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...
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When a new president moves in, he and his family bring along their own tastes, preferences, and customs. The new family’s ways are often quite different from those of the previous occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Even time-honored White House festivities such as the Pageant of Peace and the Easter Egg Roll have been adapted to reflect the First Family’s entertainment style.The transition to a new administration requires White House workers to help the new First Family understand how the household has previously functioned, while also adapting to the incoming family’s style and traditions.
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...
The whole family [of President Theodore Roosevelt] were fiends when it came to reading. No newspapers. Never a moment was...
For most of the 19th century, the structure of the White House staff remained generally the same. At the top...
A group of physicians and surgeons meeting in Washington 1891 was treated to a reception at the White House on the...
Animals -- whether pampered household pets, working livestock, birds, squirrels, or strays -- have long been a major part of...
President Andrew Jackson was a slaveholder who brought a large household of slave domestics with him from Tennessee to the...
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...
Prior to the 1939 visit of the queen and king of England, Eleanor Roosevelt received a State Department memorandum, listing various...
"Largely through television," notes historian William Seale, the White House "is the best known house in the world, the instantly...
1862-1863: Mary Todd Lincoln, grieving over her son Willies death in February, began to participate in spirit circles or seances...