The White House

The word “iconic” has been so overused as to be nearly meaningless. Its application to buildings should be quite rare as there are actually only a handful deserving of the term. The “White House” is certainly one of them.

In the new United States, a 1792 competition for the president’s house brought an anonymous design from Thomas Jefferson based on Andrea Palladio’s 1566 “Villa Rotonda” in Vicenza. But an Irish architect, James Hoban, won with a Neoclassical/Palladian building based generally on Ireland’s country houses and specifically, Dublin’s grandest mansion of 1745.

Jefferson competition entry 1792

Hoban competition entry 1792

The “fix” may have been in, however, as George Washington, himself, was the ultimate judge and had met the impressive Hoban at a social event in Charleston, South Carolina, the year before.

Hoban had also travelled to the President’s House in Philadelphia before the competition and saw for himself Washington’s own addition of a large oval salon to the south side. Philadelphia president’s house circa 1795

The 1791 Pierre L’Enfant plan of the new city of Washington, D.C., showed a much larger “President’s House” than Hoban had envisioned and extensive five-foot-deep foundations for a building bigger than the Capitol had actually been dug. L’Enfant plan 1791

But Washington and the building commission were concerned that the Aquia (aak-why-ah) sandstone quarry nearby would not produce enough blocks for both the mansion and the new Capitol. As an apparent rationing measure, it was discovered much later that underneath the earliest whitewash, reddish Seneca stone had been used for the Ground Floor. Aquia Creek Quarry circa 2019

Slaves had been brought in to clear the site of trees and stumps and dig the foundations (James Hoban, himself, was the “owner” of five of them). And in a study of the slave labor used for the U.S. Capitol Building, it’s obvious from National Archives records that enslaved people labored in quarries cutting stone and brickmaking for the president’s house as well. Their payment, however, was given to the slaveholders alone. Slaves picking cotton circa 1800

But to eliminate the huge cost of a bigger building as well as avoid the negative “optics” of a gargantuan dwelling for the head of a republic, the house’s size was reduced.

In addition to its grand Classical roots, Hoban had designed it as a self-contained, more simplified pavilion. And some historians have noticed that this simplification of its Leinster House model produced a better and more cohesive building than the house in Dublin.

Leinster House front 1745-48

Construction

For what would be about $63 million today, the construction of arguably the most famous house in the world began its eight-year gestation. On the grounds itself was built a brothel for the Irish workers. Eventually placed outside the site, it was allowed to stay there after Hoban defended the madame, Betsy, to the commissioners.

White House construction circa 1796

Scottish and Irish stonemasons overseeing those slaves directed them also to set the blocks for the foundations for a newly reduced Executive Mansion. But whether it was the adversarial “Scottishness” of Master Mason, Colin Williamson, or that the Irish Hoban, a trained carpenter and stone-cutter, was acting as an American-style architect/contractor, something caused a major rift between the two and Williamson was dismissed in 1795. Carving on White House circa 2018

It, like most Hellenistic buildings, used the same Italian Renaissance grammar of alternating rounded and triangular window pediments on the principal floor. While its use still inspires curiosity, its strangeness was merely an invention to make for a more “sparkling” façade directed by Alexander the Great thousands of years earlier. Alternating window pediments circa 1727

Each end of the building had a “Serlian” (Palladian) three-part window in the center of the 1st floor and a semicircular, “fanlight” window with Georgian frame and mullions above that on the 2nd.

Interior

Inside, the somewhat “Baroque” arrangement of bulbous, stacked oval center saloons flanked by squared cubes has remained a constant through the centuries. Though the names and uses of the surrounding rooms have changed, other than the elongation of the State Dining Room in 1902, the familiar floorplan has stayed the same throughout.

Floorplan in 1803

Floorplan in 1952

Linked by the “Cross Hall,” the principal floor rooms both large and not-so-large have become a virtual museum of French and English décor and the PR backdrop of national announcements, press conferences, and targets of eager public hand-shakers.

Foundations

However, neither Aquia nor Seneca stone had been used as foundations for the interior walls. It relied instead on perishable brick footings stacked over shrinking clay within the sandstone exterior walls. This method (as well as Hoban’s use of timber for its rebuilding after the house’s 1814 destruction during the War of 1812) would be a time bomb set to go off over a century later that almost led to a near-collapse of the entire mansion.

Stepped brick foundation circa 2018

Optical Tricks

When the house was finished in 1800, it was one of the largest buildings in the United States. The principal floor had over eighteen-foot-high ceilings to combat the Southern heat of Washington, D.C., but Hoban also achieved scale tricks with the design that belied its true size.

Cross Hall visual scale circa 2016

Though its main North Front had been reduced to a look of two stories instead of three (the ground floor is hidden on the North Front and the attic floor is behind a balustrade), the windows are bigger than European examples.

North facade model circa 1985

South facade circa 1860

Its original 1798 lime “whitewash,” used for sealing the porous sandstone (and apparently to cover the discrepancy of stone coloring) was merely a fortuitous happenstance for history. Along with the later painting of its smoke damaged walls in 1817, the white color became an iconic look and descriptive term for what was formally named the “White House” in 1902.

It also coincidentally imparted a simplicity that hid the joints in the building’s blocks to instead direct the eye to the superb stonework carving on the façades. At center stage and somewhat out of European fashion at that date, a flamboyant high-relief stone swag (or “festoon”) above the North Door comprising laurel leaves, Scottish Roses, and acorns joins with highly carved cornice and sill brackets and similar flamboyant roses on the Ionic column capitals to produce a nearly three-dimensional effect. North Portico Door carving 1992

In 1805 when he was president, Thomas Jefferson finally got his hands on the house by designing (with his architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe) the low wings to the east and west in the simple Greek stoa form that used Roman Doric (Tuscan) columns. West Colonnade 2011

That he thought nothing of employing the free labor of slaves for his own home, it’s probable that slave labor also constructed those wings.

Size

Even with Jefferson’s wings and the house’s enormity when compared to American buildings of the time, the American Executive Mansion was smaller than European equivalents built for royalty then. However, the demise of aristocratic rule has reversed the equation in democratic nations.

Engraving circa 1850s

Today, when adding up the space of the private quarters of the second and now third floors, the movie theater in the East Wing, the bowling alley under the North Portico, and the other rooms of the ground floor they use, the actual square-footage for the president’s family is bigger than that for most other world leaders.

Aerial view circa 2010

And at 132 rooms and 55,000 square feet, the entire White House has become the large “President’s Palace” it would have been in 1790.

Burning

Ironically, the British soldiers inside the house throwing flaming spears in 1814 would have passed velvet-draped windows and English Regency furnishings just like the palaces of Great Britain.

Painting of the burning of building circa 1814

Though its exterior sandstone walls were the only remaining element after the fire, the house’s rebuilding by the original architect (unfortunately substituting timber for brick) became a symbol of the young republic’s resilience.

Watercolor after the fire circa 1814

President James Monroe moved in by 1817 after it had been finished by Hoban and luxuriously redecorated (through the help of Capitol architect, Benjamin Latrobe). Latrobe used custom-made Empire furniture and vermeil dining room adornments that to this day are painstakingly reassembled from private collectors. Latrobe Map Room mantle 1817

In 1824, Hoban was brought back to design the semi-circular South Portico and in 1829, added the square, pedimented North Portico before he died. Latrobe, however, had painted versions of them as far back as 1807. This has led to permanent confusion as to who, actually, had designed them. South Portico

But by 1873, garish overstuffed sofas, busy floral carpets, and the additions of numerous conservatories and greenhouses aesthetically burdened the original Classical structure. Red Room 1884

In 1882, before President Chester A. Arthur moved into the White House, he hired Louis Comfort Tiffany to redecorate the Red and Blue rooms as well as the Entrance Hall and East Room. The elaborate Victorian décor remained in place for twenty years. Tiffany redecorated East Room circa 1889

Roosevelt Remodeling

Though the building had been informally called the “White House” ever since its whitewashing in 1798, it was formally named that historic term in October 1901. Roosevelt’s large family and the house’s cluttered, Victorian look collided with both the new century and his administration’s self-image.

Roosevelt West Wing circa 1908

The greenhouses were swept away and replaced by the first incarnation of the oval office in the West Wing at the end of Jefferson’s colonnade. Greenhouses circa 1890s

Theodore Roosevelt’s family moved to a house across the street in June of 1902 while the previous decorations were removed, turning the house once again into a Neoclassical pavilion created by the firm McKim, Mead and White in a mere four months. Roosevelt renovation Cross Hall circa 1903

The ground floor oval underneath the Blue Room had originally started its life as a dark and un-windowed servants’ hall. In 1837, it then became a furnace room but lost its heating plant and snake-like ductwork to be remade into an entrance hall for the South Front called the “Diplomatic Reception Room.” Modern Diplomatic Reception Room plan circa 2022

The State Dining Room was also enlarged to usurp the Main Staircase footprint on the west end of the Cross Hall. However, a steel support truss replacing the load-bearing north wall to hang over the ceiling added thousands of pounds of weight to the building and eventually pulled away from the outer wall to lead to an eminent collapse almost fifty years later. Jefferson era first floor plan circa 1803

To balance the room into a classical proportion, its wide Palladian window (then as now containing a doorway to the terrace on the roof of the Jefferson wing) was masked inside to a smaller opening matching the corner window on the western elevation. The now off-center middle window was blocked entirely and replaced by a white marble fireplace mantle carved with American Buffalo heads. State Dining Room fireplace mantelpiece and Lincoln portrait 1948

English inspired dark wood paneling enveloped the room with silver-plated chandelier and sconces on the Corinthian pilasters. They joined taxidermy moose and elk heads incorrectly thought to be trophies of Theodore Roosevelt’s frequent hunts but actually bought from a New York decorator. Roosevelt remodeled State Dining Room circa 1904

Other than the larger State Dining Room, Hoban’s basic floorplan of State Reception Rooms was maintained on the principal floor. And the grand East Room assumed a spare French salon look eventually evolving into a “Federal” décor instead of the fussy Victorian it had devolved to. Roosevelt East Room circa 1904

But with the removal of the main staircase at the west end of the Cross Hall, a secondary stairway east of the Entrance Hall had to be transformed into the principal stair to the family’s quarters on the second floor. That floor, with the addition of the West Wing, was entirely devoted to the family’s use with bedrooms and sitting rooms replacing the offices on the east end.

Roosevelt renovation Grand Staircase circa 1903

Later Administrations

Woodrow Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Wilson, designed the earliest version of the Rose Garden (with George Burnap) off the West Wing. But his second wife, Edith Wilson, despised the giant animal heads in the State Dining Room and had them removed but otherwise maintained its baronial look.

Ellen Wilson/George Burnap “West” Garden 1913

In 1927 during the last year of the Coolidge administration, the attic floor suspended from the outside sandstone walls was heightened and converted to a true family bedroom/service level with an outdoor terrace encircling the roof designed by society architect, William Adams Delano. Coolidge Third Floor circa 1927

By 1933, the Franklin Roosevelt administration had his designer, Eric Gugler, reconstruct and expand the West Wing office building and move his ceremonial room from President Taft’s 1909 Oval Office (now the Roosevelt Room) in the center of the smaller wing to its present position. Oval Office Floor circa 1990

Also completed was the use of the ground floor with Library, China, and Vermeil rooms. But not so public was a swimming pool financed by disabled children and dug into the floor of the remaining Jefferson wing in 1933 by Delano and the White House architect, Lorenzo Winslow. 1933 Franklin Roosevelt pool circa 1956

In 1943, because Eleanor Roosevelt was such a formidable and accomplished First Lady busy with proxy presidential duties, the administration expanded the rudimentary party entrance of 1902 into a true office structure created by Winslow for her use at the end of the East Colonnade.

Aerial view of East Wing 1992

Truman Renovation

Harry Truman added the balcony to the South Portico in 1947-48 for $1.6 million designed by the aging William Delano but that was just the start of the building’s modernization. It was then that the true condition of the sinking interior was discovered.

Truman Balcony circa 2017

However, public news of the house’s dreadful condition was delayed until after the election of November 1948 as its decrepitude could have acted as an apt metaphoric weapon for the more youthful Republican candidate. Interior shell circa 1950

After the interior demolition, a new foundation of concrete reached a depth of 20 feet under the sandstone walls. Then, similar to the construction of a modern office building, a steel cage skeleton was built inside the 1792 walls. But unlike the traditional office block, its décor inside had to resemble an actual home. Truman renovation cutaway circa 1949

Shortly after the surprise win, the Truman family packed up and moved to Blair House across Pennsylvania Avenue for most of the duration of his new full term. And Congress allocated $5.4 million without knowing just what the job would entail. Blair House circa 2007

In a time when “Historic Preservation” confused restoration with re-creation, the bulk of the interior (with the exception of the steel suspended attic floor) was totally obliterated in 1949. Other view of interior shell circa 1950

The entire interior under the intact attic floor was scooped out leaving a vast worksite for tractors and trucks, laboriously dismantled for threading through the small remaining doors. Steel framework circa 1950

And while Congress had appropriated money for its repair, the lack of complete design drawings, too many decision-makers, and general ignorance of its true condition led to timing errors and cost overruns. East Room reconstruction circa 1952. Photo by Abbie Rowe.

New York’s B. Altman department store warehoused the existing furnishings for free with the expectation that its decorators could also install their new reproduction furniture into the finished rooms. But while some of the house’s original materials were saved or recreated albeit with a few streamlined touches, the vast majority was carted to a landfill or sold as souvenirs. B. Altman & Co furniture in Red Room circa 1960

Again headed by Winslow, the finished building made its months’ delayed reappearance in March of 1952 as a modern steel and concrete structure within the original Hoban walls of the 1790s. Unveiling of White House 1952

The State Dining Room wall paneling was painted celadon green and the mantelpiece replaced by dark green marble moulding. With few exceptions, the Theodore Roosevelt interior by McKim, Mead and White was almost exactly recreated within its new steel skeleton. Truman renovation State Dining Room circa 1953

The Main Staircase now opened to the entrance hall instead of the Cross Hall. The marble columns between the two spaces resembled load-bearing solid stone but in reality were vertically seamed around the steel “I” beams (columns). Entrance Hall & Staircase circa 1953

Much needed restrooms for men off the Library and women off the Vermeil room on the ground floor finally turned the mansion into a suitable place for parties and receptions. 19th century guests knew to slip behind strategically placed screens shielding open toilet bowls or forgo all liquid refreshment at the “White House.”

Ground Floor Library circa 2022

Kennedy Restoration

Though each administration had redecorated the house from subtle to maximum results, and some had even completely rebuilt the building, possibly no administration has had more long-term effect than First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy did in her husband’s.

Current Red Room 201

Firmly establishing the White House as a museum of the United States (and establishing the first office of the curator) reflecting the various epochs and Administrations that have inhabited the building, its 1961 décor and scholarly approach have set the standard to this day. 1817 Bellange bergere circa 2019

The entire mansion was redecorated to be the finest “house museum” in the country whose only comparison is to the former DuPont mansion in Winterthur, Delaware. Few structural changes were required as the Truman “renovation” began its reuse as a new building a few years earlier. Jackie Kennedy circa 1961

One of the most transformative decisions was to place the recently found and surprisingly un-faded 1834 American scenic wallpaper by Jean Zuber and Co. along the oval walls of the otherwise darkened Diplomatic Reception Room off the ground floor South Front entrance. Jacqueline Kennedy restoration of the Diplomatic Reception Room circa 1962

The B. Altman furniture was removed and the mansion was completely redecorated by both Sister Parrish in the family quarters and Stéphane Boudin on the State floor. The silver chandelier and sconces were gilded and a new white marble mantelpiece with buffalo heads was put back into place in the State Dining Room. Stephane Boudin designed Blue Room circa 1962

With that coda, it resembled a perfect Neoclassical pavilion whose décor reflected the best of museum scholarship as well as a recognition of its past eccentricities. It showcased French and English saloons whose looks would have passed inspection by the discerning eye of President Monroe in 1817. Jacqueline Kennedy East Room circa 1962

Perhaps the White House’s simple, white design is the key to its iconic status. Buckingham Palace, though only one of the sovereign’s residences, is definitely symbolic of the monarchy but it is probably too big. And the Grand Kremlin Palace, in addition to its role as a ceremonial space only, is too complicated and has too grandiose an interior. But the simpler White House has an important distinction in that the U.S. President primarily lives there.

Though it may be very grand itself, it is after all a home. White House circa 2022