Winfield House
Winfield House is a mansion in Regent's Park ( London ). It is the official residence of the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The property covers 49,000 m², making it the largest private park in London after Buckingham Palace .
history
The original building on the property was Hertford Villa , the largest of the eight villas John Nash had built in Regent's Park. The residents included the Marquesses of Hertford , newspaper owner Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere , and the American financier Otto Hermann Kahn . A fire in the 1930s damaged the villa; the American Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton bought the house, had it demolished and replaced it with the present-day neo-Georgian mansion. It was designed by Leonard Rome Guthrie from the English architecture firm Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie. The name of the house goes back to Barbara Hutton's grandfather Frank Winfield Woolworth and his famous estate Winfield Hall in Glen Cove . Hutton's only child, Lance Reventlow , was born in Winfield House.
During the Second World War was Winfield House by a unit of the Royal Air Force used. Cary Grant paid a visit during the war; he was married to Barbara Hutton at the time. After the war, Hutton sold the house to the US government for a dollar; since 1955 it has served as the residence of the respective US ambassador.
Winfield House is on the United States Secretary of State's List of Culturally Significant Properties .
US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama stayed at Winfield House during their visit to London from March 31 to April 2, 2009.
Web links
- Winfield House on the US Embassy website
- Winfield House (Hertford Villa, St Dunstan's) in the DiCamillo Companion Database of Houses ( Memento from July 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 51 ° 31 ′ 51 ″ N , 0 ° 9 ′ 51.4 ″ W.