Pink Palace
a.k.a. Inter-American Defense Board Headquarters
2600 16th St., NW., Washington, DCThe Inter-American Defense Board headquarters, located at 2600 16th Street, N.W., is a monumental Venetian Late Gothic Revival residence constructed in 1905 as part of a plan to create a grand entrance into the nation's capital along 16th Street. Constructed to the plans of noted local architect George Oakley Totten, Jr., it stands as one of Washington's most interesting and elegant residential structures. Sited prominently at the height of the 16th Street hill, the building was part of an ambitious design by Mrs. John B. Henderson, a local real estate magnate, and socialite, to create a grand official entrance to the city leading down 16th Street, N.W. to the White House. The house, in its style, siting, and scale is illustrative not only of Mrs. Henderson's grand intentions to turn what she considered to be an architecturally uninteresting town into an elegant city but also of the federal government's renewed interest, in the turn of this century, in creating a city worthy of being the nation's capital. This building, popularly known as the Pink Palace, is an excellent example of the type of grand, in-town estate envisioned and constructed by Mrs. Henderson along 16th Street.
Local significance of the building:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.