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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Lamplighter job description, 1888. Working on average five hours a day, the White House lamplighter was responsible not only for illuminating and extinguishing the lamps, but also for lighting fires, removing ashes, cleaning the basement, and polishing the ranges. Electric lights were not installed in the White House until 1891.
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...