New Embassy

Smart citizens of Paris felt a twinge of pique, last week, at news that a plan originally conceived by Louis XV's great architect Jacques Ange Gabriel to beautify the present Place de la Concord will shortly be carried to completion by the U. S.

The news broke at Paris with announcement that 31,000,000 francs ($1,219,000) has been agreed upon as the price eventually to be paid by the U. S. for a structure facing the Place de la Concord which is now occupied by the famed Cercle de

l'Union Artistique or Fine Arts Club. How the Coolidge Administration proposes to deal with this property in the manner of Louis XV was crisply revealed at Washington, last week, by Representative Stephen G. Porter of Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Foreign (Diplomatic and Consular) Service Buildings Commission. Said he: "An office building for our Embassy and Consulate will be erected. . . . Such a building as the Administration now has in mind would correspond with the architecture of the Hotel Florentin, the present residence of Baron Edouard de Rothschild, at the corner of the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue St. Florentin, and would balance the two larger structures of the Ministry of Marine and the Hotel Crillon, in accordance with the original plan of Jacques Gabriel."

Observers recalled that the present, sumptuous U. S. Ambassadorial Residence at No. 2, Avenue d'lena, Paris, was purchased and bestowed upon the State Department by the present U. S. Ambassador to France, famed Clevelander Myron Timothy Herrick.