What I Learned At The White House: A Memoir

            The Blue Room of the White House, now resplendent with the annual Christmas tree and trimmings, is arguably one of the most beautiful interiors in America.

            The key to the room is the Monroe furniture bought in the 1820s. This silk-upholstered and gilded ensemble goes a long way toward explaining the decisions of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. In 1995 the commitee, headed unofficially but forcefully by Hillary Clinton, restored the room with rich colors, gilding, French polished woodwork, and elaborate draperies in both fabric and wallpaper forms. The sidewall, a copy of a common American wallpaper, is a perfect foil.

            As paperhanger and consultant I've worked in this room several times, and this memoir shares details of that work. But, I have few illusions about the importance of my work in the big picture. While it was wonderful to be walking down a sunny sidewalk in Washington knowing that I was heading for my job at the White House, this heady feeling vanished when I began meeting the dozens who can say the same with far greater justification, since they go there on a daily basis.

            The three most frequent questions I'm asked are 1. How did you get that job? 2. Were you nervous? and 3. What's it like to work in the White House? I'll answer those questions in these blog posts. I'll also talk about how the work of designers Kaki Hockersmith, Ken Blasingame, and Michael Smith on the second floor differs from the work done in the state rooms.

            The staff at the White House tends to stay put and there is a pronounced Southern flavor, especially among older workers. One person I missed on a recent work trip is Cletus, the longtime head of the paint shop. Cletus had to be between 75 and 80 years of age, and finally got around to retiring. This cheerful black worker was like a walking encyclopedia and talked effortlessly about the last dozen or so presidential households, a real-life "Butler," if you will. Like staff painters everywhere, Cletus was constantly under pressure, finishing one room as he started prepwork in another. By some accounts there are 125 rooms in the White House complex. Cletus seemed to be just as happy as I that the wallpaper was being handled by someone else. Certainly wallpaper in general has had a great run in the White House, especially in the nineteenth century, and it's been an honor to help put some of it back. The great exceptions are the Red and Green Rooms. These have been upholstered for so long that it might take an Act of Congress to change them back.

            Aside from any decorative statements, the White House as domestic icon and cultural touchstone is woven into the fabric of American life in ways that are far from obvious. It is at once a domicile, a seat of power, a tourist attraction, and an armed camp. The second floor, where the First Family lives, is a serene space well-insulated by a ring of professional security from media attention. The politics and pressure of statesmanship are kept almost completly at bay in the offices and apparatus of the West Wing, and symbolically there in the Oval Office. The Oval Office, created in 1909 by Taft, is not to be confused with the oval rooms in the main block of the White House.

           

There are good reasons why George Washington preferred an oval shape for his main reception room, as we shall see. Although Washington never lived in the White House, he created the model for the "elliptical saloon," as the Blue Room was originally called, at his President's House in Philadelphia (1790 - 1797). Above and below the Blue Room are two other oval rooms, all three stacked something like a wedding cake, except that instead of a tiny bride and groom at the top there is the Truman balcony looking out on the South Lawn.

            

Above the Blue Room is the Yellow Oval Room, part of the second-floor residential area just mentioned. Below the Blue Room is the Diplomatic Reception Room into which Jackie Kennedy put the "Scenic America" panorama by Zuber in 1961.

That installation laid the groundwork for the acquisition and installation of two other wallpaper decorations, a set of "War of Independence" (also by Zuber and based on Scenic America) still hanging in the President's Dining Room (now covered by fabric), and the Chinese scenic wallpaper in the double parlors at Blair House, the President's Guest House across Pennsylvania Avenue. This last set was originally hung c. 1765 by John, second Earl of Ashburnham Place, Sussex, England.

            Without question a good choice for a study guide about decoration at the White House is Bill Seale's "The President's House", a two-volume tome. The great things about it are the relentlessly domestic tone and the scope. No furnishing detail is too small, and many are found in no other source.

            One of the first things we learn from Mr. Seale is that the house was down-sized from the original plans by L'Enfant. It was also reoriented 90 degrees. The White House as built became less formidable and palace-like. The house is most often seen from the north, where the temple-like facade cuts a fine figure. When standing in the middle of the Blue Room the view south through the central window to the Jefferson Memorial is grand. The Memorial is perfectly lined up. 

            The importance of centrality extends to the top drapery wallpaper. An oval room can have no mismatches in running figures at the top of a wall. Full swags being necessary, the border was centered on both the north and south axes and cut to fit. This wallpaper drapery, which is based on early ninteenth-centry French models, has a fairly deep vertical design (27" or so), and a large horizontal repeat (22" or so), and needs to be that large, since the walls are nearly twenty feet high.

(to be contd.)

photo credits: 

- the 3 floor plans are from Wikipedia, authored in SVG by ZooFari using Inkscape, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

- the photo of the White House Christmas tree is from www.whitehouse.gov ("The Blue Room Tree") and appears here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License: http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright

Copyright: © 2013 Robert M. Kelly