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President Roosevelt's White House Improvements
Reconstruction of the West Wing in 1930 after extensive damage by a Christmas Eve fire in 1929 included a central air-conditioning system installed by Carrier Engineering Company. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his staff experienced their first warm season at the White House in 1933, air-conditioning units were added to the private quarters on the second floor. Roosevelt swam as therapy for
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Securing the White House
When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, White House security became a much more serious concern than it had been in the past. Bulletproof glass in the three south windows of the Oval Office and a "bomb-barrier," concrete poured along the West Wall of the Executive Office Building, were installed. Special outdoor lighting was designed by General
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Photographs of the Lincoln White House
Abraham Lincoln assumed the office of president of the United States on March 4, 1861, an innovative period for photography. He was the first president to be photographed extensively and is thought to have sat for as many as thirty-six photographers on sixty-six occasions. 1 His White House also became the subject matter for a growing number of photographers. Their work enables us
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Gettysburg and Golf Courses
On July 12, 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first president in office to employ a helicopter in his transportation service. This event marked a significant development for both the White House and the helicopter industry. In the short term, the helicopter became a key feature of presidential safety in the event of nuclear war. At the same time, Eisenhower’s occasionally co
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The Man Who Came to Dinner at the White House
To Alexander Woollcott, the White House was the “best theatrical boarding house in Washington.” To his hostess, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Woollcott was “a perfect guest,” one she welcomed “with open arms.” To White House Chief Usher, Howell G. Crim, however, the former drama critic, popular lecturer and radio personality, sometime actor, and Algonquin Round Table habitué was “impossible.” The White House house
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Comfort in My Retirement
They have been four years of incessant labour and anxiety and of great responsibility. I am heartily rejoiced that my term is so near its close. I will soon cease to be a servant and will become a sovereign. As a private citizen I will have no one but myself to serve, and will exercise a part of the sovereign
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The West Wing: 1900-1924
1902: A White House "restoration" was undertaken. Under Theodore Roosevelt, the 19th-century conservatories were razed, and a new "temporary" executive office building, later called the West Wing, was erected. President Theodore Roosevelt worked in his new rectangular office for the first time on November 5. The first cabinet meeting was held in the new wing on November 6.
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President Thomas Jefferson's White House Museum
An issue about the White House and the West naturally draws one’s attention to the expansionism experienced during Jefferson’s administration. While the glow of new, cheap land way out there somewhere reverberated in the average citizen’s mind, natural curiosity made him or her wonder also what the West was like. People knew it was different, and might have s
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Rebuilding the White House and U.S. Capitol
On August 24, 1814, British forces marched into Washington, D.C. and set fire to the White House, the Capitol, and other government buildings. After the British left the city, the government hired James Hoban, designer of the original President's House, to supervise the rebuilding of the mansion and executive office buildings, while Benjamin H. Latrobe returned as Architect of the Capitol.
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Dressing Down for the Presidency
The new British minister to the United States was outraged. Within a few weeks of Minister Anthony Merry’s arrival in Washington, he was reporting to his foreign office in London what he perceived as breaches of diplomatic protocol, and topping his list of grievances were complaints regarding President Thomas Jefferson’s appearance. Merry had accompanied Secretary of State James Madi
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History on the Auction Block
Dolley Madison died at her house on Lafayette Square on July 12, 1849. She was eighty-one. By that age she was one of the few women of note who remembered the founding fathers personally. There were others, most of them women like Mrs. Madison who had outlived their husbands. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, widow of Alexander Hamilton was older and lived just up
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Eleanor Roosevelt's "My Day," 12/12/1938
WASHINGTON, Sunday—I must go back to tell you something of what has been going on the last few days, for they have indeed been typically busy days of the Washington season.Friday night I presided at the dinner of the American Public Welfare Association. The last time I had been with them was in Montreal three years ago. This di