During the heydays of the transatlantic alliance between Belgium and the United States, the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs built a new chancery – the office section of an embassy – in Washington, D.C. In historical research on diplomatic architecture, authors have mainly focused on the building policy of (former) great powers such as the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia. These studies examine to what extent these states have used such diplomatic building projects as an instrument of national representation on foreign soil.