History

No. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.--inspiration of patriots, aspiration of statesmen, shrine of all good U. S. citizens--whither Mr. & Mrs. Herbert Clark Hoover of Palo Alto, Calif., will move on Monday-- was first called "The President's Palace," then "The President's House." Not until 1814, when it was repainted to hide its British fire scars, did it become "The White House."

With its grounds it is valued at $22,000,000. It has 20 bedrooms, 14 baths, rooms for 35 servants. In 129 years it has sheltered all the U. S. Presidents save the first.

President Washington picked the site "upon a rising ground, affording a fine water prospect, with a view of the Capitol." James Hoban, an Irish architect residing in Charleston, S. C., won a $500 prize competition for the plans by copying the ducal home of Leinster near Dublin. Much of his design was lopped away for economy's sake. President Washington laid the cornerstone without ceremony in 1792.

President John Adams first occupied it in November 1800. The Adamses found that "twelve roaring wood fires" would not warm it. In the barnlike East Room hung the Adams wash.

When the British burned it in 1814 Dolly Madison saved Gilbert Stuart's Washington portrait. Within the gutted walls Hoban reconstructed it.

President Monroe imported $60,000 worth of "heavy substantial furniture" from France. President John Quincy Adams caused a public uproar by installing a billiard table. The North Portico was finished by President Jackson, whose inaugural party for the Plain People nearly wrecked the interior.

President Van Buren spent $27,000 on new decorations. Congress fumed about "Caesar's palace" and "Asiatic Mansion." In consequence Harrison won the "Log Cabin" campaign.

President Polk was the first to marvel at gas illumination (1849). Mrs. Fillmore installed the first bath tub and cook stove in 1851. The stove brought protests from her Negro cook who preferred the huge open basement fireplace with its cranes and hooks. In spring and summer the Fillmore family moved over to higher Georgetown, "because the marshes between it [the White House] and the River made malaria inevitable." President Pierce first benefited from a central heating plant (1853).

President Arthur, "the dilettante mid-Victorian, the ornament of New York club life, draped hangings of pomegranate plush over windows and mantels, built a partition of colored glass across the entrance hall, caused potted palms to spring from the red plush carpets and otherwise strove to reproduce in the interior the funereal effects that prevailed in the homes of wealthy New Yorkers of the period."

Electric lights first gleamed in the eyes of President Harrison (1890). When President McKinley gave public receptions the house was in such ill repair that the sagging floors had to be shored up with beams in the basement.

President Roosevelt went to the White House with six children, to find only five available bedrooms. Congress gave him $475,455 to renovate, to remove the President's office to a separate wing (1902). He also installed an elevator, an electric plate-warmer, dumb waiters, telephones, typewriters.

President Coolidge vacated his official home for seven months in 1927 while a new $400,000 roof was being put on. The ancient wooden beams were replaced with steel girders, the entire structure fire-proofed.