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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Lillian Rogers Parks holds a portrait of her mother, Maggie Rogers, who came to the White House in 1909 under President William Howard Taft and retired in 1939 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Parks recalled, “I grew up in the White House. I was 12 years old when I first started going there with my mother.”
Roland Freeman, Smithsonian InstitutionSamuel Ficklin, 1992. Samuel Ficklin worked as a part-time butler from 1941 to 1990, serving nine presidents. Nine members of Ficklin’s family, including his brothers John and Charles, were also employed at the White House through the years.
Roland Freeman, Smithsonian InstitutionButlers in the Family Dining Room, c. 1975. Eugene Allen (second from right) worked from 1952 to 1986 as a pantryman, butler, and maître d’. He recalled, “I had a good relationship with all the butlers. You know, it’s closer than your relatives, because you work so close together. You see them every day. You eat together, you work together. It’s every day.”
Eugene Allen photo album, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural HeritageCloakroom staff, c. 1940. Former usher James “Skip” Allen described his colleagues as “the greatest staff that’s ever come down the pike. Ninety-seven people, one big happy family most of the time. Everyone is professional. Everyone knows what they’re going to do when they’re told to do it. You seldom have to make any deep checks on making sure that their jobs are done.”
Lillian Rogers Parks photo album, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural HeritageFamily connections among the White House residence staff run strong, and it is not unusual for workers in the Executive Mansion to be children or siblings of other employees. The continuance of these family lines through the generations speaks to the level of confidence and trust that First Families place in the household staff, who are in turn dedicated to a high standard of service to the president and the nation. Recommending one’s son, daughter, or sibling for a position in the White House is a further expression of that dedication.
Among members of the residence staff, a spirit of kinship pervades the working White House. It embraces those who are not related by blood, but who are part of a “family” committed to the hard work and cooperation crucial to the efficient operation of the Executive Residence. Employees collaborate on the job, maintain personal ties outside the workplace, and stay in active contact with retired colleagues through correspondence and reunions.
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...
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...
The whole family [of President Theodore Roosevelt] were fiends when it came to reading. No newspapers. Never a moment was...
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...
White House staff who lived at the President’s House during the nineteenth century, including enslaved and free African Americans, us...
Thomas F. Pendel was a White House doorman from the Abraham Lincoln administration to the turn of the 20th century....
"Largely through television," notes historian William Seale, the White House "is the best known house in the world, the instantly...
John Quincy Adams hired Antoine Michel Giusta as his valet after they met in Belgium in 1814. Giusta was a deserter...
1862-1863: Mary Todd Lincoln, grieving over her son Willies death in February, began to participate in spirit circles or seances...