The inspiration for renewing the rose garden at the White House came from President Kennedy in 1961. My involvement began at a picnic on a hazy summer day in August at our beach house on Cape Cod, surrounded by sand dunes, the sea, and sailboats. It was a picnic for a few friends and included President and Mrs. Kennedy. Hardly had

I recently had the opportunity to visit with Nash Castro, the last surviving founder of the White House Historical Association, who also played a role in the story of the Rose Garden while serving as liaison to the White House for the National Park Service during the Kennedy administration. His influence would be even stronger in the Johnson administration, when

George Washington in 1792 had set aside 85 acres for the “President’s Square,” presumably to have paddocks, sheepfolds, hay fields, meadows, and the other usual attachments to country houses, in addition to vegetable gardens to serve the table and ornamental plantings for pleasure. Washington himself had all of this at Mount Vernon and clearly deemed it appropriate to the official residence of the

The primary Easter Monday entertainment at the White House has always involved egg rolling. Participants roll dyed, hard-boiled eggs across the grass to see whose will go the furthest before cracking. Other egg sports enjoyed in the early years were egg ball, toss and catch, egg croquet and egg picking—a contest where eggs are pecked together until they crack. Af

“That Manila could lend anything to Washington may be an idea that would surprise some persons, but the Luneta is an institution whose usefulness to society in the Philippine capital is not to be overestimated.”–Helen Herron TaftIn her memoirs, Recollections of Full Years, Helen Herron Taft wrote about a promenade by the Manila Bay that inspired the first public projec

Following the close of World War II, Japan and the United States developed a close alliance along with strategic and trade partnerships. Beginning with Gerald R. Ford in November 1974, seven U.S. presidents have made journeys to Japan, and the Japanese heads of state and government have also visited the White House. Crown Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko arrived in

John Adams was the first president to occupy the White House in 1800; one of his first additions was a vegetable garden.In 1801, Thomas Jefferson was active in planning improvements for the Executive Mansion (White House) garden, including a stone wall around the house. He also directed the planting of numerous trees between 1802 and 1806.While the White House was being rebuilt

The White House tennis court, first built in 1902 behind the West wing, was moved to the west side of the south lawn in 1909 to make way for the expansion of Executive office space.A heated indoor swimming pool was built in 1933 for Franklin D. Roosevelt's therapy as he was disabled by poliomyelitis. During President Nixon's first term, this space in

A slave helps craft this statue and the Capitol's statue of freedom... A statue of Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans occupies the center of Lafayette Square. Erected in 1853, it was the first bronze statue cast in the country and the first equestrian statue in the world to be balanced solely on the horse's hind legs. The sculptor,

Every spring, the National Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1912 gift of 3,020 cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo, Japan, to the city of Washington, D.C. This cherished tradition has deep historic ties to the White House and the nation’s first ladies, beginning with First Lady Helen Herron Taft.For over twenty years, writer Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, known fo

In the early days of gardening at the White House, the gardens were fenced away to facilitate care and watering. A large vegetable garden was planted on the west side, with a water pump nearby. There were ornamental plants, but there is no record of an ornamental garden until Andrew Jackson’s was built on the east side about 1833, centered up

The 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