![]() In 1800, when the home was almost finished, America's second president, John Adams and his wife Abigail moved in. President Washington oversaw the construction, although he never got to live in the presidential house. Most of the labor was done by African Americans, some free and some enslaved. Washington liked the design, so on October 13, 1792, the cornerstone was laid for the President's House in the new capital. Hoban had tried out a neoclassical design in Charleston, South Carolina, as he was finishing up the 1792 Charleston County Courthouse. Image LC-USZC4-1495 Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (cropped) Proposed East Facade of the President's House by B. Like many home builders even today, the plans were downsized from three floors to two - local stone would have to be allotted to other government buildings. Hoban's 1793 elevation drawing showed a neoclassical facade very similar to the mansion in Ireland. Many historians believe that James Hoban based his design on the Leinster House, a grand Irish home in Dublin. ![]() It would have three floors and more than 100 rooms. The "White House" proposed by Hoban was a refined Georgian mansion in the Palladian style. Eight other architects also submitted designs, but Hoban won the competition - perhaps the first instance of the presidential power of executive preference. Capitol building by a grand avenue.Īt George Washington's suggestion, Irish-born architect James Hoban (1758-1831) traveled to the federal capital and submitted a plan for the presidential home. Working with George Washington to design a capital city for the new nation, L'Enfant envisioned a majestic home approximately four times the size of the present White House. Originally, plans for a "President's Palace" were developed by the French-born artist and engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant. In the subsequent Truman Renovation, architects enclosed the hall with solid partitions and created a living room.What Washington, D.C. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who screened the area off from the Center Hall, particularly enjoyed it. Charles McKim removed the steps completely in 1902 and the defunct landing became a private sitting area. President Ulysses Grant had the grand stair remodeled, allowing sitting space by the window. The presidents and first ladies would descend to the Cross Hall below on state occasions. this is the room where I had my appendix out!"īefore 1869, the West Sitting Hall was little more than a staircase landing lit by an elegant half moon window, or a lunette (which has its twin in the East Sitting Room). At a Nixon dinner party given here in the early 1970s, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, exclaimed, "My goodness. White House children also used this bedroom. Both the McKinleys and the Clevelands made it their master bedroom. It was once called the Prince of Wales Room, as the British heir to the throne slept here during an 1860 visit. Until it was converted into the President's Dining Room in 1961, the large northwest room on the Second Floor had been a bedchamber. Truman had the space redesigned during his interior renovations of 1948-52, and it emerged as a comfortable sitting room and reception area. As late as World War II, the "Great Passage" was described as cluttered, dark and dismal. When the eastern end of the Second Floor was used for state business, the Center Hall was partitioned off to keep the public from wandering into the family apartments. The construction of the West Wing in 1902 removed the noise and disruption of the executive offices from the first family's residence. In 1927 the attic was enlarged and finished as a Third Floor while the White House roof was rebuilt. ![]() The upstairs family quarters also witnessed the sorrow of Willie Lincoln's death and the long confinement of the mortally wounded President James Garfield. ![]() ![]() James Madison Randolph, grandson of Thomas Jefferson and the first presidential grandchild, as well as Esther Cleveland, Grover Cleveland's daughter and the first presidential child, were both born on this floor in the White House. Until 1902 the first family quarters shared the Second Floor with the president's offices while the Third Floor was simply an attic. ![]()
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