BUILDING DESIGN
Designed in 1950 by the renowned team of Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, architects of the CIA Headquarters at Langley and a host of other civic projects, the embassy was completed to great critical acclaim in 1953. It earned a prominent place that same year in an exhibition on “Architecture for the State Department” at the Museum of Modern Art, alongside another consulate by the duo in Rio de Jainero and seven other embassies from around the world. The scheme in Havana was simple and elegant: a sprawling ground floor level with two courtyard patios that contained information, visa, and consular desks, and a setback office tower that housed diplomatic offices and bases of operations for more sensitive government missions. Clad in imported travertine panels, the embassy's clean lines and simple rectangular geometries epitomized both the industrial aesthetic of International Style modernism and the seemingly inescapable influence of encroaching American culture.