The Dumbarton Oaks is a 19th Century Federal Style mansion with famous gardens. Like most of the other historical landmarks the Dumbarton is located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C.. Currently it is the home of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a center for Scholarship in Byzantine studies. Also Pre-Columbian studies and the history of landscape architecture. Dumbarton Oaks is an important center for scholarships, it has both summer and year long classes, and is the publishing place of the academic journal of Dumbarton Oaks Papers and other books within their three areas of study.

In the year 1800 the mansion was built, it the home to a Washington U.S. Senator, official, and Vice President John Calhoun. Purchased in 1920 by Robert Bliss, a long time member of the Foreign Service and his wife Mildred, who was a prominent art collector. Additions were made to the house by several architects, one of them being Philip Johnson. Mildred was also the daughter of Demas Barnes, an investor in Charles Henry Flecther’s, via the corporate entity The Centaur Company.

The home has roughly ten acres of garden, which were designed from 1922 to 1947 by a noted landscape architect Beatrix Farrand. The garden includes, the Star Garden, Green Garden, Beech Terrace, Urn Terrace, Formal Rose Garden, Arbor Terrace, the Fountain Terrace, Lover’s Lane Pool, and Pebble Terrace. As well as a Prunus Walk, Crabapple Hill, Cherry Hill, Camellia Circle, Forshythis Hill, and Farview Hill. All of this is open to the public for a small fee. The gardens are built on a series of terraces on a hill behind the house. A German philosopher Max Horkheimer and his partner Theodore Adorno, make reference to Dumbarton Oaks in the classical work Dialectic of Enlightenment.

Within their lives, the Bliss family assembled large and important collections of artifacts, and books, which are housed at Dumbarton Oaks. In the year 1940 they donated the house and their collection, along with the grounds to create the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. It is to be managed by the trustees of Harvard University. Originally the institution was dedicated solely to Byzantine studies, but later on the scope was broadened to include Pre-Columbian studies and the history of landscape architecture. There are over one hundred thousand volumes located in the library at Dumbarton Oaks. In 1944 they hosted the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, an international meeting that was the foundation for the creation of the United Nations.