Dumbarton Oaks is a historic estate in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. William Hammond Dorsey built the central block of the house around 1801, and Edward Magruder Linthicum later enlarged it and named it The Oaks. Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss bought it in 1920. Architect Frederick H. Brooke made it a Colonial Revival residence in 1921 to 1923, and Beatrix Farrand designed the terraced gardens.
Philip Johnson designed the Pre-Columbian pavilion, commissioned in 1959. It has eight domed circular galleries, each 25 feet (7.6 m) across, around a central fountain, with curved glass walls. Robert Venturi designed a 44,500-square-foot (4,130 m²) library, opened in 2005.
The Blisses gave the estate to Harvard in 1940, and the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks Conference there helped lay groundwork for the United Nations. The garden opened to the public in 1939.
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