White House
Evolution of the White House
Early use, the 1814 fire, and rebuilding
John Adams became the first president to take residence in the building on November 1, 1800. During Adams' second day in the house he wrote a letter to his wife Abigail, containing a prayer for the house.
Adams lived in the house only briefly, and the home was soon occupied by Thomas Jefferson who gave consideration to how the White House might be added to. With Benjamin Henry Latrobe, he helped lay out the design for the East and West Colonnades, small wings that help conceal the domestic operations of laundry, a stable and storage. Today Jefferson's colonnades link the residence with the East and West Wings.
In 1814, during the War of 1812 much of Washington was burned by British troops in retaliation for burning Upper Canada's Parliament Buildings in the Battle of York (present day Toronto) leaving the White House gutted. Only the exterior walls remained. A legend emerged that during the rebuilding of the structure white paint was applied to mask the burn damage it had suffered, giving the building its namesake hue. This is unfounded as the building had been painted white since its construction in 1798. Of the numerous spoils taken from the White House when it was ransacked by British troops, only two have been recovered – a painting of George Washington, rescued by then-first lady Dolley Madison, and a jewelry box returned to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939 by a Canadian man who said his grandfather had taken it from Washington. Most of the spoils were lost when a convoy of British ships led by HMS Fantome sank en route to Halifax off Prospect during a storm on the night of 24 November 1814.
After the fire, both Latrobe and Hoban contributed to the design and oversight of the reconstruction. The north portico was built in 1824, and though architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe proposed similar porticos during the rebuilding after the fire in 1814, both porticos were designed by Hoban. Contrary to a frequently published myth, the North Portico was not modeled on a similar portico on another Dublin building, the Viceregal Lodge (now Áras an Uachtaráin, residence of the President of Ireland). Its portico in fact postdates the White House porticos' design. The South portico was built in 1829. The similarity between the South Portico, and an elliptical portico, with nearly identical curved stairs at Château de Rastignac in Périgord, France is frequently speculated as the source. The decorative stonework on both porticos were carved by Italian artisans brought to Washington to help in constructing the U.S. Capitol. For the North Portico, a variation on the Ionic Order was devised incorporating a swag of roses between the volutes. This was done to link the new portico with the earlier carved roses above the entrance.
Layout and facts
Today the White House is a complex of three buildings. The original residence is in the center, two colonnades - one on the east and the west designed by Jefferson now serve to connect to the later East and West Wings. The residence houses the president's home, and rooms for ceremonies and official entertaining. The State Floor of the residence building includes the East Room, Green Room, Blue Room, Red Room and State Dining Room. The third floor family residence includes the Yellow Oval Room, East and West Sitting Halls, the President's Dining Room, the Treaty Room, Lincoln Bedroom and Queens Bedroom. Few people realize the size of the White House, since much of it is below ground or otherwise minimized by landscaping. The White House includes: 6 stories and 55,000 ft² (5,100 m²) of floor space, 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, 8 fireplaces, 8 staircases, 3 elevators, 5 full-time chefs, 5,000 visitors a day, a tennis court, bowling alley, movie theater, jogging track, swimming pool, and putting green.
The Truman reconstruction
Decades of poor maintenance and the construction of a fourth story attic during the Coolidge administration took a great toll on the brick and sandstone structure built around a timber frame. By 1948 the house had became so unsound that President Truman abandoned it, moving across the street to Blair House, from 1949-1951. The reconstruction required the complete dismantling of the interior spaces, construction of a new load bearing internal steel frame and the reconstruction of the original rooms within the new structure. Some modifications to the floor plan were made, the largest being the repositioning of the grand staircase to open into the Entrance Hall, rather than the Cross Hall. Central air conditioning was added and two additional sub-basements providing space for workrooms, storage and a Cold War era bomb shelter. The Trumans moved back into the White House on March 27, 1952. While the house was saved by the Truman reconstruction, much of the new interior finishes were generic, and of little historic value. Much of the original plasterwork, some dating to the 1814-1816 rebuilding was too damaged to reinstall, as was the original robust Beaux Arts paneling in the East Room. President Truman had the original timber frame sawed into paneling. The walls of the Vermeil Room, Library, China Room, and Map Room on the ground floor of the main residence were paneled in wood from the timbers.
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