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The History of Lafayette Park
Today, Lafayette Park sits just north of the White House, enclosed by H Street NW (north), Madison Place (east), Pennsylvania Avenue (south), and Jackson Place (west). This seven-acre public park is named after the famous French Revolutionary War hero, the Marquis de Lafayette. It has served as a graveyard, construction site, market, public space, and neighborhood throughout its 200-year history.
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Scholarship
Architecture: 1790s-1840s
1790sThe Presidents House was a major feature of Pierre Charles L'Enfant's 1791 plan for the city of Washington. He envisioned a vast palace for the President, a house five times the size of the house which would be built. It was planned and constructed under the personal supervision of President George Washington.
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Scholarship
A Transatlantic Journey
Sandham Symes (1807-1894) was an Irishman and architect by profession who was noted for the design of many well-known buildings in Ireland. He was also an accomplished artist and well-travelled man who held a variety of eclectic interests. One of Symes finest collections of drawings and paintings that form part of this legacy are those originating from the time he
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Article
An Essay on "A Vision Takes Form" by Peter Waddell
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
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Article
An Essay on "The Visit" by Peter Waddell
One of the most revered historic interiors of the White House is the one that President Abraham Lincoln occupied as an office. Located in the east end of the Second Floor, it shared the upstairs with the family's private living quarters. Although intended as a bedroom, it had been used for an office since 1817.Historical documentation, written and visual, is
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Article
The Lincoln Bedroom: Refurbishing a Famous White House Room
President Abraham Lincoln's office and Cabinet Room––the large southeast room on the Second Floor of the White House––has been called the Lincoln Bedroom since 1945, when President Harry S. Truman directed that Lincoln-era furnishings be assembled there. In the Truman renovation of the White House (1949-52), only the muted Brussels-style carpet gave a reasonably appropriate design context for the celebrat
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Article
Foreword; White House History (Number 35)
This number of White House History recalls the burning of the White House, which took place in 1814, two hundred years ago this August 24th. It was destruction managed in formal order by the best European military standards of the time. The fire expert in charge, Ensign John Pratt, having fulfilled similar responsibilities in Wellington’s Spanish Campaign, directed the process. Re
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Article
"A Communication Between These Offices"
When David Baillie Warden remarked in 1816 that “it was originally proposed to form a communication between the [executive departmental] offices and the house of the president,” he was referring to the initial idea for a close configuration of all the executive buildings within the President’s Square.1 Four L-shaped wings were shown as attached directly to the President’s House on Pierr
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Article
In a White House Passageway
Arches and vaults are techniques of construction that serve to divert the support of heavy masses that would otherwise require bearing walls or pillars directly beneath them. They have been in use for millennia, forming the structural systems of buildings. Steel beams in the later nineteenth century rendered vaults and arches unnecessary, and indeed generally replaced them. James Hoban built
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Article
Glimpses of the Old Family Dining Room
The Family Dining Room on the State Floor of the White House today is used primarily for smaller formal dinners and working lunches. The space, adjacent to the State Dining Room, also often serves as a staging area for State Dinners. White House families have traditionally dined in the Family Dining Room since about 1825 when President John Quincy Adams and
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Article
Uriah Levy's Gift to the Nation
For nearly twenty seven years, a full-length bronze sculpture of Thomas Jefferson was displayed at the center of the North Lawn in front of the White House. It was a feature that dominated the view from Pennsylvania Avenue and appeared prominently in engravings, paintings, and photographs of the period. The work of well-regarded French sculptor, Pierre-Jean David d’Angers (1788–1856), the stat
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Article
"Articles of the Best Kind"
When on March 4, 1817, James Monroe was inaugurated as the fifth president of the United States, the District of Columbia still bore scars from its sacking by the British three years earlier. The country had achieved few of the political and military aims that led it into the War of 1812, and having the capital torched by the enemy caused profound national