Meridian House

Meridian House is a historic mansion in the Meridian Hill neighborhood of Northwest Washington, D.C., designed by the American architect John Russell Pope in the Beaux Arts manner with Louis XVI classical symmetry. It was built around 1920 for the diplomat Irwin B. Laughlin, who filled it with eighteenth-century French drawings and Oriental porcelain and screens, and it stayed with the Laughlin family until about 1958 to 1960. In 1960 a newly formed non-profit, later the Meridian International Center, bought it with a grant from the Ford Foundation. In 1929 Architectural Forum praised it as among the finest examples of its kind in the country. A major renovation in 1994 kept the principal rooms' architectural detail, including eighteenth-century European overdoor paintings and antique brass fittings. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.