Open Diplomacy

With its slim pillars and airy grillwork, the house rises coolly from the hot, harsh Indian landscape. Inside, a many-plumed fountain plays in the lofty reception hall, whose interior walls, repeating the grille motif, rise majestically to the shallow, ruler-straight roof. A sculpturally handsome staircase spirals upward to the private quarters, which are ranged around the two-story-high central hall. The clean, modified-Mogul lines of Roosevelt House reveal the fine hand of Architect Edward D. Stone, whose U.S. embassy chancery in New Delhi (TIME, Jan. 12, 1959) established the grille as an adornment of contemporary architecture.

But while the $700,000 residence, completed early this year, draws the same esthetic praise as the neighboring chancery, it also draws some practical complaints from the people who live in it: U.S. Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith and his family. While light and air move freely through Stone's interior grillwork walls, so does sound. "You can't have a quiet chat anywhere in the house without being heard everywhere," says Mrs. Galbraith, exercising a woman's right to a little exaggeration. "When we have house guests, my husband and I talk over plans for the day in our private living room, but find it quite unnecessary to discuss them later with our guests. They've already overheard every word. It is a house for open diplomacy, openly arrived at."

Involuntary Voyeurs. Reason is that though most of the bedrooms have four solid walls, the Galbraiths' upstairs living room and the main guest suite have grillwork for their front walls. Anyone in the ambassador's room can look directly across the interior court into the main guest suite, a situation that caused an early visitor to quip: "People who live in Stone houses should undress in the dark." By hanging curtains along the grillwork walls, this problem has been alleviated.

When Under Secretary of State W. Averell Harriman stayed at Roosevelt House, he found he had a bedmate--the Galbraiths' Siamese cat Ahmed, who stalked in casually through a gap between the door and the grillwork. Sparrows nest in the grilles, and dust accumulates rapidly in the hard-to-reach crevices. Several times a week, barefoot houseboys clamber up the grilles to clean dust and bird droppings from the apertures. Fascinated by the scalability of his walls, Galbraith and his sons themselves have taken to climbing like so many human flies.

"In a Palace." The multijetted fountain in the reception hall sounds like "a toilet permanently out of order," the ambassador grumbles. But when the fountain is turned off, the small pool is hardly noticeable. On one occasion, a U.S. colonel marched straight through it without breaking stride on his way to greet Galbraith, standing at the other side. Since then, the perimeter of the pool has been marked with potted plants.

Architect Stone is defensive about the Galbraiths' complaints: "Why are they carping about these little points? These petty features obscure the truth--they are living in a palace." Stone is right, and even the ambassador concurs in principle. When Roosevelt House was dedicated in January, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru admired its beauty but wondered about its practicality. Rejoined Galbraith: "I urge in reply that utility and economy are the enemies of good architects, and certainly no builder is ever remembered for practicing these traits."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.