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stables, built on the White House grounds over
a period of a century, were never intended to
be great architecture. Public interest was keen
simply because they were the president’s
stables. The first executive stable was a simple
Georgian brick building, erected just off the
grounds in 1800. Thomas Jefferson located a stable
and carriage house in flanking wing dependencies
built at the White House in 1806. After the British
burned the White House in 1814, a frame stable
was added to the end of the rebuilt west wing.
In 1834, President Andrew Jackson directed the
construction of a freestanding brick structure
trimmed with Aquia sandstone located east of the
White House.
Andrew Jackson’s stable was razed in 1857
to make way for the present south wing of the
Treasury Department. A new structure was built
on the east grounds south of the Treasury. A tragic
fire took this building in 1864, destroying the
Lincoln family horses. A replacement stable was
erected on the west grounds. In 1871, that structure
made way for the construction of the imposing
State, War and Navy Building (today’s Eisenhower
Executive Office Building). The last White House
stable, a High Victorian mansard-roofed structure
built during the Grant administration in 1871
and extended for Benjamin Harrison in 1891, was
demolished in 1911.
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