Collection The Working White House
For more than two centuries, the White House has been the home of American presidents. A powerful symbol of the...
Main Content
One of the maintenance headaches for White House workers is the wear and tear on the wood floors. A staff member is shown here using a state-of-the-art floor sander on the East Room floor in 1955 while co-workers attend to various tasks.
National Archives and Records AdministrationClara Richardson dusts some of the dolls collected around the world by Lynda Bird Johnson, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter in 1966.
White House Historical AssociationWhite House floral designer Rusty Young uses a variety of colors, patterns, and designs to create a striking arrangement in the Green Room in 1966.
White House Historical AssociationShirley Bailey, was a veteran of the hotel industry, inspects one of the White House guest rooms in 1970. The housekeeping staff makes the beds, vacuums the floors and carpets, dusts the furniture, and ensures that the White House is always looking its best.
White House Historical Association"When people stopped wearing dress shoes and went to soft-soled shoes we all cheered because we thought this would be great for the floors," former Chief Usher Gary Walters recalled. "We couldn't have been more wrong. What happens with soft-soled shoes is that pebbles get embedded in them, so now you've got 1,500 people walking through with sandpaper on their feet. It was exactly the opposite of what we expected." Here the East Room floor gets renovated in 1977.
The White HouseInvitations, menus, place cards, programs, and more are carefully designed and written by the White House calligrapher. Here, John Scarfone prepares the menu for the 1992 State Dinner in honor of President Patricio Aylwin of Chile.
George Bush Presidential Library and Museum/NARAAbout this Gallery
“Tell us about a typical day,” many White House workers are asked. Their usual reply is, “There is no such thing as a ‘typical’ day in the White House!” Not only must workers be flexible in fulfilling a variety of duties, but the historical events and changes in technology, politics, and society that occur during an employee’s tenure have an impact on an individual’s job. Each day in the life of a White House worker brings something new.
For more than two centuries, the White House has been the home of American presidents. A powerful symbol of the...
For more than one hundred years, White House Social Secretaries have demonstrated a profound knowledge of protocol and society in...
President Andrew Jackson was a slaveholder who brought a large household of slave domestics with him from Tennessee to the...
1862-1863: Mary Todd Lincoln, grieving over her son Willies death in February, began to participate in spirit circles or seances...
Animals -- whether pampered household pets, working livestock, birds, squirrels, or strays -- have long been a major part of...
White House staff who lived at the President’s House during the nineteenth century, including enslaved and free African Americans, us...
Prior to the 1939 visit of the queen and king of England, Eleanor Roosevelt received a State Department memorandum, listing various...
Thomas F. Pendel was a White House doorman from the Abraham Lincoln administration to the turn of the 20th century....
John Quincy Adams hired Antoine Michel Giusta as his valet after they met in Belgium in 1814. Giusta was a deserter...
A group of physicians and surgeons meeting in Washington 1891 was treated to a reception at the White House on the...
The whole family [of President Theodore Roosevelt] were fiends when it came to reading. No newspapers. Never a moment was...
"Largely through television," notes historian William Seale, the White House "is the best known house in the world, the instantly...