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The Press at the White House: 1941-1952
In 1945, Harry S. Truman proposed a major West Wing expansion that would add a studio and auditorium for press briefings. The plans lacked Congressional support and were not executed. Truman moved the meeting place for press conferences from the Oval Office to the Indian Treaty Room in the State Department (today’s Eisenhower Executive Office Building). Truman’s press conferences were
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The Press at the White House: 1963-1980
Lyndon B. Johnson changed the nature of press conferences by including impromptu sessions where reporters might ask a few questions rather than the formal forums held in the Indian Treaty Room or State Department (Eisenhower EOB) auditorium. In 1969, a new Press Briefing Room was created in the west terrace by covering over a swimming pool installed for President Franklin Roosevelt.
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Scholarship
America Under Fire: Aftermath
Timeline of Events:August 29, 1814: Faced with a British demand to surrender 21 merchant ships, naval and ordinance stores and cotton, flour, tobacco and wines from the city warehouses or face attack from a squadron of seven ships, Alexandria's mayor and council bowed to the inevitable and agreed to the British demand—for they had no reliable defenses or defenders.August 30, 1814: A wa
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Story
America Under Fire: Timeline
Timeline of Events (Year 1814):May 9: News of Napoleon's abdication reached Washington.May 10-19: U.S. forces under Lt. Col. John B. Campbell captured and burned Port Dover and Port Talbot, Upper Canada (Ontario)—an outrage that contributed to the British decision to burn the public buildings of Washington, D.C.May 20: President James Madison tried to prod Secretary of War Jo
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Scholarship
Barney's Flotilla
In late May 1814, Commodore Joshua Barney, the veteran leader of the U.S. flotilla in the upper Chesapeake, left his base in Baltimore and established a new base of operations on the Patuxent River. His flotilla was small—consisting of a sloop, barges, gunboats, a galley, a lookout boat and his flagship, the cutter Scorpion—but at the moment it was
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Article
Foreword; White House History (Number 36)
Surrounding the President of the United States are clouds of relatives, moving about close and distant, that are ever marked by their association with him. Some live on in history attached to him; four presidents, Adamses and Bushes, have been father and son. The two presidents Roosevelt were relatives.White House History presents in this issue a series of stories
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Article
Emancipators
On April 2, 1814 British Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane issued a proclamation stating that "all persons who may be disposed" to escape to and seek refuge on a British warship would receive their freedom and land in a British colony. In response, an estimated 3,400 enslaved people in Chesapeake coastal areas welcomed the invading British troops as emancipators and ran away from slavery
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Introduction: Where Oh Where Should the Capital Be?
So much about the new United States was new—a democracy in a world full of monarchies, an elected president instead of a king, a people who had claimed the rights and responsibilities of citizens, to name just a few—that it should be no surprise that the location of a capital city would be addressed by the Framers of the
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Romantic Expansions
In our own time thoughts about “the West” have been rather vividly colored by popular culture imagery depicting the rugged individual in mortal conflict with a violent and unyielding terrain. But for many artists and writers of the nineteenth century the West was more an ideal destination than a specific locale. As the nascent United States began to expand westward from
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First Lady Helen Taft's Luneta
“That Manila could lend anything to Washington may be an idea that would surprise some persons, but the Luneta is an institution whose usefulness to society in the Philippine capital is not to be overestimated.”–Helen Herron TaftIn her memoirs, Recollections of Full Years, Helen Herron Taft wrote about a promenade by the Manila Bay that inspired the first public projec
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Foreword; White House History Number 33
Further pursuing our interest in the neighborhood context of the White House, as well as the presidential complex itself, this issue hopes to paint a picture of the Mexican-American War era there (1846–48), when the American armies were fighting a war two thousand miles away on foreign soil. The capital tensed for reports from the fronts. Military action followed two main li
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Foreword; White House History Number 32
We introduce costume to White House History in this issue, with plans for other issues on the subject. Looking good speaks for itself. For the president and first lady, it is a requirement. They need not be fashion plates, although some have been that, as, for example, Dolley Madison and Jacqueline Kennedy—and as you will see in this issue, Sa