Islamic Center of Washington
- Architect
- Mario Rossi
- Year
- 1954
- Style
- Islamic Medieval
- City
- Washington, DC
The Islamic Center of Washington is a mosque and cultural center on Embassy Row, just east of the Rock Creek bridge on Massachusetts Avenue in Georgetown. Egypt's ambassador Kamil Abdul Rahim revived a dormant prewar effort after 1948, chairing the mosque foundation and traveling to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to raise funds from across the Muslim world. Designed by Mario Rossi, it opened in 1957 as the largest mosque in the Western Hemisphere.
the building
Minaret on Embassy Row. The minaret and mosque facade front directly onto Massachusetts Avenue among the embassies of Embassy Row, making it one of the few Neo-Mamluk buildings in Washington and an immediate visual break from the neoclassical and Beaux-Arts diplomatic residences around it.
the style
Rossi worked in Neo-Mamluk architecture, drawn from medieval Cairo, a style with almost no other examples in Washington. It set the mosque apart from the classical vocabulary used up and down Embassy Row and signaled the building's identity as a distinctly Islamic institution rather than an adapted Western one.
More on Islamic Medievalsignificance
One of the first major mosques built in the United States, the Islamic Center was, at its 1957 opening, the largest mosque in the Western Hemisphere. Its founding drew on the collective effort of the Washington diplomatic community, including early funding from Mohammed Issa Abu Al Hawa, who broke ground in 1948 by placing a silver dollar in the earth for luck.
nearby
- McCormick, Robert S., House (Brazilian Embassy)
- Evermay
- Frances Perkins House
- French ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C.
- Oak Hill Cemetery Chapel
- Wilson, Woodrow House