2007 Essay Winner, Hugh S. Sidey Scholarship
Few symbols of American democracy inspire a greater sense of awe than the White House. For more than two hundred...
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How Long? 2 minutes
Although a great machine for the presidency, the White House operates entirely by hand. Since it was first occupied in 1800, certainly thousands of employees have worked there in various capacities, as full-time staff, from butlers to ladies’ maids to social secretaries, to carpenters, plumbers, and painters. There is no set rule about size, for the needs change. A century ago, the White House staff was simply a domestic staff of about fifteen. Extra domestic employees came with the presidents, from their homes. Indeed, even the office in the first Roosevelt’s time included only about fifteen people. When Roosevelt built the West Wing, and moved business out of the house, the office staff grew and would continue to grow, and today has expanded into many other buildings in the area. Bradley Patterson’s article in this issue addresses the subject of the presidential staff today.
Some years ago the curator’s office at the White House acquired the unpublished memoirs of the first social secretary of the White House. In this issue Priscilla Roosevelt edits and gives a context for the Theodore Roosevelt part of that memoir. Considered as a duo with her friend Archie Butt’s famous letters, the Hagner memoir is the most important White House account of its time. Photographer Maggie Knaus’s keyhole peeks at the kitchen are the result of an outsider’s work at the White House. And William Allman and Cindi Malinick describe a painting, long missing from the White House, that turned up only recently in a house across Lafayette Park.
The issue is led off by Claire Faulkner’s article on the ushers. A word Americans associate with movie theaters of another time has at the White House an entirely different meaning.
Tom Geer prunes foliage in the East Garden of the White House on a July day. The job of a White House worker involves both repetition—in a place of many traditions—and innovation in a place always new.
Few symbols of American democracy inspire a greater sense of awe than the White House. For more than two hundred...
AuthorsJAMES ARCHER ABBOTT is a graduate of Vassar College (B.A.) and the State University of New York’s Museum St...
Congress has always been tasked with appropriating funds for the care, repair, refurnishing and maintenance of the White House and...
Decatur House 8:00-8:45am Light Breakfast 8:45-9:00am Transition to the Carriage House 9:00-9:15am Welcome Stewart McLaurin, President, The...
Pierre Charles L'Enfant selected the site for the President's House and proposed a grand palace four times larger than the...
The first bath tubs in the White House were portable and made of tin; water was hauled in buckets. Running...
Following a competition for the design of the President's House in the spring of 1792, Irish architect James Hoban was commissioned...
Edith Kermit Carow was born on August 6, 1861, in Manhattan, New York. She was the daughter of Charles Carow and Gertrude...
Mamie Geneva Doud was born on November 14, 1896, in Boone, Iowa. She was the daughter of John Sheldon Doud and Elivera...
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born on July 28, 1929, in Southampton, New York, to parents John and Janet Bouvier. She and her...
In 1848, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts was offered the vice-presidential nomination for the Whig Party, alongside presidential nominee Zachary Taylor....
The Dolley Madison House, a yellow structure on the corner of H Street and Madison Place in “The President’s Neig...