NEW FACE FOR AMERICA ABROAD

ONE dismal night just before the turn of the century, so the story goes, a London bobby approached an American leaning wearily against a lamppost, summarily ordered him along home. "Home! Home!'' came the answer in a twanging New England accent. "I have no home. I am the American ambassador."

Like any U.S. ambassador in those days, Joseph Hodges Choate had been sent to the Court of St. James's with little more than his credentials and traveling expenses, was left to himself to find some house that would serve as both home and embassy. It was not until 1911 that the U.S. State Department made any concerted effort to acquire buildings abroad, and not until after World War II did Congress decide that the nation's brugeoning responsibilities demanded buildings to match.

Today, the new diplomatic face the U.S. presents to foreign capitals is one Americans can be proud of. In the past six years, the U.S. has completed 18 new embassies, 14 new consulates from Accra to Caracas to Kobe. As a result of a bold decision made in 1954, they are some of the handsomest, most original modern structures anywhere.

Credit for the decision goes to the State Department's Office of Foreign Buildings, headed by long-term Career Officer William P. Hughes. He concluded that neither Renaissance palaces (which too much recalled the past) nor glass boxes (which often clashed with traditional architecture, raised more hackles than they soothed) adequately represented the U.S. today. An advisory group of top architects was set up, and some 50 outstanding architects were called on for plans.

At Home Abroad. Keynote of the new program was that the building should be modern but related to the culture and style of the country in which it was to be built. Designers were expected to travel to the sites, familiarize themselves with the climate and customs, local construction methods and materials. The results were dramatic. Under the impact of foreign cultures, many architects were inspired to new departures from modern architecture's dogmatic restraints, evolved a host of lively new concepts to create buildings that are graciously at home in the community, friendly and yet dignified.

As with any bold architectural venture, the results have often met with a mixed critical reaction. Eero Saarinen's Oslo embassy (opposite) has been warmly praised, while his nearly completed London embassy, which combines traditional Portland stone with straw-colored aluminum trim, has been sharply taken to task for being too brash and bright. In New Delhi, Edward D. Stone adopted the form of an Indian temple and wrapped it with a lacy grille that lights up like a jewel box at night. The New Delhi embassy has been so widely admired that it now stays open on Sundays to accommodate the swarms of Indian visitors, while its dramatic use of the grille has brought this device, long a traditional part of Hindu temples, back into high architectural fashion.

Around the world the U.S. is now reaping the rewards of good architecture. In Kobe, Japan, where 600 U.S. citizens and Japanese this week turned out for the Fourth of July reception, Japanese guests went out of their way to express their pleasure that the modern, technologically advanced structure had been shaped to complement a traditional Japanese garden. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, U.S. Ambassador Gerald Augustin Drew was proudly showing off his one-month-old embassy on Harry S. Truman Boulevard as the most completely air-conditioned building on the island.

Marble & Mahogany. In Greece, Athenians were pleased that the new U.S. embassy designed by Walter Gropius will make copious use of the same Pentelic marble that the ancients used to build the Parthenon. In Baghdad, where temperatures rise over 110DEG F. and air condition ing is not available. Architect Jose Luis Sert solved the problem by threading a flow of water from the nearby Tigris River through the buildings, incorporating screens, high ceilings and playful parasol roofs to make the quarters habitable during the hot season. In The Hague, U.S. Ambassador Philip Young found that he could do his work with a great deal more efficiency now that his embassy, previously scattered over four different buildings in various sectors of the city, was unified into one complex. He also took considerable satisfaction in the fact that all winter long Dutch boys and girls trooped in regularly at noon hour to watch movies about the U.S. in the em bassy's new 120-seat auditorium.

On lower levels, too, the new buildings were paying off. In Caracas, where the passport section issued 26,000 visas last year, Consul General Louis Mason Drury made the point: "It's the visa and passport work that pretty much shapes your reputation with people. This building has paid for itself already as far as public relations are concerned." In Indonesia, Charge d'Affaires John W. Henderson found the new air-conditioned embassy had raised morale higher than in any of his previous six posts: "It's a building of which Americans can be proud. I consider it neither ostentatious nor unduly modest in the role the U.S. is playing in this part of the world."

The most bizarre compliment of all is the one paid to the new embassy in Accra, Ghana--the most recently established of all the U.S.'s 79 embassies. A free, floating structure on stilts designed by Chicago Architect Harry Weese to make maximum use of local mahogany (so inexpensive locally that it is used to make soft-drink crates), it has so taken the Ghanaians' eyes that the government now wants it for its very own for ministerial offices. The U.S. State Department last week agreed to negotiate the sale, with the proviso that another site be made available for a bigger and even handsomer embassy building.

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