The President and His Steward Meet with a Calamity
John Quincy Adams hired Antoine Michel Giusta as his valet after they met in Belgium in 1814. Giusta was a deserter...
Main Content
As a water route to the interior the Potomac River presented physical difficulties in various obstructions to navigation, which, though picturesque, required canals to bypass. One such spot was Great Falls, shown here in 1802 in an engraving by G. Beck and T. Cartwright.
John Quincy Adams hired Antoine Michel Giusta as his valet after they met in Belgium in 1814. Giusta was a deserter...
Few first ladies have been so attuned to the natural beauty inside and outside the White House as First Lady...
The history of the white house grounds begins nearly two centuries before the construction of the house itself. Sailing up...
The house in which the President of the United States lives has always had a great fascination for American citizens...
For the politicians, civil servants, and accompanying citizenry of the new federal government—freshly arrived in 1800 from comfortable, sophisticated Philadelphia—the...
Many presidents have used ships for both relaxation and diplomacy. From fishing to meetings with foreign dignitaries, water travel provides...
The preoccupation of those who occupied the White House for most of the nineteenth century was settlement of the West....
Paul Jennings was born in 1799 at Montpelier, the Virginia estate of James and Dolley Madison. His mother, an enslaved woman...
The national parks preceded the National Park Service, but the first great natural park was a state park. California’s Yo...
Prior to President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt’s visit to Panama in 1906, no American president had set foot outside the co...
So much about the new United States was new—a democracy in a world full of monarchies, an elected president in...
Historians of American music, art, and dance often explore their subjects through different topical categories such as genres, schools, and...