A Home in Eisenhowerplatz

London's historic Grosvenor Square has been a stamping ground for Americans ever since 1785, when John Adams, first U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, moved in at No. 9, on the corner of Brook Street. But though U.S. offices clustered so thickly around the square in World War II that Londoners called the area "Eisenhowerplatz" (now "Little America"), the U.S. never got around to building its own embassy. Last week London buzzed with the news that in Grosvenor Square the U.S. will 1) build a new $3,000,000, five-story embassy, probably by 1958, and 2) entrust the design to one of the boldest U.S. modern architects, Finnish-born Eero Saarinen, 45.

Saarinen's design was selected from among plans submitted by eight leading U.S. architectural firms. The problem set by the State Department's Foreign Buildings Operations: design a building "which is distinguished and will reflect credit on the United States," yet remain "appropriate to the site and country." Surveying the site during a trip to London last year, Saarinen (whose most recent projects have been General Motors' $68 million Technical Center in Detroit and M.I.T.'s tricornered Kresge Auditorium and cylindrical chapel--TIME, Dec. 5) decided to scale his building to the proportions of the square's older Georgian buildings, conform to surrounding heights and match cornice lines to nearby buildings.

"London struck me as a city of black and white," Saarinen says. To emphasize the play of light and shadow across the broad, 330-ft. fac,ade, he worked out a structural grill that takes its rhythm from the window spacing of surrounding Georgian structures. For his major material Saarinen chose white Portland stone, traditional both in London's official buildings and as ornament on private brick dwellings. To sharpen the black and white contrast, he used black oxidized bronze for a decorative frieze of state seals between the first and second floors and for a great seal of the U.S. above the main entrance. The final result is a U-shaped building that will house the embassy staff in the center, USIS and consular offices in either wing, and shelter a formal garden court (over an underground garage). Londoners generally were enthusiastic. Wrote the architectural correspondent of London's Times: "A welcome acquisition to the rapidly changing face of Mayfair."

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