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| American Ambassadors in France |
| The list of American ambassadors to France is an illustrious one, beginning with Benjamin Franklin (1785-89), already known and admired across Europe, who was quickly embraced by French intellectuals of the revolutionary period. |
| The American Library in Paris | Charles Trueheart |
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His immediate successors, who also bestrode the city as fellow statesmen of liberty, were two future presidents of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (1785-89) and James Monroe (1794-96), as well as Gouverneur Morris (1792-94), a principal author of the U.S. Constitution, and Robert Livingston (1796-1804), who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase. In the course of the next century, American envoys – their titles were ‘Minister Plenipotentiary’ until 1893 when the United States Legation became an embassy and the chiefs of mission ambassadors – included five former or future secretaries of state and a future secretary of the treasury, numerous candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency, and one future vice president, Levi Parsons Morton (1881-85). Although many of these distinguished men were celebrated figures in French society during their terms, they also suffered occasional frustrations, none more than Joel Barlow (1811-1812), a onetime poet and merchant whose tenure as minister ended tragically: Unable to secure an appointment with Napoleon I in Paris, Barlow followed him to Poland on the emperor’s disastrous march to Moscow, was turned away again, and died in the chaos of the French army’s massive retreat. In the twentieth century, Ambassador Myron T. Herrick – who served twice in the post, 1912-14, 1921-29 – solved a problem that plagued all his predecessors: the absence of a suitable official residence for the ambassador. Using his personal funds, he purchased a hôtel particulier on the avenue d’Iena with his own funds. From its balcony, the hero Charles Lindbergh greeted a sea of French well-wishers after his legendary transatlantic flight. In 1968, the ambassador’s residence moved to the Palais de Pontalba on the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, where it remains, two blocks from the chancery just off the Place de la Concorde. Since World War II – during which William Leahy served briefly as envoy to the puppet wartime government at Vichy -- American ambassadors in Paris have included distinguished career diplomats (Jefferson Caffery, David K. E. Bruce, Charles Bohlen, Arthur Hartman), figures from the political world (R. Sargent Shriver, Pamela Harriman), and prominent business executives and financiers (Douglas Dillon, Amory Houghton, Arthur K. Watson, Evan Galbraith, Felix Rohatyn, Craig Stapleton). The current ambassador, entertainment industry executive Charles H. Rivkin of California, presented his credentials in 2009
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 Benjamin Franklin © U.S. Embassy Paris |
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