Embassy of Canada

At 59 feet wide and 80 feet tall, the facade of the Moore House is a greatly enlarged version of a typical three-bay row house composition. Within this seemingly restrictive model, the architects created a complex and highly successful interplay between the three bays and sets of twos. Two main stories marked by tall French windows open onto two sets of balconies, limestone on the second story and wrought iron on the third. Two “attic” stories, each defined by a full (but different) entablature, comprise fully one-third of the building's height. Two side bays, treated in the same elegant manner as those on the front, are visible from the street. Buff brick walls in conjunction with elegant architectural details carved in limestone are rarely an elegant combination, but Price and Sibour balance each material so that the finely carved limestone blends with the brick but predominates as the appropriate vehicle for the sculptural decoration. Total compositional control and integration, evidenced by such correlations as the segmental pediments on the dormer windows vis-à-vis the second-story arched French windows and the differentiation and transition between solids (walls) and voids (windows and doors), make the Moore House one of Washington's finest Beaux-Arts–era mansions.