Asia Society announces new permanent home in historic Washington building

The Asia Society announced on Thursday that it had marked out territory on the Washington policy landscape with the purchase of a US$17.5 million building that will give it a permanent spot alongside other US capital think tanks dating back more than a century, striving for influence.

The 70-year-old institution, founded by the grandson of oil mogul John D. Rockefeller, has focused more on public policy in recent years, in addition to its traditional focus on arts, culture and education, under former Australian prime minister and Asia Society President Kevin Rudd.

“The Blaine Mansion is the ideal Washington location for our Policy Institute and its China Centre,” Rudd said in a statement.

Thursday’s announcement came a day after it closed on the historic 15,000-square-foot James G. Blaine Mansion, which will house offices, state-of-the-art conference facilities and meeting spaces.

The Guilded Age building, listed at US$29.95 million in 2023, then reduced to US$19.99 million in 2025, also has a private pool as part of its 7,000-square-foot penthouse, plus three levels of underground parking and an attached restaurant space and office annex.

A quick search suggests the think tank is currently the only one in Washington with a pool, although the Asia Society is reportedly looking into renovating the rooftop area.

The purchase was made possible by Stephen Schwarzman, a society trustee and the chairman, chief executive and co-founder of Blackstone, the world’s largest asset management firm, who was the lead donor, in addition to contributions by other trustees and supporters.

The financier, listed by Forbes as the world’s 46th richest person with a net worth of US$41.7 billion, has long supported US-China ties.

In 2023, he gave US$100 million to launch the Schwarzman Scholars programme at Schwarzman College on Beijing’s Tsinghua University campus.

Earlier this month, the House Select Committee on China called on the Trump administration to sanction several Chinese institutions, including Tsinghua.

“The relationships between the United States and countries in Asia will shape much of this century, and policymakers need a trusted, independent forum for candid dialogue and the sharing of expertise,” Schwarzman said in a statement.

The Gilded Age mansion is located in Washington’s DuPont Circle neighbourhood, sometimes dubbed “think tank row”. Blaine is within a few blocks of the nation’s oldest, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, founded in 1910.

SCMP Plus is a new premium news platform that gives you an

all-inclusive edge to stay ahead on China news.

To access our exclusive content you’ll need to subscribe.

Already a subscriber?

LOG IN

And it is in company with the others, shuttling lawmakers, academics, foreign leaders and journalists in and out of lunch meetings, seminars and Track 1.5 and 2 “unofficial” negotiation sessions.

In a bid to shake their reputation as too bookish and at arm’s length from the pointy end of policy, some think tanks started rebranding themselves after the 1980s as “do tanks”.

Others have at times referred to the neighbourhood as “universities without students”, the “C-Span echo chamber” and part of the “Washington is Hollywood for ugly people” characterisation attributed to Democrat strategist Paul Begala in the early 1990s.

Blaine Mansion has had a storied history. Lawyer and former diplomat John Phillips and his wife, Linda Douglass, most recently sold it. Phillips, a former ambassador to Italy and San Marino from 2013-2017, practised public interest law, which would not, on the face of it, seem hugely lucrative. But he was a pioneer in the US Government’s 1980s whistle-blower reward programme meant to encourage citizens to report fraud.

This saw his firm take on numerous major fraud cases that recovered over US$13 billion for state and federal governments over several decades. These were pursued under a contingency fee model – under which a law firm only gets paid if it wins – that saw his Phillips & Cohen LLP earn hundreds of millions of US dollars.

The building was completed in 1882 for James G. Blaine, a Maine politician who served as US Secretary of State. Among its past lives, Blaine Mansion was the home of inventor George Westinghouse, the Japanese Embassy from 1921 to 1925, the Rural Electrification Administration during the Great Depression and the offices of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Phillips and former journalist Douglass embarked on a multi-year US$20 million renovation after buying it in 2006 for US$6.2 million.

“We are proud that the Asia Society Policy Institute will make this distinguished heritage building its permanent home in Washington,” said Rudd.