Rio de Janeiro and Havana by Harrison & Abramovitz, 1948 and 1950

Following the Second World War, the United States embarked on a decades-long building program to construct foreign embassies in 25 countries around the world in an effort to contain the threat to democracy posed by the Soviet Union and communism. After the Soviet Union successfully conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1949, surprising the international community, the containment of communism became the primary foreign policy goal of the United States government. To this end, the United States expanded its nuclear arsenal and military presence, but also recognized that cultural diplomacy, or “soft power,” in the form of education, art exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, and architectural design were important strategies to persuade other countries about the benefits of democracy.

Library, US embassy Havanna

The US State Department hired leading modern architects, including Wallace Harrison, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Eero Saarinen, to design embassies that expressed the American ideals of a progressive, democratic society. Located in the center of major cities, these buildings were porous and open to their urban surroundings. They employed large amounts of glass and abstract geometries, sometimes combined with local materials and forms. Embassies served as local headquarters for American diplomats, members of the United States Information Agency, and operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency, but they also included public spaces, such as libraries where visitors could read about American culture, auditoriums for lectures and film screenings, as well as art installations featuring American artists, particularly the abstract expressionists.

The first embassies built under the State Department’s modernist program were those designed by Harrison & Abramovitz in Rio de Janeiro (1948, top picture-left)  and Havana (1950, top picture-right). Wallace Harrison was the favorite architect of the Rockefeller family, and Latin America was a key focus of the Rockefellers during World War II and the Cold War. In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Nelson Rockefeller as Coordinator of Inter-American affairs. In this position, Rockefeller was responsible for containing the influence of Nazism in Latin America — a cause which Rockefeller remained passionately committed to until well after the end of the war. Rockefeller was an important influence in Harrison & Abramovitz’s selection to design the United Nations Secretariat Building in New York City, which was built concurrently with the Rio and Havana embassies from 1947-1952, and it is interesting to note the similarities between their design for the UN and their designs for these embassies.

View from the the US embassy in Rio

The firm’s work exemplified the extreme minimalism of the International Style, fitting the State Department’s emphasis on modern architecture as cultural diplomacy. Their design for the Brazilian embassy, on Avenue Président Wilson in Rio de Janeiro, was a twelve-story tower topped with a recessed penthouse and covered rooftop terrace that totally revolutionized what an American government building could be. The concrete structure was clad in Italian travertine and over 25,000 square feet of glass. The tall tower, which housed staff apartments, a movie theater, and a cafeteria on the upper floors and offices on the lower ones, was complemented by a kidney-shaped, single-story annex which housed the USIS library.

Even more so than their embassy in Rio de Janeiro, Harrison & Abramovitz’s embassy in Havana strongly reflects the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City  — exhibiting strong parallels in terms of the building’s glazing, massing, and the calculated synergy between the building’s glass façades and its waterfront setting.

As with the UN, every element of the Havana embassy was selected to harmonize the architectural composition with its natural landscape. Glazing was used to mirror sky and water, and stone cladding was used to link the structure with the Cuban terrain. The unglazed portions of the principle structure were clad in Italian travertine supplied by the Italian government as part of its settlement of debts from World War II. The base of the building was clad in jaimanitas, a coral native to Cuba. The landscape architect Thomas D. Church designed the original plantings on the site. The interior furnishings for Rio and Havana were both made by Knoll & Associates.

Lines to apply for visas at the US embassy in Havanna

From 1763, Rio de Janeiro was the colonial capital of Brazil under Portuguese control. In 1960, the capital was moved to Brasilia (designed by the modernist Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer beginning in 1956). Beginning in 1971, Harrison & Abramovitz’s embassy was converted to a consulate and it continues to operate in that capacity today.

From the time of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 until the Obama administration reopened the embassy in 2015, the US Embassy in Havana ceased to operate. From the day it opened, the embassy has been a controversial political symbol, and although the US Embassy currently operates in the building, it has been operating under an “ordered departure status” since 2017.

David B. Peterson is CEO of Onera Group, Inc. and Executive Director of the Onera Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to supporting historic preservation. Mr. Peterson is Board Chair of the Harlem Academy school, an independent school offering students a leading education regardless of economic circumstance. He serves on the Advisory Council of the Glass House, a National Trust Historic site. He holds a BA from Dartmouth College, an MBA from NYU, and a MS in Historic Preservation from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Click here to order ‘US Embassies of the Cold War’.