Collection An Artist Visits the White House Past
From its construction in 1792, until the 1902 renovation that shaped the modern identity and functions of the interior of the White...
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President Buchanan Greets Visitors From Far Away, 1860. Peter Waddell, Visitors From the East, oil on canvas, 48 x 60.
When President James Buchanan welcomed a delegation from Japan to the White House, the foreign visitors considered it lacking, without towers or a moat. They did admit it was handsomely furnished. The three samurai were the first Japanese ever to visit the United States, and they became instant celebrities. For their part, the Japanese considered America to be an inferior society, not likely to last long.
From its construction in 1792, until the 1902 renovation that shaped the modern identity and functions of the interior of the White...
Recently, White House neighbors on Lafayette Square shared a fascinating surprise. In October 2008, Decatur House, an historic property of the...
The new British minister to the United States was outraged. Within a few weeks of Minister Anthony Merry’s arrival in...
In 1809, James and Dolley Madison moved into the nearly completed President’s House that contained worn furnishings from past administrations. Mr...
The Andrew Jackson equestrian statue in Lafayette Park is familiar to most of the world in its place in front...
To Alexander Woollcott, the White House was the “best theatrical boarding house in Washington.” To his hostess, First Lady Eleanor Roos...
Late in James K. Polk’s presidency, his wife Sarah Childress Polk received an unusual gift that implicitly equated expansionism wi...
In our own time thoughts about “the West” have been rather vividly colored by popular culture imagery depicting the rugged indi...
For nearly twenty seven years, a full-length bronze sculpture of Thomas Jefferson was displayed at the center of the North...
This shaving mirror, one of a pair, has a remarkable history. It not only reflected the face of President James...
Stained glass, a medieval art, was revisited in the historically retrospective nineteenth century. The art was a prominent feature of...
WASHINGTON, Sunday—I must go back to tell you something of what has been going on the last few days, fo...