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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Chefs prepare the cake for the wedding of Tricia Nixon and Edward Cox on June 11, 1971 From left to right: Heinz Bender, Hans Raffert, Maurice Bonte, and Henry Haller. Later, Haller recalled, “It was six or eight tiers. You see, the cake had to be really big because the East Room has a very high ceiling; so if you put a small cake in there, it looks like nothing. You don’t worry about a little bit of overproduction here; you make a big cake.”
Library of CongressClinton family poses with White House residence staff under North Portico, 2004. When Bill and Hillary Clinton returned to the White House for the official unveiling of their portraits in June 2004, they and their daughter, Chelsea, recalled some of the memorable times they had shared with members of the staff.
George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum/NARAFirst Lady Patricia Nixon's birthday party, 1972. On the occasion of First Lady Pat Nixon’s 60th birthday, White House staff members wished her a “Happy 39th” in the spirit of comedian Jack Benny’s longstanding joke that he perpetually remained 39 years old.
Courtesy of Henry & Carole Haller and FamilyAbout this Gallery
The memories of White House workers include not only times of grief, war, and political tension, but also charming moments with the first children, joy, humor, excitement, and satisfaction with a job well done.
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...
Animals -- whether pampered household pets, working livestock, birds, squirrels, or strays -- have long been a major part of...
A group of physicians and surgeons meeting in Washington 1891 was treated to a reception at the White House on the...
Thomas F. Pendel was a White House doorman from the Abraham Lincoln administration to the turn of the 20th century....
1862-1863: Mary Todd Lincoln, grieving over her son Willies death in February, began to participate in spirit circles or seances...
John Quincy Adams hired Antoine Michel Giusta as his valet after they met in Belgium in 1814. Giusta was a deserter...
For most of the 19th century, the structure of the White House staff remained generally the same. At the top...
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...
The whole family [of President Theodore Roosevelt] were fiends when it came to reading. No newspapers. Never a moment was...