” Mellon. They were two of the world’s wealthiest women.

 Across W Street NW on the right is the 25-acre Mount Vernon campus of The George Washington University, whose main digs are downtown. When it was Mount Vernon Seminary, its famous grads included Ada Louise Comstock, a president of Radcliffe College, and the daughters and granddaughters of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The seminary morphed into Mount Vernon College and became part of GW in 1999. The campus hosts an annual French film festival and other public events.

 On the next block to the right is the Embassy of Germany and ambassador’s residence. Designed in 1994 by Oswald Mathias “O.M.” Ungers, the stone residence uses patterns of squares “throughout the complex, with the windows, doorway and artwork—even the furniture and fireplaces—all demonstrating this harmony of design,” says Germany’s website. Visitors can catch a glimpse from the outside, and they typically are invited inside the compound during the European Union’s spring embassy tour.

 Turn left on Reservoir Road NW. On both sides of the road by 44th Street NW is the Glover Archbold Trail, part of a network of wooded trails that crisscrosses D.C. It’s named for the parkland’s donors, banker Charles Carroll Glover and Anne Archbold, a Standard Oil heir, whose 1922 Tuscan-inspired villa lies northeast of the trailhead in the private, gated Hillandale community.

 Just after the park on the left is the 8-acre Embassy of France, which was also part of Archbold’s 78-acre estate. Behind the metal-barred gate, the French sponsor wine tastings, movies, concerts, art exhibits, a Bastille Day celebration, and more. Its modern, white-marble campus was built in 1984.

 Georgetown University starts across the street. Its medical school and hospital front Reservoir Road NW. Behind that, the rest of its camera-worthy campus stretches roughly a half mile.

Philip Johnson–designed Kreeger Museum

CODE BREAKERS: SINKING GERMAN SUBS

America’s future looked dreary during those first few months after Pearl Harbor was bombed. From January to March 1942, German U-boats sank 216 American ships off the East Coast, according to the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. But the tides turned after the workers at the Navy’s Nebraska Avenue complex broke the submarines’ Enigma-created ciphers. “We were able to sink or capture 95 German U-boats based on this type of information,” says the NSA’s Jennifer Wilcox. The U.S. Navy focused on the subs’ encrypted messages, while the U.S. Army, the British, and others worked on solving the Enigma ciphers of the German Army and Air Force, the NSA says. (A cipher changes individual letters, and a code changes entire words or phrases.) On Nebraska Avenue, roughly 3,000 of the 5,000 workers were WAVES, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. They worked 24/7 using 121 massive Bombe machines that replicated the typewriter-like Enigma enciphering machines used by the Germans. Some of the cryptanalysts also focused on Japanese codes. One of them was Agnes Meyer Driscoll, also known as Miss Aggie or Madame X. This pioneer cryptanalyst “broke a multitude of Japanese naval systems, as well as [being] a developer of early machine systems,” the NSA said when it inducted her into its Hall of Honor in 2000. Driscoll moved from the Navy to the NSA when it took over some of the military’s cryptologic duties. She’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

POINTS OF INTEREST

(Private) residence of the ambassador of Japan 4000 Nebraska Ave. NW, 202-238-6900, us.emb-japan.go.jp/jicc/index.html

NBC4 Washington and NBC News 4001 Nebraska Ave. NW, 202-885-4000, nbcwashington.com and nbcnews.com/meet-the-press

(Private) residence of the ambassador of Sweden 3900 Nebraska Ave. NW, 202-467-2600, swedenabroad.com

Department of Homeland Security 3801 Nebraska Ave. NW, 202-282-8000, dhs.gov

American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, 202-885-1000, american.edu

National Park Service’s Wesley Heights Trail Foxhall Road NW at Edmunds Street NW, 202-895-6000, nps.gov/rocr/index.htm

Kreeger Museum 2401 Foxhall Rd. NW, 202-337-3050, kreegermuseum.org

(Private) residence of the ambassador of Spain 2350 Foxhall Rd. NW, 202-452-0100, spainemb.org

(Private) residence of the ambassador of Belgium 2300 Foxhall Rd. NW, 202-333-6900, countries.diplomatie.belgium.be/en/united_states

Mount Vernon Campus of The George Washington University Foxhall Road NW and Whitehaven Parkway NW, 202-994-1000, gwu.edu/mount-vernon-campus

(Private) Embassy of Germany and residence of the ambassador 1800 Foxhall Rd. NW, 202-298-4000, germany.info/embassy

National Park Service’s Glover-Archbold Trail Reservoir Road NW at 44th Street NW, 202-895-6000, nps.gov/rocr/index.htm

(Private) Embassy of France 4101 Reservoir Rd. NW, 202-944-6000, ambafrance-us.org

Georgetown University Reservoir Road NW to Prospect Street NW (main entrance: 3700 O St. NW), 202-687-0100, georgetown.edu

ROUTE SUMMARY

1 Start at 4001 Nebraska Avenue NW.

2 Turn left on Foxhall Road NW.

3 Turn left on Reservoir Road NW.

CONNECTING THE WALKS

For Walk 2 (Forest Hills to Tenleytown), take the M4 bus on Nebraska Avenue NW about ½ mile to the Tenleytown-AU Metro station. For Walk 5 (Georgetown North), continue east on Reservoir Road NW to Wisconsin Avenue NW.