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Little in Washington life excites locals more than the first sight of building spectator stands for the upcoming inauguration. The windows of the White House Historical Association look out over Lafayette Park and a hive of activity is underway in the weeks before President-elect Obama will take the oath. Not a leaf is on a tree to obscure a building
At this stage in the construction of the White House, 1796, the walls are rising above the second floor level. They are half way to completion. People were now beginning to see how extensive the house was to be, and they must have looked on in wonder. Larger than a statehouse and taller than most church steeples, it would have loomed
The new drawings were in hand, yet the site of the President’s House was not determined. Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s monumental “palace,” planned as a landmark in his ambitious city plan, was under way, but work was halted. A smaller house was now to be substituted for it. Already one could see the tremendous scale of the building L’Enfant h
The Red Room was the only complete interior designer Louis Comfort Tiffany created for the White House. Redesigned in high aesthetic taste (meaning art-like) the room was first called the Red Room some thirty-five years before, during the administration of James K. Polk. It is shown here about 1883, during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur, transformed from the old-fashioned room
Peter Waddell's painting re-creates the historic square north of the White House in 1902, the year President Theodore Roosevelt remodeled the house. To the right of the White House, one can see that the conservatories have been removed from the roof of President Thomas Jefferson's west terrace. At the end of this terrace the Temporary Executive Office is under construction. It
Although a great machine for the presidency, the White House operates entirely by hand. Since it was first occupied in 1800, certainly thousands of employees have worked there in various capacities, as full-time staff, from butlers to ladies’ maids to social secretaries, to carpenters, plumbers, and painters. There is no set rule about size, for the needs change. A century ago, th
Theodore Roosevelt’s remodeling of the White House in 1902 transformed it from a crazy quilt of alterations over time into a cohesive statement of modern times. Of course the historic original house prevailed. That it be kept was central to the stated concept of “restoration” that architect Charles F. McKim laid before the president and first lady. The familiar White House
The most distinctive of the state interiors in the White House is the Blue Room. Located central in the plan, it projects toward the magnificent view of the Potomac valley. In planning a new office in 1909 President William Howard Taft elected to create an oval office, to replicate the shape and thus relate the official office to the historic White
We at the White House Historical Association are relative newcomers to Lafayette Square. The windows of our brick town houses look out on Lafayette Park. A distinction is made between the two “Lafayettes,” the park in the middle, with the square referring to the buildings that face it along the sides. The White House is set back considerably from the sout
President Rutherford B. Hayes announced when he was elected that he would serve for one term only; this he did, and it was an uplifting four years for the country. With his wife, First Lady Lucy Hayes Hayes, President Hayes was determined to return tranquility to a nation troubled by recent political scandal and economic depression. They set out to
Perhaps the most legendary object in the White House past, apart from the Lincoln bed and Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington, was removed a century ago and later destroyed. It was the Tiffany screen of colored glass that stood in the Entrance Hall a mere nineteen years, from 1883 until 1902. This popular expression of the Aesthetic taste in design was
The East Room, the largest interior in the White House, was conceived in planning the house as an official gathering place where, among other ceremonies of state, Congress would convene to present bills to the president. President Thomas Jefferson disposed of state ceremony early-on, so there was no urgency to complete the room. It was unfinished when the British burned