Visiting the Embassy

Brian and I had the opportunity to visit the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, DC. But first we had to go through a special clearance process to have the visit approved. And then we had to go to a special military briefing before the visit. And then during the visit we had to turn over our phones... 

But it was all so worth it! The embassy is one of the most glamorous on Embassy Row, and it has an equally glamorous history as well...

The building is also known as the Walsh-McLean House and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a contributing property to the Massachusetts Avenue Historic District, as well as the Dupont Circle Historic District.

The 50-room mansion, designed by architect Henry Andersen, was built from 1901 to 1903 by Irish-born Thomas F. Walsh for his daughter Evalyn. It cost $853,000 to construct (about $20,000,000 in 2008). Costing $850,000, the Walsh house was the most expensive ever built in Washington at that time.Evalyn eventually married Edward McLean, whose family owned the Washington Post. Edward negotiated to buy his wife the Hope Diamond, in a dressing room of the house. She was the last private owner of the famous jewel.

Thomas Walsh emigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1869 at the age of 19 with empty pockets and a drive to succeed. He went out west to seek his fortune, and he found it. He struck gold, of all places, in a silver mine in Colorado in the late 1880's. At its peak, the mine was producing $5,000 worth of gold daily. In 1903, he sold it for $5 million, plus a percentage of its phenomenal annual output, and moved to Washington, D.C. Thomas and his wife Carrie built the grandest house they could imagine near Dupont Circle, then a mecca for the rich and powerful who came to town to lobby the government and make a social splash. Many years later, in her autobiography "Father Struck It Rich," their daughter Evalyn Walsh McLean said the house expressed "the dreams my mother and father had when they were poor in Colorado."

On December 19, 1951, Ali Sastroamidjojo purchased the building for ONLY $335,000, for Indonesia, less than half of what it had cost to build fifty years earlier.

In September 2014, the Indonesian government inaugurated a 16-foot tall statue of Dewi Saraswati, a goddess of knowledge and wisdom, representative of the island of Bali. This statue is one of a few that graces Embassy Row, the others being a statue of Winston Churchill at the British Embassy, as well as a statue of Mahatma Gandhi at the Indian Embassy. 

Here is the statue- 

 The 16-foot gold and white statue depicts Saraswati standing on a lotus with three young students at her feet, one of which is Barack Obama.

The entry way is breath taking-

 with a grand central staircase patterned after those seen in great ocean liners, had three floors of open promenades under a huge stained-glass skylight. It also featured one of the earliest in-home elevators to wisk guests up to the fourth floor theater and ballroom. To top it off, Thomas Walsh had a slab of gold imbedded in the arch over the main entrance of the house, to show where the money came from.

This skylight above was made by Tiffany's, and sadly this picture only captures part of how large the entire thing really is!

My instructor Ibu Vianna, and Brian's 4 week substitute instructor Ibu Dewi-

 Brian's instructor, Iby Wita, traveled back to Indonesia, hence his need for a substitute.

The Walshes' flamboyant, free-spirited daughter, Evalyn, married the wealthy Edward Beale McLean and the two of them managed to spend their combined fortunes of $100 million. Among their purchases was the famous 46-carat Hope Diamond, which they bought for $180,000. Even though Evalyn didn't believe in the gem's legendary curse and wore it everywhere, the jewel seemed to cast a shadow over the lives of both the McLeans and the Walshes.

The litany of their tragedies seems never-ending. The Walshes son died in an auto accident; Thomas Walsh was plagued with alcoholism and depression in his later life; Evalyn and her husband also lost their 9-year old son in a bizarre auto accident in front of their famous "Friendship" estate; Edward McLean died of a heart attack in a mental institution; the family newspaper, the Washington Post went bankrupt; and Evalyns' daughter died of an overdose of sleeping pills.

Some people have claimed to see the restless spirit of Evalyn Walsh McLean still haunting the mansion, drifting up and down the massive staircase and through the many grand rooms of the fabulous house that was built by a man who was clever enough to look for gold in a silver mine.

We however did not see the ghost of Evalyn during our visit...