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Obamas Could Move to Embassy Row: Here’s Why

The Bidens and Clintons can put a good word in to the first family. (Photo By Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
The Bidens and Clintons can put a good word in to the first family. (Photo By Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

President Barack Obama will be the first former president to stick around D.C.  since Woodrow Wilson. Wilson retired from the White House with his wife, Edith Wilson, to 2340 S St., NW, in the Embassy Row neighborhood.  

Wilson lived there until his death in 1924. Edith lived there nearly four more decades until she died in 1961, when she gave the home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And, Embassy Row, off of Massachusetts Avenue, could very well be where the Obamas decide to live.  

Two of Obama’s good friends and trusted advisers are very familiar with the area, as well as several foreign ambassadors. Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., has lived at the Naval Observatory, about four minutes up Mass. Ave from the Wilson home, for more than seven years now. In 2000, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bought a $2.85 million five-bedroom house in the neighborhood.  

But Clinton and former President Bill Clinton considered their Chappaqua, N.Y., home to be their primary residence. They bought that property for $1.7 million in 1999, two years before they left the White House, to kick off Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign.  

When Pope Francis visited in September, he stayed at the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See to the United States, also known as the Vatican embassy. Located across the street from Biden’s home, security was very prepared to protect the Pope.  

And since Obama’s staying in Washington after his presidency for daughter Sasha to finish high school, Embassy Row makes sense for her logistically. The first family would be a five-minute drive from the exclusive Sidwell Friends campus if they live close to the Naval Observatory and a 10-minute drive maximum from anywhere else on Embassy Row.  

Embassy Row homes have plenty of land for first dogs Bo and Sunny and privacy for the family. And the first couple’s social life would continue to thrive with their future neighbors.


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