You Might Also Like
-
Article
The President and Washington During the War with Mexico
James Knox Polk was at home in Columbia, Tennessee, when he judged that it was about time to find out the results of the election. A dispatch from Washington was waiting for him at the post office. And the news of his presidential victory marked not only a change in his life, but marked, in retrospect, the start of the
-
Article
The Bad Boy
When James and Dolley Madison moved to the White House officially on March 4, 1809, they were accompanied by her son Payne Todd, child of her first marriage. Payne had turned 17 only a few days before and had lived with his mother and adoptive father in Washington already for nearly eight years, ever in the shadows of the prominent and highly social
-
Article
Lincoln in His Shop
In the summer of 1864, Kentuckian John Bullock called upon President Abraham Lincoln at the White House to make a personal appeal. The young Bullock took his seat in the reception area adjacent to Lincoln’s office alongside numerous other individuals, hoping for an opportunity to have but a few minutes with the nation’s leader. Uncertain if the president would even
-
Article
Good Neighbors: FDR, Major Gist, and Blair House
From its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, the historic preservation movement in the United States drew its leadership from private citizens, not government officials.1 An archival collection kept at Blair House, The President’s Guest House, records the pioneering alliance of Major Gist Blair, the last family descendant to live there, and President Franklin D. Ro
-
Article
The White House Collection: Reminders of 1814
When the President’s House was consumed by fire in 1814, furnishings purchased over twenty-five years by the United States government for Presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were lost. Among them were the eighteenth-century objects from the two residences occupied by President Washington in New York in 1789 and 1790 and from the Philadelphia home in wh
-
Article
History in White House Silver
One of the most interesting collections of silver of which this country can boast is at the White House. It was begun by President James Monroe in 1818, after the war with Great Britain, and has grown over the years, remaining in continuous use by the Presidents and a constant parade of guests. Considering the duration of its service at s
-
Article
Slavery, Freedom, and the Struggle to Keep a Family Together
Although President Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of enslaved men, women, and children in his lifetime, he brought only a handful with him to the White House. In need of additional help, he hired the labor of an enslaved man named John Freeman from Dr. William Baker, the Maryland physician who owned him. The practice of hiring out enslaved workers in
-
Article
The White House Historical Association Kennedy Rose Garden Exhibition
The White House Historical Association has the privilege of announcing the opening of a new exhibit, The Kennedy Rose Garden: Traditionally American, which explores President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 vision for a new garden adjacent to the Oval Office. The exhibit is free and open to the public July 16 – September 12, 2015; Monday – Saturday from 10 a.m – 3 p.m.
-
Article
White House Vegetable Gardens
John Adams, the first resident of the White House, wanted a vegetable garden plowed and fertilized with the goal of planting in the spring of 1800. By the time the ground was ready for planting, Adams had returned to private life after Thomas Jefferson’s victory in the 1800 presidential election. President Jefferson inherited a construction site when he came into office an
-
Article
Determining Where the White House Must Stand
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
-
Article
Pathbreakers: Oscar Stanton DePriest and Jessie L. Williams DePriest
Shelley Stokes-Hammond prepared these biographical sketches as part of a project for a graduate documentation course at Goucher College where she received a Master of Arts in Historic Preservation in 2011.In March 1929, Oscar Stanton DePriest became the first African American to serve in the United States Congress since George H. White of North Carolina left the House in 1901. DePriest was
-
Article
Dolley Madison's House
Did you know that after her husband's death, First Lady Dolley Madison was so poor that she had to accept money from a former slave and hand-outs from her neighbors on Lafayette Square? The yellow house on the corner of H Street and Madison Place was Dolley Madison's home from 1837 until her death in 1849. Originally built by her brother-in-law, Richard