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WHITE HOUSE HISTORY Quarterly

Furnishing the White House: The Decorative Arts Collection The Journal of T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I A T I O N Number 56

Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 56, originally released in print form in 2020. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. © 2020 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY Quarterly

Furnishing the White House: The Decorative Arts Collection The Journal of THE WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Winter 2020, Number 56

the white house historical association Board of Directors

chairman

Frederick J. Ryan Jr.

vice chairman and treasurer John F. W. Rogers

secretary

James I. McDaniel

president

Stewart D. McLaurin John T. Behrendt, Michael Beschloss, Teresa Carlson, Jean Case, Janet A. Howard, Knight Kiplinger, Martha Joynt Kumar, Anita McBride, Robert M. McGee, Ann Stock, Ben C. Sutton Jr., Tina Tchen, Gregory W. Wendt

liaison

David Vela

ex officio

Lonnie G. Bunch III, Kaywin Feldman, David S. Ferriero, Carla Hayden, Tom Mayes

directors emeriti

John H. Dalton, Nancy M. Folger, Elise K. Kirk, Harry G. Robinson III, Gail Berry West

white house history quarterly founding editor

William Seale (1939–2019)

vice president of publishing and executive editor Marcia Mallet Anderson

editorial and production director Lauren McGwin

senior editorial and production manager Kristen Hunter Mason

editorial and production manager Elyse Werling

editorial assistant Rebecca Durgin

consulting editor

CONTRIBUTORS r o b ert m . kelly is a wallpaper consultant, researcher, and paperhanger. He is the author of The Backstory of Wallpaper: PaperHangings, 1650–1750 (2013). kristen hunter m aso n is the senior editorial and production manager at the White House Historical Association and a regular contributor to White House History Quarterly. laur en m c g w i n is the editorial and production director at the White House Historical Association and a regular contributor to White House History Quarterly. betty c. monkman served more than thirty years in the Office of the Curator, The White House, retiring as chief curator in 2002. She a regular contributor to White House History Quarterly and author of The White House its Historic Furnishings and First Families and The Living White House.

Ann Hofstra Grogg

design consulting Pentagram

editorial advisory Mac Keith Griswold Scott Harris Anthony Pitch (1939–2019) Lydia Barker Tederick

the editor wishes to thank

The Office of the Curator, The White House; Will Seale III

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m eli ss a nau l i n is assistant curator in the Office of the Curator, The White House, where she focuses on the decorative arts. She is a regular contributor to White House History Quarterly and co-author of Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House. dav id rams e y is a corporate interior designer who specializes in interiors for commercial and historic preservation projects. stewart c. stevens sr. is a native Washingtonian and worked in the White House for seven presidents over the course of thirty-four years. He is the author of The White House Chandeliers: My Experiences While Working for Seven U.S. Presidents.

CONTENTS

A gilded detail from a newly restored armchair in the Bellangé furniture suite.

“HERE LIVES A GREAT CHANDELIER CLEANER”: The White House Career of Stewart C. Stevens

FOREWORD

willia m sea le

A SUITE FOR THE NATION RESTORED TO ITS ORIGINAL SPLENDOR: Regilded and Reupholstered, the Historic White House Bellangé Suite Begins Its Third Century melissa naulin

“THERE SHALL BE IN THE WHITE HOUSE A CURATOR OF THE WHITE HOUSE” b et t y c. m o nkm an

THE MONROE OVAL ROOM IN SUMMER DRESS: An Annual Ritual Preserves Fine White House Furnishings

davi d ram s e y

B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

s t e wa rt c . s t e v e n s w i t h lynet ta s t ev ens

A QUILT OF WHITE HOUSE FABRICS REVEALS THE COLORS OF VICTORIAN STATE ROOMS: The Legacy of Upholsterer Alice E. Kennedy

PRESIDENTIAL SITES QUARTERLY FEATURE: Stephen Decatur’s Porcelain and Silver Find a Home at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage laur en m c g w i n

104

REMEMBERING WILLIAM SEALE

kristen h unter mason

marcia mallet anderson w i t h w i ll s eale i i i

106

DAVENPORT & COMPANY FURNITURE DESIGNS FOR THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S WHITE HOUSE RENOVATION: An Architectural Treasure Trove in the White House Collection

Reflections AS A NEW YEAR BEGINS IN WHITE HOUSE HISTORY . . . st ewart m c laur i n

lauren m c gwin

THE STORY OF FRENCH SCENIC WALLPAPERS IN THE WHITE HOUSE: Risks and Rewards ro bert m. kelly

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FOREWORD

Decorative Arts at the White House f o r t h e p r e s i d e n t o f t h e u n i t e d s tat e s , decor of the Executive Residence plays a vital role in conveying the tone of his office and administration and in presenting the prestige of the nation to the world. It is strange that the appearance of the house would make that much of a difference, but design at the White House has proven its influence and utility over and over again. When Andrew Jackson, a populist, arrived at the White House, the image he conveyed to many American people was that of “the ruffian.” To the surprise of everyone, he soon ordered the refurnishing of the White House with elegant furniture and huge glass chandeliers. All was charged to the government with little objection as the intended purpose was clear—to impart the power and prestige of the nation. Jackson went so far as to build an Arch of Triumph: an architectural entrance to the East Room adorned with gold stars to celebrate the entrances and exits of the president of the United States. One of Jackson’s predecessors, James Monroe, had exactly the same purpose in ordering the gilded French furniture featured in this issue for the principal State Room. All through the nineteenth century the White House had more or less the look of prominent bankers’ houses in the Midwest—full of the finest and most stylish furniture, expensive fabrics, and sumptuous window dressings. No less important was the introduction of bathrooms, electricity, and the latest technologies of the time, all designed, purchased, and installed strategically to amplify the wealth and power of the United States and the prominence of its head of state. Following the world recognition of America’s newly acquired global power in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Theodore Roosevelt had the house totally remodeled. He personally selected the classical court styles of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France to please the newly assembled diplomatic community in Washington. The interest in historical furnishings and decorative arts at the White House has continued to grow through the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries with

the ongoing collection of antiques and the strategic selections made during each administration to outfit the Oval Office and State Rooms. Every element of the house plays a part in representing the tone and priorities of the president’s administration. This issue features that subject, exploring the decorative arts traditions at the White House. Melissa Naulin presents the newly restored Bellangé suite, ordered for the “Oval Room” by President James Monroe and now regilded and reupholstered in the most authentic way—except not in the original color. David Ramsey envisions this room in its original red, in “summer dress.” Kristen Hunter Mason tells the story of a special quilt and its maker, a female upholsterer whose artistic use of nineteenth-century fabric scraps serves to document the colors of late nineteenth and early twentieth century State Rooms. Lauren McGwin reveals an “archival treasure trove”—the White House collection of furnishings drawings that A. H. Davenport and Company proposed for Theodore Roosevelt’s renovation. Robert M. Kelly traces the history of the rare and elegant antique scenic wallpapers hung in the Diplomatic Reception Room and President’s Dining Room during the Kennedy administration. Stewart C. Stevens shares his life story and his work cleaning the chandeliers and windows at the White House for seven presidents. And finally, Betty C. Monkman presents biographies of the White House curators who have cared for White House interiors since 1961. For the presidential site feature, Lauren McGwin visits The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s plantation home, to trace the journey of some prized pieces of porcelain and silver from the Stephen Decatur House to the White House and then to The Hermitage.

william seale (1939–2019) editor, WHITE HOUSE HISTORY QUARTERLY

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O P P O S I T E : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N RIGHT: OFFICE OF THE CURATOR, THE WHITE HOUSE

A Suite for the Nation RESTORED To Its Original Splendor Regilded and Reupholstered, the Historic White House Bellangé Suite Begins Its Third Century MELISSA NAULIN

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o f t h e m a n y f u r n i s h i n g s u i t e s purchased for use in the White House during its 220year history, the French-made, gilded wood suite procured by President James Monroe in 1817 for the oval room on the State Floor has proved to be the most significant. It has the distinction of being the longest-serving suite, in use first from 1817 to 1859 and then again from 1961 to the present after pieces from the original suite began to be reacquired. The suite’s longevity is a testament to its craftsmanship. It was made in the Paris workshop of Pierre-Antoine Bellangé (1757–1827), an experienced cabinetmaker who was well versed in the special considerations that furniture intended for use by a country’s head of state demanded. While the Bellangé suite has demonstrated the durability required of public furniture, it has necessarily required periodic refurbishments during its long tenure. The White House has recently unveiled the suite’s most current refurbishment, which was intended, with the exception of the upholstery color, to restore it as close to its original appearance as possible. The White House Historical Association generously funded all aspects of the recent restoration.

PRESIDENT JAMES MONROE’S FRENCH FURNITURE Following the burning of the President’s House during the War of 1812, President James Monroe inherited the challenge of furnishing the rebuilt Executive Residence anew. In 1817 the United States was struggling after a second destructive and costly war with Great Britain. Anxious to secure the country’s future and its place on the global stage, Monroe understood the role that interior furnishings could play in establishing respectability. To that end, he decided to furnish the two most important entertaining spaces in the President’s House—the oval-shaped parlor (now known as the Blue Room) in the center of the State Floor and the State Dining Room—with goods made in France, which were widely acknowledged as the apex of fashion at that time. Monroe entrusted orders for the French goods to the export firm of Joseph Russell and John La Farge, Americans working in Le Havre. Congress had appropriated $20,000 to refurnish the President’s House, and Monroe budgeted $12,000 of that for French purchases, although he also allowed for an overage of up to $3,000, thereby committing a full 75 percent

of his budget to the imported French furnishings. Ultimately, the French goods overran even the overage amount, as Russell and La Farge sent a bill totaling $18,429.26, with an additional charge of $1,286.82 for shipping. The French furnishings that Monroe selected for the President’s House thus almost completely consumed the fund Congress had established to furnish the entire house.1 In an attempt to control costs, President Monroe had been very specific with his agents about the furnishings he wanted, including the amount he wanted to spend on each item. Monroe was knowledgeable about French domestic goods, having lived for a number of years in Paris, first as the American minister to France from 1794 to 1796 and again in 1803. By 1817, though, Monroe was more than a decade removed from firsthand knowledge of French luxury goods, and much had changed in those years, with the abdication of Emperor Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Russell and La Farge tried to work within Monroe’s parameters but were not always successful. For the central oval parlor, Monroe asked for a suite of mahogany furniture that incorporated eagle decoration of some sort. He received a suite of gilded beechwood furniture without eagles. The change in the suite’s choice of wood significantly increased its cost. Writing to Monroe at the time of shipment, Russell and La Farge explained that while they had tried their best to adhere to his requests and budget constraints, they had vastly overspent Monroe’s stated budget for one of the most important [commissions]. . . the furniture for the large oval room . . . which is caused by the change which we have been obliged to make of giltwood instead of mahogany. The result of that substitution has been an increase of expense for the trimmings of the Fauteuils [armchairs], & c. and the draperies of the curtains, which must be richer, that every thing might be in harmony. We should also add that mahogany is not generally admitted in the furniture of a Saloon, even at private gentleman’s houses.2 Russell and La Farge also blamed the higher cost on the fact that the Bellangé suite was upholstered in “crimson silk trimmings, fringes, & c., which is 50 per cent. dearer than other colors.”3 It is unclear whether Monroe had requested red upholsteries for this room or the French agents had

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previous spread

One of four regilded and reupholstered original armchairs from the Bellangé suite is seen in the Blue Room in 2019, opposite an image of the reupolstery work in progress. The Bellangé suite is the longest serving of the White House furniture suites. The White House now owns ten of the original fifty-three pieces purchased by President Monroe in 1817, as well as eleven reproduction chairs.

H I S T O R I C A L S O C I E T Y O F P E N N S Y LVA N I A

above

The earliest known image of the Bellangé suite in place in the White House is an 1856 engraving published in the United States Magazine during the Franklin Pierce administration. Pieces from the original suite included in the image are chairs, a pier table, two sofas, small footstools, two fire screens, and three of the four original curule-base stools. The bergères are the only forms in the suite not included in the illustration.

selected it to complement the giltwood furniture they ordered. Russell and La Farge charged the United States 15,188 francs, or $3,038, for the Bellangé suite, which was certainly expensive but still represented less than one-sixth of the entire French bill. This charge included fifty-three pieces of furniture, while the cost for the single Aubusson carpet for the same room, for example, was 9,060 francs, or $1,812.4 The cost of the Bellangé suite seems to have attracted so much attention after its delivery not because of its actual total but because it was more expensive than anticipated. Many American scholars have questioned Russell and La Farge’s stated reasons for not fulfilling the furniture suite order as directed, suggesting that the commissioners were dishonest and/or greedy, that the cabinetmaker was trying to dump old stock from another project, or that mahogany was difficult for cabinetmakers to obtain during this period.5 While it is impossible to know with certainty what exact factors determined the substitution, credence must be given to the stated reason of adhering to French furnishings protocol.6 At the time of the American commission, Pierre-Antoine Bellangé had been working for almost thirty years within the extensive rules of the French GardeMeuble, the department responsible for furnishing

the official residences of France’s kings, and then its emperor. He had also supplied furniture to the political leaders of other European countries, including Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark. In 1817, the same year that he was chosen to outfit the President’s House, he was appointed to be an official cabinetmaker to King Louis XVIII. Russell and La Farge described Bellangé to Monroe as the “first [or best] Ebeniste in Paris.”7 Furniture historians would not refer to him that way now, although he was well respected in his time.8 While Bellangé worked extensively in mahogany, the knowledge that he was furnishing a formal receiving room for the official residence of the American president would have led him to consider gilded wood as the only acceptable furniture finish. Monroe’s request for mahogany furniture probably seemed outdated to the French agents and cabinetmaker, reflecting his familiarity with French fashions in the late 1790s and early 1800s but displaying ignorance of the recent Empire-style fashions. Russell and La Farge knew of Monroe’s desire to furnish the President’s House in a manner that would help establish the new nation’s credibility with its international peers and may have felt that, in ordering gilded beechwood, they were saving the president, and their native country, from embarrassment. Bellangé’s fifty-three pieces of furniture must have overwhelmed the 39 × 29 foot oval-shaped room. It is important to note that there were three fewer doorways in the room than there are today, but two 9-foot-long sofas, eighteen armchairs, eighteen side chairs, two bergères (large armchairs with enclosed sides), two fire screens, four stools with X-shaped stretchers, six footstools, and a pier table must have still crowded the room. A visitor to the President’s House in 1825 described the positioning of the many chairs in the room, writing that they were “alternately armed and single so that in the arrangement of the chairs around the room there appears to be no confusion of arms, but a resplendency and simplicity which is very admirable.”9 The only known period image of the room with the Bellangé furniture in place dates to 1856, just four years before the suite was removed, and gives us an idea of how the furniture was arranged late in its use. In the engraving, chairs are seen lining the perimeter of the walls as described earlier, but a few are also seen pulled in toward the center of the room. The single pier table is positioned directly

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opposite the mantel in the room and surmounted by a large mirror. The two sofas flank the pier table on either side and have small footstools arranged in front of them. The two fire screens are placed in front of the fireplace but at a 45 degree angle, and with one of the four original curule-base stools in between. The only furniture form from the original suite not visibly in use are the two bergères. Reaction to President Monroe’s refurbishment of the President’s House was mixed. It is believed that the public first saw the new furnishings, including the Bellangé suite, on January 1, 1818, when the president held a traditional New Year’s Day open house. Thomas Hill Hubbard, a congressman representing central New York, was one of the visitors that day, and he wrote to his wife of greeting President and Mrs. Monroe in the “Elegant Oval drawing room.” He found the Bellangé suite particularly impressive, writing, “The chandeliers were large and Superb—the Carpets very beautiful, but the Chairs & sopha’s of garnet or crimson silk and Gilt exceeded any thing of the kind I ever saw.” He concluded that “the whole Combined so much Neatness & Simplicity with grandeur and Magnificence that I Was much very much gratified with the sight.”10 Others did not see the refurbished house in such a positive light. In 1818, the Washington Gazette published a letter from someone identifying himself as “A Journeyman Cabinet Maker” who complained that the new French furnishings at the President’s House were all about “pomp and parade, extravagance, and profligacy.”11 The American painter and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse commented on this difference of opinion in 1819 when he noted in his journal that some of the President’s House is “decorated in the most splendid manner, some think too much so, but I do not. Something of splendor is certainly proper about the Chief Magistrate for the credit of the nation.”12 As Virginia Senator John Taylor wrote in 1823, the highest quality furnishings in the President’s House were “designed to impress upon foreign ministers a respect for the [United States] government, which may have a valuable influence upon our foreign relations.”13 Thus while European visitors to the President’s House tended to judge it modest, they at least did not accuse the Americans of being ignorant of fashion. The Englishman William Faux, who visited the President’s House in 1820, found it “neither so elegant, superb, nor costly as the seats of our nobility” but still “a good, substantial, pleasant abode.”14

If all fifty-three pieces of the Bellangé suite were initially installed in the oval room, it is clear that they did not all remain there for long. While the pier table, sofas, fire screens, and two types of stools appear to have remained in consistent use in the room until their removal in 1859, the number of chairs gradually decreased through the years, and ten cannot be accounted for by the time they were sold. As was customary at the change of administrations, an inventory of government-owned furnishings was taken in March 1825, the month that James and Elizabeth Monroe moved out of the President’s House and John Quincy and Louisa Adams moved in. This inventory, the first taken since the acquisition of the Bellangé suite, records that twenty-four of the thirty-eight chairs originally provided were still in use in the “Elliptical Drawing Room.” The fourteen chairs no longer in use with the rest of the suite seem to have been moved by that time either to the neighboring “Green Drawing Room” or upstairs to a room that seems to have been serving as a storage room.15 By 1837, there were only fourteen chairs left in use in the elliptical room according to bills for reupholstering the furniture in that room, but sixteen chairs in the “President’s Parlor” (believed to be the present-day Green Room) appear to have received the same upholstery treatment as the Bellangé suite, suggesting that they were also from the suite.16 Eight of the original chairs would remain unaccounted for, if this scenario is accurate. By the time of the next surviving inventory, 1849, only “12 Arm chairs (gilt)” are noted in the “Circular Room” but “12 Chairs (gilt)” and “4 Arm chairs (gilt)” are noted in the “Green Room.”17 In the same year, John Wagner regilded the Bellangé suite and invoiced for “Regilding and Repairing 14 arm chairs,” “12 Single chairs,” and “2 Large Armchairs,”18 adding further evidence to the theory that the twenty-eight gilt chairs noted in the Blue Room and Green Room in the 1849 inventory were all part of that suite. Auction records from 1860, when the majority of the Bellangé suite is believed to have been sold, identify “12 Blue Gilt Arm Chairs” and “4 Green Gilt Arm Chairs” and “12 Green Gilt Side chairs” among the sold items.19 It therefore appears that eight of the original Bellangé chairs were damaged or had been disposed of by 1837, and an additional two were gone by 1849, leaving only twenty-eight of the original thirty-eight chairs to be sold in 1860.

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B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

above

The pier table is the only piece from the Bellangé suite that remained in the White House after the 1860 auction. It continued to be used in the Blue Room until 1902, and then stood in the Ground Floor room now known as the Diplomatic Reception Room until about 1944, when it was moved to storage. Jacqueline Kennedy returned it to use in 1961.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY REFURBISHMENTS In defending the cost of the president’s French furnishings to Congress in 1818, William Lee, President Monroe’s primary purchasing agent, wrote: “It must be acknowledged that the articles are of the very first quality, and so substantial that some of them will last, and be handsome, for twenty years or more.”20 Lee would no doubt be surprised to learn that the vast majority of the Bellangé suite would be in continuous use for the next forty-two years and that some of the pieces, returned to the White House in the 1960s and 1970s, have received an additional fifty to sixty years of use. As is to be expected, the suite has required a number of refurbishment campaigns during these years. The suite was likely first reupholstered in 1837, when President Martin Van Buren changed the primary color of the oval room’s furnishings from red to blue. This redecoration led to the room’s current name, the Blue Room. “Sattin Medallion” fabric and matching trims were secured for the Bellangé suite from James Paton & Company, whose business was identified in an 1837 directory of New York City as a “fancy & staple drygoods and curtain material warehouse.”21 Paton & Company also charged for “repairing & covering” the furniture in the “Circular Room 1st Story,” comprised

of “14 chairs, 2 soffa, 4 Tabburetts [tabourets, or the X-shaped stools], 2 Screens, 5 footstools, and 4 Silk Pillows.” As mentioned previously, Paton & Company also provided “Sattin Meddallion” fabric of the same cost that was used for “Repairing & covering 16 chairs” for the “Presidents Parlor,” believed to be pieces from the Bellangé suite that had been moved into the Green Room by that time.22 The suite’s original gilt finish appears to have been in use until John Wagner’s regilding of it during the Zachary Taylor administration. Wagner invoiced the White House for “Regilding and repairing” forty-two pieces of the suite, detailed as “1 Large table, 14 arm chairs, 12 Single chairs, 2 Sofas, 4 Ottomans [the X-shaped stools], 5 Stools, 2 Screens, [and] 2 Large Armchairs.”23 Wagner’s stamped marks remain visible on at least two surviving examples from the suite, with four marks appearing on the interior face of the back seat rail of a White House armchair (1961.14.1) and two marks appearing in the same location on the armchair owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, D.C.

THE AUCTION AND THE RETURN By the late 1850s, the Bellangé suite had been in continuous use for more than four decades and served eleven presidential administrations. The French furniture was undoubtedly considered old and out of fashion by this time, and in 1859 it was removed by President James Buchanan’s niece, Harriet Lane, who served in the role of first lady for her never-married uncle. Lane wanted to furnish the President’s House in the latest fashions, and the Bellangé suite, after all, was thirteen years older than Lane herself. In its place, she selected another gilded suite, also French in design but in the then-fashionable Rococo Revival style. Unlike the Bellangé suite, the new Blue Room suite was made domestically by German émigré cabinetmaker and upholsterer Gottlieb Vollmer of Philadelphia. At nineteen pieces, it was considerably smaller than the suite purchased for the same room in 1817, although it contained four large sofas and a circular divan for the center room. Twelve chairs, the same number of the Bellangé suite that had been in use for many years in the room, were acquired, in three different designs. Two ottomans, or large footstools, completed the set. All were upholstered in blue brocatelle. Vollmer also supplied Lane and Buchanan

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with a new suite of furniture for the Green Room, this one in ebony and gilt with green and gold brocatelle upholstery. As in the Blue Room, the sixteen outgoing Bellangé chairs were replaced with an equal number of new chairs, again in three different styles.24 Forty-two pieces of the Bellangé suite— all but the ten chairs already missing and the pier table—were sold at auction in Washington, D.C., on January 17, 1860, by James C. McGuire & Company. The suite brought just over $300.25 Only the Bellangé pier table is believed to have remained in the house after the 1860 auction. It continued to be used in the Blue Room in the same location opposite the mantel until 1902, when it was moved to the Ground Floor oval room directly below, now known as the Diplomatic Reception Room. The pier table was used in this space until about 1944, when it was removed to an off-site storage location. The decision to retain the pier table in 1860 ultimately led to the eventual return of other pieces in the Bellangé suite. In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took an interest in historic White House furnishings. After she inquired about the survival of any old pieces, staff brought the pier table from its off-site location to the White House for her inspection. The table, by then missing its marble top and mirror glass, was placed temporarily in the White House carpenter shop, where Mrs. Kennedy first saw it, thus spawning the popular

story that she “found” it there.26 By publicizing her “find,” Mrs. Kennedy subsequently attracted the donation of two armchairs and two side chairs from the original suite to the permanent White House collection. She commissioned reproduction chairs—seven armchairs and four side chairs—to supplement the reacquisitions and thus allow the Blue Room to be outfitted with the Bellangé suite once again. The reproduction chairs were made by Max Schneider & Son of New York in 1962. In the 1970s, two additional original Bellangé armchairs, one bergère, and one of the two sofas were added to the White House collection. Most recently, in 2012, the White House reacquired one of the two original fire screens from Grogan & Company, an auction house in Dedham, Massachusetts. Including the pier table, the White House now owns ten of the original fifty-three pieces of the 1817 suite. With the eleven reproduction chairs, the modern version of the Bellangé suite is thus composed of twenty-one pieces.

RECENT REGILDINGS The pier table, in poor condition when Jacqueline Kennedy saw it in 1961, was soon sent out for restoration. Her friendship with Jayne Wrightsman, a collector of eighteenth-century French furnishings, led to her introduction to the celebrated decorating firm of Maison Jansen, headquartered in Paris.

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above

The firescreen from the Bellangé suite re-acquired in 2012 for the White House collection is seen prior to restoration. Red threads and small patches of a blue-colored upholstery found caught under tacks on the screen (seen in the enlarged detail above) provided valuable evidence of nineteenth-century upholstery fabrics.

BRUCE WHITE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION / WHITE HOUSE COLLEC TION

Presumably on Mrs. Kennedy’s recommendation, the White House curator Lorraine Pearce contacted Paul Manno, who directed Jansen’s New York office, for advice. Manno indicated that his firm could complete the work, which he detailed in an estimate: “the existing gold paint will be entirely removed so that we arrive at the raw wood. / The entire table will be regilded with water gilding as done in the Eighteenth Century.”27 The other original Bellangé pieces reacquired by the White House in the 1960s appear to have been put into use with the finishes as they had been when they arrived. In 1972–73, as part of a refurbishment of the Blue Room overseen by First Lady Pat Nixon and White House Curator Clement Conger, all the Blue Room furniture, including the 1962 reproduction chairs and the pier table regilded just ten years earlier, were sent to Thorp Brothers, Inc., a respected New York City restoration company. That firm treated a total of seventeen pieces: six original pieces (the pier table and five required pieces—two armchairs, two side chairs, and one bergère) and the eleven reproduction chairs. The bill, totaling about $18,000, details that the work was comprehensive, including removing upholstery, repairing loose frames, stripping the existing gold finish (metal leaf on some, bronze overpaint on others), recutting gesso on the reproduction chairs to better reveal carved details, replacing missing carving, refashioning the form of the bergère, regilding, and “lightly antiqueing.”28 The three additional original Bellangé pieces reacquired later in the 1970s (two armchairs and the sofa) were all sent to the same restoration shop for similar treatment upon acquisition. While the techniques used in 1972 may have been considered appropriate for restoring museum pieces at the time, in retrospect it is clear that the work was aggressive. The furniture was sanded without an apparent attempt to preserve any of the original gilding. The wood frames of many of the pieces today exhibit extensive cracking and checking, suggesting prolonged exposure to a water-based stripper of some sort, which caused the wood to expand and contract. It is also possible that this water damage occurred during earlier regilding campaigns, including the 1849 work by John Wagner. After decades of use, by the early 2000s the gilding treatments of the 1970s were severely degraded. The gold was completely worn away in many areas, exposing the gesso and red bole layers

underneath, and in some places even the gesso layer was gone, revealing patches of bare wood. In 2006, the White House Office of the Curator hired William A. Lewin Conservator LLC, a Baltimore firm specializing in historic gilding, to survey the original Bellangé furniture and determine if any of the pieces retained evidence of original gilding. Due to previous gilding restoration efforts, few did, but William Lewin and Davida Kovner were able to recover some small finish samples from one of the armchairs that showed original gilding. These samples were mounted in acrylic and studied under a microscope to identify the composition of the various layers and to help determine the original gilding pattern of matte and burnished areas. Conservators at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles were able to use these small samples to ascertain the exact chemical composition of the gold leaf that the original French gilders used on this suite.29 This information allowed Lewin and Kovner to choose gold leaf that matched the original color as closely as possible. The Lewin team used traditional water-gilding techniques to re-create the suite’s original appearance, including contrasting areas of matte and burnished gilding. To deduce the original gilding pattern, they relied on the evidence gained through their study and analysis of the original Bellangé pieces as well as on evidence from similar chairs in the collection of Fontainebleau that retain their original gilding and two presidential portraits that appear to depict chairs from the Bellangé suite.30 The regilding is certainly much brighter than we are used to seeing on historic chairs, but it is based both on scientific analysis of the original gilding and on historical understanding of French gilding practices. The current aesthetic, we believe, closely represents the suite’s original finish appearance.

UPHOLSTERY RESTORATION Textiles by nature are much less durable than gilding or wood, and the Bellangé suite was reupholstered multiple times during the course of its use in the White House, not to mention the reupholstering that undoubtedly took place on reacquired seating furniture in the approximately one hundred years it was not owned by the White House. With the exception of the survival of original underupholstery and unpatterned silk on the back of one armchair from the suite, there was very little

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The DAR Museum allowed us to borrow the chair for further examination and authorized the removal of its mid-twentieth-century show fabric. Once the show cover was carefully removed, Laveissière’s original underupholstery was revealed. The arm rolls and the cushions on the chair’s seat and back were all constructed in the early nineteenth-century French manner, with linen covers, abundant horsehair, tight stitching, crisp edge rolls, and tightly woven webbing. As we suspected, the chair’s upholstered back panel proved the most informative. Traditionally, the show fabric on chair backs like those in the Bellangé suite was applied to the rear side of the back cushion that the upholsterer constructed from the front side of the chair, so that it would be visible through the finished wood frame when viewed from behind. Later upholsterers were forced to apply show fabric to this panel from the rear of the chair unless they wanted to completely remove the chair’s back cushion. Once the modern cover was removed, we found an unpatterened, greenish-blue show fabric hiding below,

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B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

physical evidence to suggest how the original textile components could be re-created. All the original seating furniture had been completely stripped of upholstery when it underwent “restoration” in the 1970s. Photographs showing two of the White House chairs (armchair 1973.956.1 and the bergère) before being sent to New York reveal what appears to be original underupholstery in whole (the armchair) or in part (the bergère), but these materials were removed and apparently discarded. The Bellangé fire screen that the White House acquired in 2012 had a few red threads caught under tacks that may be from the original upholstery treatment and small patches of a later blue-colored upholstery, but that was the extent of evidence on the pieces the White House owned. We therefore worked on determining if any of the other few pieces of the suite known to have survived outside the White House had any information to offer. We found what we were looking for just a few blocks away, at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum. This museum was given an armchair from the White House Bellangé suite in 1919, although it was not recognized as such at the time. The chair’s connection to the neighboring White House seems to have been made by DAR Curator Frank Klapthor in the early 1960s, when Jacqueline Kennedy was searching for the whereabouts of other pieces of the Bellangé suite. Once the chair was recognized, Mrs. Kennedy asked the DAR to transfer it to the White House, but was declined.31 On a visit to the DAR Museum in 2008 to examine the gilding of the Bellangé chair, we noted evidence of what appeared to be original underupholstery: the form, the materials used, the tight weave of the webbing, and the fact that the stitches visible on the bottom of the underupholstery still seemed to be functional and connected to the top of the seat pad. Our speculation was confirmed a few years later, in 2011, by the Parisian upholsterer and historic French upholstery scholar Xavier Bonnet, who served as our consultant on this project. He pointed out that small pieces of twine were visible between the underupholstery and the wooden chair rails on the DAR chair. This twine would have originally secured paper wrapping that Bellangé would have placed to protect his handiwork before the chair was sent to Antoine Louis Joseph Laveissière, the original upholsterer. If the original underupholstery had ever been disturbed, this twine would not have survived.32

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An original White House Bellangé armchair, now in the collection of the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum, is seen during an examination of its upholstery. During the examination, a greenish-blue show fabric and a red silk fabric were found below the modern upholstery. The fabrics matched what was known of the nineteenthcentury upholstery while the chair was in the White House. In addition, small pieces of twine, visible between the underupholstery and the wooden chair rails were found. They would have originally secured paper wrapping that Bellangé used to protect the chair frame when it was sent from his shop to the original upholsterer. If the original underupholstery had ever been disturbed, this twine would not have survived.

adhered to an unpatterned red silk fabric beneath that.33 These fabrics and their order of placement correspond to our understanding of the upholstery changes for the Bellangé suite that occurred in the White House during the first half of the nineteenth century, based on written records. We would have loved to have found evidence of the original patterned show cover or trims on the DAR chair, but we did not. But the lack of physical evidence was more than compensated by documentary records. The original bill of lading prepared by Russell and La Farge to accompany the forty-one crates of goods shipped to Monroe is amazingly detailed.34 Their fastidiousness in accounting and describing was probably prompted by their need to justify charges that were going to exceed Monroe’s request. As every textile component of each furniture form in the suite is listed individually, with quantity and cost, this bill of lading served as our instruction guide for the upholstery restoration. The document lists the minutest details about the suite’s original upholstery, such as the fact that 86 pounds of horsehair were used to stuff the mattress for each sofa, and that 2 ells (equivalent to 2.36 meters or 7 feet, 9 inches) of 26 ligne (equivalent to 5.6 cm or 2¼ inch) border was used on each bergère. Bonnet helped us interpret this evidence, which we used to determine reupholstery details such as which width border went where on a piece of furniture, where the different gimps were located, and what type of fabric was used on the armrests. Following the evidence laid out in the bill of lading allowed our talented historic upholsterer, Francis Kalista of Baltimore, to reupholster the Bellangé pieces in the same manner as the French tapissier Laveissière. At the same time, the information about the original design of the show upholstery on the Bellangé suite was rather thin. The bill of lading described the fabric as “double warp satin, fine crimson, two colored gold, and a design of laurel.”35 We also knew from Russell and La Farge’s correspondence with President Monroe that the Paris company Cartier fils supplied the original show fabric, although the manufacturer of the fabric was not named.36 Since 1963, the White House Bellangé suite had been upholstered in multiple versions of an Empire medallion pattern featuring an eagle on its seat back. This choice was inspired by the upholstery seen on an oval-backed chair in an 1822 painting of President Monroe by John Vanderlyn, now in the New York

City Hall portrait collection. The chair in the painting has carved detail very similar to that on the Bellangé suite, causing curator Lorraine Pearce and Jacqueline Kennedy to believe that they had discovered an image of the original Bellangé suite fabric. The fact that they treated the painting’s depiction of the upholstery as evidence of the original, while ignoring the fact that there were no oval-backed chairs in the original suite, was problematic. When new upholstery fabric was chosen during the Nixon and Clinton administrations, the Vanderlyn painting continued to be considered period documentation of the original upholstery design. Considering how detailed the bill of lading was, our research team felt strongly that it would have made some mention of an eagle design if the upholstery indeed had had eagles. Bonnet also argued that a pattern with eagles would have been a custom-woven design, which Russell and La Farge would have been unable to secure in the short time they were given to fulfill the White House commission. We therefore decided to break with the sixty-year history of using an upholstery pattern featuring eagles in the Blue Room in favor of exactly reproducing a documented period design. We knew early in the restoration process that despite our quest for authenticity, the one detail that we would not be restoring to the original was the color of the fabric. The Blue Room has been known as such since 1837, and we were not going to upend 183 years of tradition by trying to change the Blue Room to a Red Room. The White House already has a Red Room, after all. The key evidence in the documentary record for our purposes then was that the original fabric somehow featured laurel, and was of a very fine quality since it had two shades of contrasting gold thread rather than the more typical one shade. Using two shades of the same contrasting color would have given the original fabric greater depth and complexity than if it had been made with one. We therefore sought a French fabric design appropriate to the Bellangé furniture that was documented to be in use as of 1817. On the recommendation of Xavier Bonnet, we selected an Empire medallion pattern in which a wreath of laurel leaves encircles a stylized floral design of a fritillaria flower on the seat back, and acanthus leaves and bellflowers on the seat cushion. This fabric pattern, with an alternate seat back design, is documented to have been ordered in 1811 by

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treatments so they could be used interchangeably in the Blue Room. For the 1817 pieces, the Lewin team identified and secured any surviving original gilding that they found by covering it with a reversible barrier layer that allowed the building of the new gesso and gilding layers on top of the original. After regilding was completed, the pieces were carefully transported to Kalista for reupholstery. He first rebuilt the underupholstery for each piece using linen webbing, horsehair stuffing, and linen covers in the same manner that would have been done in Laveissière’s shop two centuries earlier. He

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B O T H I M A G E S T H I S S P R E A D : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

upholsterer Jean-René Flamand for a furniture suite for the French Emperor Napoleon’s use at the Château de Fontainebleau.36 The Abegg-Stiftung museum in Riggisberg, Switzerland owns the same textile pattern, but in the richer version with two shades of gold instead of one. The Abegg-Stiftung example is stamped “CF,” which is believed to stand for Cartier fils.37 The Musée des Tissus in Lyon also owns the pattern, but with the fritillaria back design instead the helmet design seen on the seat backs of the Fontainebleau and Abegg-Stiftung examples.38 Finally, a suite of furniture marked by Bellangé and very similar in design to the White House suite had survived covered in fabric identical in design to the Musée des Tissus example, with the frittilaria back. This suite is now in the collection of Buscot Park, a National Trust site in Oxfordshire, England. Prelle, a textile factory operating in Lyon, France since 1752, reproduced the original fabric on the Buscot Park suite in 1994, and we asked them to produce the same design for us, but in a custom blue colorway to match the existing draperies and carpet in the Blue Room. Declercq Passementiers in Paris provided reproductions of the multitude of trims on the White House suite, as detailed by the bill of lading. The Committee for the Preservation of the White House, whichs advises the first lady and the Office of the Curator on restoration projects, was consulted frequently during the planning process for this project, and approved all major decisions. Physical restoration work on the suite began in 2013. The first step in the process was to strip each piece of all upholstery materials. As none of our pieces had any surviving 1817 upholstery, we did not choose to reuse any of the existing materials, but decided to build up each piece from scratch. National Park Service conservator John Courtney constructed and installed alternative frames for each form, providing modern Baltic birch plywood platforms that Frank Kalista could then secure his upholstery to. This method prevents new holes from being made in the original wooden frame of each piece, as all upholstery attachment is done to the new frame. The alternative frames are attached to the furniture’s original framework by reusing existing holes, rather than creating new ones. Once the alternative framing was complete, the piece was sent to the shop of William A. Lewin Conservator LLC for regilding. Both original 1817 pieces and 1962 reproductions received identical gilding

room in May 2019, and the fire screen was reintroduced to the room in January 2020 after 161 years away from its original location. Restoration work continues on the remaining armchairs and side chairs, which will be rotated in as necessary to allow for any necessary gilding touchup or upholstery repairs. The last piece of the suite to be regilded will be the pier table, since it is no longer used in the Blue Room due to the changed configuration of the room. It has not yet been decided whether the pier table will be reinstalled in the Entrance Hall, where it has stood since 1972, or be moved to a new location within the White House.

A SUITE FOR THE NATION When two hundred years ago James Monroe’s purchasing agent, William Lee, found himself defending the cost of the Bellangé suite and other French furnishings procured for the President’s House to Congress, he wrote, In furnishing a Government house, care should be taken to purchase substantial heavy furniture, which should always remain in its place, and form, as it were, a part of the house: such as could be handed down through a succession of Presidents, suited to the dignity and character of the nation. In the end, this sort of furniture is the most economical. The most respectable furniture to be seen in the government houses in Europe has been made for a century, although fashion has quite altered the forms of private furniture. The convenience, solidity, and usefulness of the public furniture has a decided preference.40

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The newly restored fire screen was returned to the Blue Room in January 2020 after 161 years away from its place in the White House.

completed all necessary stitching by hand. Because of the stark visual contrast between how the Bellangé furniture appeared before restoration and after, we decided we needed to complete enough pieces to unveil them as a group rather than inserting them piecemeal into the room with unrestored pieces. Once the sofa, five armchairs, and two side chairs had been completed, they were installed, on September 20, 2018. One of the armchairs initially stood where the bergère had traditionally been placed, in the center of the bowed wall overlooking the South Grounds. The bergère rejoined the

The Bellangé suite has proven to be exactly what Lee and Monroe hoped it would be: durable and stylistically neutral enough to be of service to a long succession of presidents. The suite’s longevity despite heavy use and frequent redecorations has made its individual pieces some of the White House’s most valued treasures. The Bellangé suite no longer serves to establish U.S. legitimacy on the world stage; it now represents the rich history of a nation that has achieved global importance. As the suite continues to welcome guests in the Blue Room, we trust that its most recent refurbishment will not be its last.

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This view of the north side of the Blue Room captures the newly restored sofa and four armchairs. A restored side chair is seen below.

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B O T H I M A G E S T H I S S P R E A D : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

A view of the south side of the Blue Room made in January 2019 shortly after the restored suite was unveiled, includes four armchairs and two side chairs. The restored bergère (below) was returned to its place under the center window in May 2019. The decision to use a brighter gilding than that used during the late twentiethcentury restorations was based both on scientific analysis of the original gilding and on historical understanding of French gilding practices. It represents the suite’s original finished appearance.

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B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

NOTES

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A detail of the newly restored sofa, the only one of two of the original Bellangé suite sofas now in the White House collection.

William Seale, The President’s House: A History, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 1:154.

2. [Joseph] Russell and [John] La Farge to James Monroe, September 15, 1817, Records of the House of Representatives, House Report 79, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., 1824–25, 160, Record Group 233, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

City directory. The existence of an appropriate James Paton & Co. working in the city at the time suggests that Seale misinterpreted the period writing in the account. See 2:555nn6, 8. 22. Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, account 75138, no. 1-30, Record Group 217, National Archives. 23. Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, account 102509, Record Group 217, National Archives.

3. Russell and La Farge to Monroe, n.d., ibid., 164.

24. Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, account 136728, no. 20, Record Group 217, National Archives.

4. Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, account 37131, no. 3, Record Group 217, National Archives.

25. “Sales for a/c Com [Commissioner of ] Pub. [Public] Buildings by Jas. C. McGuire & Co.

5. For example, see Hans Huth, “The White House Furniture at the Time of Monroe,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, 29 (January 1946): 23–46; Betty C. Monkman, The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2014), 56–65; Leslie B. Jones, “James Monroe’s White House State Furniture à la Française,” White House History, no. 44 (Winter 2017): 28–39.

26. J. B. West, with Mary Lynn Kotz, Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973), 240; “Historic Antique Pier Table Is Found in White House,” New York Times, April 15, 1961, 11.

6. This argument is made most convincingly by Sylvain Cordier in Bellangé, ebenistes: Une histoire du goût au xixe siècle (Paris: Mare & Martin, 2012), 131–36.

28. “Bill #14170,” June 6, 1972, Thorp Brothers, to White House, OCWH.

7. Russell and La Farge to Monroe, n.d. 8. Sylvain Cordier, who completed his dissertation about and later published a monograph on Pierre-Antoine Bellangé, thinks Bellangé would have been considered within the top three to five cabinetmakers (menuisiers) working in Paris at the time that Russell and La Farge fulfilled the White House commission. Conversation with author, September 26, 2014. 9. Alexander Macomb to Jane Kennedy, November 6, 1825, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Free Library, quoted in Seale, President’s House, 1:154. 10. Thomas Hill Hubbard to Phebe Hubbard, January 3, 1818, Hubbard Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 11. “To Corn-Planter,” Washington Gazette, May 28, 1818. 12. Samuel F. B. Morse, journal entry for December 17, 1819, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, ed. Edward Lind Morse (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1973), 1:227. 13. John Taylor to John H. Bernard, January 5, 1823, Robb-Bernard Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. 14. William Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States (London: Printed for W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1823), 443. 15. “Inventory of Furniture in the President’s House Taken the 24th day of March 1825,” Records of the United States Senate, 19th Cong., 1st sess., National Archives. The fourteen chairs from the Bellangé suite not inventoried in the “Elliptical Drawing Room” are most likely to be either the “14 Elegant Gilt Green Silk bottomed Chairs” inventoried in the “Green drawing Room” or the “1 Doz. Gilt Chairs with Satin covers, much worn” and “2 Arm Chairs, Gilt with do.” inventoried in the “Third Room” on the Second Floor (today’s Treaty Room).

27. “Estimate No. 101.383,” May 10, 1961, prepared by Jansen Incorporated for The White House, object folder 1817.420.1 for the pier table, Office of the Curator, The White House (OCWH).

29. Kellie Boss, “Electron Microscopy Report for White House Bellangé Gilded Furniture Suite,” November 17, 2015, Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation Department, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. 30. The two portraits are those of Andrew Jackson painted c. 1830 by Ralph Earl in the collection of the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum and the 1822 portrait of James Monroe by John Vanderlyn in the collection of New York City Hall. 31. William McPherson, “DAR Won’t Yield to First Lady,” Washington Post, February 20, 1962, B4. 32. Xavier Bonnet identified the full name and correct spelling of the Parisian upholsterer “Laveissier” whom Russell and La Farge indicated had upholstered the Bellangé suite. 33. The same application and type of fabrics once existed on the seat back panel of White House armchair 1973.856.1, according to images and correspondence provided by the seller, the antiques dealer Peter Hill. This back panel is presumed to have been removed and discarded when this chair was sent to New York for restoration after 1972–73. Object folder 1973.856.1, OCWH. 34. Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, account 837131, no. 3, Record Group 217, National Archives. 35. Ibid. 36. Russell and La Farge to Monroe, n.d. Bonnet’s research led him to conclude that the Lyons firm of Dutillieu et Théoleyre was the most likely manufacturer of the original fabric for the White House’s suite. 37. The fabric design we chose is documented as catalog entry 76 in Jean Coural with Chantal Gastinel-Coural and Muriel Müntz de Raïssac, Paris, Mobilier national: Soieries Empire (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1980), 251–52. The furniture, which retains its 1811 upholstery, remains in the collection of the Château de Fontainebleau.

16. Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, account 75138, no. 1-30, Record Group 217, National Archives.

38. The fabric is object number 5216a-b in the Abegg-Stiftung collection.

17. “Inventory of Furniture &c in the President’s House, January 21st, 1849,” Records of the Former Commissioners of Public Buildings and Grounds of the District of Columbia, Letters Received, National Archives.

39. The fabric is object number 28097.1-2 in the Musée des Tissus collection. 40. William Lee to the Hon. B. Bassett, &c. &c. &c., February 24, 1818, published in “Statement of William Lee,” 5.

18. Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, account 102509, Record Group 217, National Archives. 19. “Sales for a/c Com [Commissioner of ] Pub. [Public] Buildings by Jas. C. McGuire & Co., Auction and Commission Merchants,” January 17, 1860, Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, account 136728, Record Group 217, National Archives. 20. “Statement of William Lee, Esquire, Agent for Procuring Furniture for President’s House,” March 9, 1818, House Report 143 (Washington, D.C.: E. De Krafft, 1818), 4. 21. Longworth’s American Almanac: New-York Register and City Directory (New York: T. Longworth, 1837), 481. In The President’s House, Seale identifies the vendor as James Pators & Co., but there is no entry for this company in the 1837 New York

white house history quarterly

The Monroe Oval Room in “SUMMER DRESS” An Annual Ritual Preserves Fine White House Furnishings

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

dav id rams ey

t h r o u g h o u t t h e n i n e t e e n t h and into the twentieth century, a yearly ritual was performed at the White House that was as important as a national holiday, a social season, or even a gardening schedule. This process was vitally important to the preservation of the decorative arts within the mansion and was performed in varying degrees with little fanfare but intensive effort, time, and specific materials. Rarely recorded visually, the process was detailed in ledgers, bills, and invoices of the local upholstery houses involved. The process was the twice yearly “disrobing” and “robing” of interiors, at the end and beginning of “the season,” that is, the winter months when Congress was in session and Washington society was abuzz with parties, receptions, dinners, teas, and other events. Starting in early April and continuing through June, each room in the White House was to some degree “disrobed” to prevent the detrimental effects of summer temperatures, daylight, humidity, and insects on furniture, finishes, and textiles. Most politicians left town for the summer, including the president, and the White House was mostly closed to the public. Then, in September and October, the rooms were “robed” to once again showcase the splendor of the President’s House, newly refreshed.

SOCIAL DRESS In 1817, James Monroe ordered furnishings from

France for the oval room, the most formal room in the President’s House. Gilt-wood seating furniture made by cabinetmaker Pierre Antoine Bellangé, upholstered in crimson silk, was prominently placed. On axis with the Roman-style marble mantel stood the Bellangé pier table, which displayed a Roman-style bust of George Washington by Giuseppe Ceracchi.3 The repetition of Greek and Roman symbols throughout the room, including olive and laurel leaves, evoked strength and victory. A pair of ostrich eggs on silver stands, one of the more exotic decorations, represented rarity and nobility. For security, these eggs resided during the day within the president’s private quarters and were brought down and placed on the mantel for special entertainments.4 A large, clear oval glass dome protected the bronze clock featuring Minerva, also from France.5 The oval room was ready for

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previous spread

The East Room in “summer dress” c. 1910 during the William Howard Taft administration. Draperies are stored away and upholstered benches are covered with custom-fitted protection against sunlight and moths. The chandeliers and torchères are bagged to preserve their delicate finishes and provide a protective barrier from flyspecks and dust.

D AV I D R A M S E Y

The process of “disrobing” and “robing” required upholsters and their assistants to work around the schedule of the president and his family.1 Leading the effort in the early decades of the nineteenth century was the Frenchman Charles Alexandre, who was first hired by President James Monroe to refine and complete the interiors of the White House, rebuilt following the fire of 1814. Alexandre, his name later changed to Alexander, continued to work in the White House for more than fifty years, redecorating and transforming the rooms for the seasons.2 Created with computer technology, the illustrations in this article give a glimpse of how the Monroe oval room (today’s Blue Room) may have looked in the social and summer seasons.

D AV I D R A M S E Y

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North and south views of the elegant crimson and gold Monroe oval room as it would have appeared during the social season— in “social dress”— as re-created by the author using computer technology. The contents of the room reflect the President’s House inventory of March 25, 1825.

Monroe’s first reception, on New Year’s Day 1818. Nearly a century later the impression it made was recalled by Esther Singleton, an early historian of the White House: “It was beautifully furnished with console-table, sofas, arm-chairs, chairs, stools, hearth-furniture, chandeliers, hanging and standing, clock, vases, mirrors, and curtains. It glowed with rose and glittered with gold.”6 No known illustration of the room exists from Monroe’s time, but it was often described in contemporary diaries, letters, and newspaper articles, and documented in bills of sale and labor invoices. All testify to a most impressive room. The flocked wallpaper, especially, captured attention. These expensive wallpapers were made to resemble rich damask fabric and were fashionable with the wealthy throughout Europe, especially in France, where Monroe would have seen them while he

was minister to France in 1794–96 and 1803. One visitor to the White House said that the wallpaper looked like “crimson tapestry without figures . . . mounted with a rich gilt border with antique devices.” He went on to observe that “the chairs are alternately armed and single so that in the arrangement of the chairs around the room there appears to be no confusion of arms, but a resplendency and simplicity which is very admirable.”7 If the shape, proportion, and size of the room were not enough to impress, the furnishings, with their rich gilded frames, crimson and gold lamps, decorative trims, and sumptuous lighting, were unlike anything seen in the United States. But similarly furnished saloons in European palaces would never have had the constant wear incurred by the State Rooms of the White House.

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The process of “disrobing” the house lasted approximately two months and was staggered from the least-used rooms to the most-used rooms, finally ending when the president and his family left Washington, D.C., to escape the dangers of disease and oppressive heat. Many presidents in the early nineteenth century, like Monroe, summered at their family homes and plantations. Others, such as Martin Van Buren, relocated to residences in the north of the city and commuted to the White House daily to work. James Buchanan and then

Abraham Lincoln spent summers, for example, at the Soldiers’ Home, about 3 miles northeast of the White House.8 The upcoming absence of the president’s family signaled the cleaning and storage process throughout the mansion. The necessity of protecting the furnishings during the summer months transformed the appearance of the State Rooms from splendor to slipcovered, a stark off-white that was mostly devoid of symbolism. The “disrobed” view of the rooms would not have gone unnoticed. The annual Fourth of July open house, when the

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D AV I D R A M S E Y

SUMMER DRESS

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A view of the north side of the Monroe Oval Room in “summer dress” reveals custommade muslin slipcovers on the furniture, grass matting in place of carpet on the floor, and the chandelier wrapped in gauze. Framed mirrors and candleholders are wrapped with layers of tobacco cloth to protect the bronze and painted finishes. The fireplace dogs are protected with custom tin covers, and the firebox is sealed with a wallpapered summer screen insert to reduce soot infiltration.

president would greet the general public in the oval room, would have necessitated the removal of the slipcovers. It is more than likely the drapery would have remained stored, the grass matting retained on the floors, and the great chandelier covered with protective gauze. Nevertheless, as the historian William Seale observes, “Even in the summer, when all the gilt and crimson were covered and the chandelier was wrapped in gauze, the curtains down, the Aubusson rolled up and stored, the elliptical saloon held its own as the finest of all the rooms in the President’s House.”9 Singleton gives documentary evidence of the “disrobing” in July 1818: Good care was taken of the furniture and decorations: at the approach of summer precautions were taken against the ravages of flies, moths, and dust. Alexander renders a bill for $91.35 in July for taking down curtains of the Green Room, Circular Room, Audience Hall, and Yellow Room; taking up the carpets of the Green Room, Saloon, Stairs and Entry, President’s private room, the entry and Dining-Room; making cambric cases for lamps and looking-glasses and making one chair-case. His next bill is $72.00 for making 12 arm-chairs [covers], and $25.00 for 2 bergères [covers].10 Loose decorative elements such as mantel ornaments, vases, and smaller lighting fixtures were carefully wiped clean with a soft cloth and stored in the cellar, most likely in the Steward’s Room or the adjacent locked vault directly below the current State Dining Room for safekeeping. Large immobile components such as the chandelier, cornices, framed mirrors, portraits, and candleholders were dusted and carefully wrapped with layers of cloth to protect the bronze and painted finishes from flyspecks and dust. Inexpensive and plentiful tobacco cloth, made of cotton, was often used because it draped lightly and easily over delicate finishes and complex structures. Originally made to protect tobacco crops from too much sunlight, this cloth was and still is used for a variety of purposes. The garret or attic was the first priority to clean so it could receive delicate textiles and smaller furnishings. During the nineteenth century, the White House attic was accessible only through a narrow winding service stair south of the Porter’s Room. It was comprised of a series of angled storage spaces

in the corners of the roof. Servants’ bedrooms were grouped toward the center, laid out between the great chimney breasts for warmth in the winter.11 The bare pine wood flooring of the attic storage spaces was swept clean, and poison was laid out to kill vermin and insects. The slanted ceilings and roof structure were brushed free of dust and spider webs and at times freshly whitewashed. Next, a deep cleaning of the carpeting, rugs, wallpaper, painted plasterwork, and silk draperies commenced below stairs. The textiles of the oval room would have been top priority, for they were the most expensive and required utmost care throughout this process. The sooner the transformation of the oval room was complete and the longer it remained covered, the less likely the delicate finishes would have been damaged. Cleaning and storing of carpets and rugs were always required for the smaller rooms. However, the great size of most rooms in the White House and the limited access to the attic meant that many larger rugs had to remain in place. In smaller rooms the carpeting was taken up by removing the tacks. The carpets were then shaken and beaten outside to remove as much dirt as possible. The scholar Stephanie Phillips explains that carpets were often “cleaned with a piece of cloth, then soap, and then a mixture of warm water, alum, gall, and fuller’s earth,” and finally were “rubbed dry and laid flat on the grass or hung to dry.”12 Once the smaller rugs were cleaned and sufficiently dried, the workmen rolled and wrapped them in paper or linen and took them to the attic for storage. The large rugs were returned to their rooms to be covered with paper and topped with protective grass matting. The matting generally came in strips no wider than 3 feet and was sewn and cut to fit the shape of the room.13 None of the existing porous pine flooring or mahogany perimeter wood borders was typically left exposed. The flocked wallpaper of the oval room was less pervious to insect damage because the varnished grounds and the glues used to attach the wallpaper over the stretched linen canvas preparatory layer acted as deterrents.14 Nevertheless, it was carefully dusted with soft brushes from top to bottom. The 18 foot ceiling height made this process difficult using simple ladders. It necessitated the removal of the furnishings to the center of the room, where they were carefully inspected for moth larvae and other

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cornices, brushed and shaken outside to remove dust, folded and enclosed in strong unfractured linen or brown Holland wrappers, and stored away in the attic on top of the rugs.16 Labor-intensive, this process required several workers given the roughly 15 foot length and 10 foot width of each drapery panel, their decorative tapes and delicate trimmings. Most of the windows in the White House during Monroe’s time contained two separate pairs of functioning draperies: the first pair a decorative silk or printed cotton, and the second pair a more utilitarian white muslin or dimity.17 The utilitarian drapery reduced glare and protected the contents of the rooms from fading when the winter sun was low in the sky. They also provided an extra layer of

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D AV I D R A M S E Y

insects. Custom-made muslin slipcovers sewn by Alexander were carefully fitted over each piece of furniture prior to brushing the wallpaper. Ceilings, plaster cornices, ceiling medallions, and all woodwork were also carefully brushed and wiped down with soft cloths. Ceilings of typical houses were usually whitewashed every three years to cover soot residue, and the woodwork was painted every five years.15 Within the President’s House, this process occurred more frequently as needed and required. Painting necessitated the protection of all elements of the room with lightweight tobacco cloth or rolls of paper tacked around the room to fully protect the wallpaper from paint spills. Drapery panels were unfastened from their

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A view of the south side of the Monroe Oval Room in summer shows the windows with the draperies removed and built-in wood panel shutters in use to protect the room from the sun’s rays. As also seen in the north view (page 28), each piece of furniture is protected from dirt and summer insects with a custom-made slipcover. Argandstyle lamps are substituted for the original Monroe era candle fixtures for safety.

insulation against the winter cold. During the summer months, these muslin draperies were stored alongside the more costly draperies. Protection from insects and the sun’s rays was provided by built-in architectural solid wood panel shutters, otherwise folded into the sides of every window recess. In addition, the exterior of the White House was equipped with louvered shutters on many of the south-facing windows and on the Second Floor of the east- and west-facing facades. These shutters were painted dark green and were hinged from a full-height center vertical post for easier access and operation given the great size of the windows. Occupied rooms on the Second Floor possibly had lace curtains to provide air circulation and privacy. Rooms on the southeast “business” end of the house had simple angled awnings in lieu of exterior shutters. Each of these shading devices appear year-round in daguerreotypes and stereo views of the mansion from the mid-nineteenth century. Awnings remained a feature of the south, east, and west fronts of the house well into the 1930s, finally being eliminated altogether under the Truman Balcony by 1960. Should insects slip through open windows and shutters, glass-domed flycatchers, baited with sugar water and cobalt poison, likely would have been set about. Metal screening, fitted to windows, did not appear in trade catalogs until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.18 The elaborate fireplace andirons had custom-made zinc boxes for protection. Singleton reports that the ornate andirons in the oval room were protected when not in use by tin covers that cost $5.00.19 Fireplaces were emptied and more than likely covered with decorative solid screen boards to minimize chimney soot settling in the room from open flues. These covers were usually decorated with artistic scenery or simply covered with wallpaper matching that of the room. Despite all the care and precautions, when John Quincy Adams moved into the President’s House, the furniture, according to the March 25, 1825, inventory, “having been seven years or upwards, in use, is of necessity more or less injured and defaced.” Yet the same inventory lists the decorative arts objects throughout the oval room as “elegant,”20 and the inventory does not describe any damage to the room. The wallpaper, textiles, and rugs purchased for the Monroe oval room remained intact for twenty years without modification, until 1837, when the room was forever changed to the Blue Room. The

longevity of the Monroe finishes is a testament to these early preservation practices, which ensured the decorative objects chosen for the White House by President Monroe would be protected for future generations. NOTES 1.

See, for example, Brevet Brigadier General Nathaniel Michler, Major of Engineers, U.S. Army and in charge of Public Buildings and Grounds, “The Statement in Detail of Expenditures ‘for Repairing and Refurnishing the President’s House’ for the Calendar-Year Ending the 31st of December 1869,” Records of the House of Representatives, Record Group 42, 41-A-F21.3, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

2. William Seale, The President’s House: A History, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 1:295, 372; 2:547n27, 552n29, 562n44. 3. The marble bust of George Washington is now in the White House Collection. 4. Seale, President’s House, 1:155. 5. Ibid., 1:259. 6. Esther Singleton, The Story of the White House (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908), 1:115. 7. Quoted in Seale, President’s House, 1:154. 8. Ibid., 1:217, 344–45, 373; Lawrence L. Knutson, Away from the White House: Presidential Escapes, Retreats, and Vacations (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2014), 54–57, 78–89. 9. Seale, President’s House, 1:155. 10. Singleton, Story of the White House, 1:128. 11. The Restoration of the White House, Senate Document 197, 57th Cong, 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903), 18. 12. Stephanie Phillips, “The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion: Seasonal Dress as an Interpretative Tool” (MS thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 48. 13. Ibid., 49. 14. “Flock Wallpaper,” Victoria and Albert Museum website, www. vam.ac.uk; Allyson McDermott, “Wallpapers in the Historic Interior,” Building Conservation Directory, 2004, online at www. buildingconservation.com. 15. Phillips, “Lockwood-Mathews Mansion,” 8. 16. Ibid., 22. 17. Patrick Phillips-Schrock, The White House: An Illustrated Architectural History (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2013), 157–59. 18. Phillips, “Lockwood-Mathews Mansion,” 19. 19 Singleton, Story of the White House, 1:126. 20 Quoted in ibid., 1:187, 183.

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B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

A Quilt of White House Fabrics REVEALS THE COLORS of Victorian State Rooms The Legacy of Upholsterer Alice E. Kennedy KRISTEN HUNTER MASON

in june 19 95 a crazy q ui lt and matching pillow sham with an important White House association went up for auction in Frederick, Maryland. The quilt was said to have been made with fabric remnants from White House upholstery projects completed between 1897 and 1904. The auction was for the estate of Margaret W. Queen, and its printed notice explained that the quilt had been made by Queen’s ancestor, the upholsterer A. E. Kennedy, and named her grandfather Abraham E. Kennedy as a cabinetmaker and upholsterer who worked at the White House.1 The quilt and pillow sham were purchased by the White House Historical Association and given to the White House. Research conducted soon after confirmed that the pieces in the quilt were in fact fabrics used in the White House interiors during the late 1890s.2

ALICE E. KENNEDY FEMALE UPHOLSTERER Census records, city directories, a few newspaper articles, and White House records provide bits of information about Alice Kennedy’s life.5 She was born about 1856 in Montgomery County, Maryland, the youngest of John and Margaret Crown’s nine children. By about 1874, she had moved with her parents into the District of Columbia and resided there for the rest of her life. She married Abraham J. Kennedy, the son of Irish-Catholic immigrants, in 1875, and they had their first child, Alice, in 1876. The couple had three more children: Bertha, born in 1877; Edwin, born in 1879; and Charles, born in 1882. When Alice Kennedy began her career in 1894, her children ranged in age from 12 to 18. Her husband Abraham Kennedy worked laying telegraph lines in the early 1880s and became an electrician by 1885, eventually working at the War Department. As electricity was first installed in the White House in 1891, it is likely that he assisted with the wiring at the State, War and Navy Building next door at about the same time. Active as an upholsterer from about 1894 to 1906,

Alice Kennedy partnered initially with Charles E. Johnston as the upholstery firm Johnston and Kennedy. It appears that Johnston and the Kennedys were neighbors on Seventeenth Street across from the State, War and Navy Building (today known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) in 1893, a year before their partnership was listed in the city directory. After working for a year out of the Kennedy home at 614 Seventeenth Street Northwest, the firm moved around the corner to 1704 G Street Northwest in 1895. The partnership dissolved by 1898, but Alice Kennedy continued to operate independently as A. E. Kennedy out of the G Street location until she moved to 1016 Connecticut Avenue in 1900, where her shop remained until 1906.

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Purchased at auction in 1995 by the White House Historical Association and given to the White House collection, this crazy quilt was made by White House upholsterer Alice E. Kennedy with remnants of fabrics used in White House upholstery projects between 1897 and 1904. left and below

White House records indicate that Alice Kennedy worked on various upholstery projects from 1894 to 1903, including upholstery work in several of the State Rooms during the Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt administrations. In 1902 she worked with McKim, Mead & White on the renovation of the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt. On September 28, 1902, the upholstery projects she had in progress for that renovation were destroyed in a fire at her shop. The Baltimore Sun estimated the loss at $7,000 (about $180,000 in current

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Alice Kennedy and her partner Charles Johnston advertised their upholstery and decorating business at 1704 G Street in the 1886 District of Columbia city directory. Kennedy later operated independently from 1016 Connecticut Avenue. Her shop is seen in the 1908 photograph below just north of Farragut Square.

H I S T O R I C A L S O C I E T Y O F WA S H I N G T O N, D . C .

This early research focused on the technical aspects of the quilt as a textile and did not investigate A. E. Kennedy, who was assumed to be Abraham E. Kennedy. Recent research has revealed, however, that the upholsterer who made the quilt was actually Alice E. Kennedy, Margaret Queen’s grandmother. It is not clear if the confusion of Queen’s grandparents came from the auction house or if family lore had conflated the couple with similar initials (Abraham Kennedy’s middle initial was actually J.), both of whom worked for the White House in various capacities during the same period.3 Nor is it surprising that the upholsterer was assumed to be male, since almost all the upholsterers hired by the White House at the time were men, for example W. B. Moses, who redecorated several State Rooms for President Chester A. Arthur in the early 1880s.4 Alice Kennedy may have used her initials for the sake of her business, as a woman in the industry would not have been accorded the same status as a man. Understanding that A. E. Kennedy is a female upholsterer, however, better explains the creation of the crazy quilt, as it is improbable that a man during the late Victorian era would have made a quilt; quilting was a distinctly feminine craft.

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On September 28, 1902, Kennedy lost all of her work in progress for the Roosevelt renovation when a fire damaged her Connecticut Avenue shop. The Baltimore Sun estimated the loss at $7,000. Kennedy was able to recover from the fire quickly enough to supply finished work to the White House in 1903. bottom right

T O P : B A LT I M O R E S U N / B O T T O M : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

No photographs of Alice Kennedy are known to exist. She is buried in Holy Rood Cemetery in Georgetown with her husband and children.

dollars).6 Despite this major loss, Alice Kennedy continued upholstering objects for the White House. The inclusion of her name (listed only as A. E. Kennedy) in the 1903 Annual Report upon Improvement and Care of Public Buildings and Grounds indicates that she was able to recover from the fire quickly enough to supply many items to the White House that year. These are listed as plush velvet barrier ropes, lamp and window shades, and damask wall covers for the Blue Room, Red Room, and Green Room.7 Her recorded work for the White House ended after 1904. In November 1905, Alice Kennedy and Abraham Kennedy each declared bankruptcy, and A. E. Kennedy’s business disappears from the city directory by 1907.8 The couple’s names also appear in records for preparations for large social events at the White House. Abraham Kennedy, although officially an electrician at the War Department, was tasked with transporting, setting up, and returning the silk flags required for all Army and Navy Receptions at the White House. In a letter addressed to Kennedy as “Electrician, Public Grounds,” Colonel Theodore Bingham, presidential aide and superintendent of public buildings and grounds, commended Kennedy on his efforts as a foreman of a team involved in the 1897–98 social season.9 In addition to the flags, Kennedy was eventually responsible for hiring and overseeing extra servants as well as making arrangements to ready the State Rooms for large receptions.10 These responsibilities for the War Department seem to have continued until the end of the Roosevelt administration. Besides her upholstery work, Alice Kennedy was also involved in White House social events as her shop was used to store the special equipment needed for receptions, such as carpets, table trestles, plush ropes, standards, and coat racks.11 The Kennedys appear to have been considered valued staff by the presidential administrations for which they worked. In 1899 when their youngest son Charles died at the age of 17 from typhoid, the Washington Post reported that the White House and War Department sent floral arrangements for the funeral.12 Additionally, the Kennedys and their adult, married children were invited as guests to Judicial and the Army and Navy receptions each year from 1903 to 1911. For several of the receptions Abraham Kennedy was listed as one of the invited officials of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds.13 white house history quarterly

The Kennedy quilt now owned by the White House is what is known as a “crazy quilt,” a style named for its erratic and patchwork form. Usually pieced together from scraps of silk and velvet in varying shapes, sizes, and colors, crazy quilts are also characterized by decorative stitching, such as a herringbone or feather stitch. These quilts enjoyed widespread popularity among upper- and middle-class American women during the last two decades of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. The quality of the fabrics typically used and the intricacies of the patterns embody the consumption and excess prevalent in the Victorian era. Crazy quilts fit well into typical Victorian home decor where sumptuous upholstery, decorative fabrics, and pieces of feminine handiwork covered every surface.14 Once the fashion for Victorian extravagance faded in the early twentieth century, so, too, did the interest in crazy quilts. The Kennedy quilt is made up of more than nine hundred pieces of eighty to ninety different fabrics. They are arranged in a general pattern of large diamonds with a floral shape in the center, surrounded by fan and triangle shapes in the corners of the diamonds. The quilt has an outer border of rectangles in varying widths. It measures about 90 inches in length and 65 inches in width. The matching pillow sham is 19 inches in length and 19½ inches in width. Its decorative top layer features fabric scraps similar to those on the quilt, but they are arranged in a more erratic fashion, without a recognizable design. Presumably all the fabrics in the quilt and pillow sham were used in various upholstery projects in the White House in the 1890s and early 1900s. From existing period photographs of the interiors at the White House, at least six rooms or pieces of furniture can be linked to the fabrics in the quilt. The color themes of the State Rooms greatly aid in matching the fabric to period images. The tradition of these themed rooms described by a dominating color loosely stems from the decor of stately, formal rooms in the houses of European nobility during the nineteenth century. The entertaining rooms of these houses were usually designed around a color or style. Each State Room in the White House took on its color scheme at a different point. President James Monroe presented the newly refinished

Green Room at the 1818 New Year’s Day reception, and by the 1860s the room was firmly established in green decor. The Blue Room was originally decorated in red by President Monroe and then green by President Andrew Jackson; not until 1837, when President Martin Van Buren redecorated in blue, did the room received its permanent color. The Red Room was first made red in 1845 by President James K. Polk; until that time it had been themed as yellow, the color first introduced in the time of President James Madison.15 During the nineteenth century, as photography became more commonplace, the White House and its interiors were heavily photographed. These photographs serve as visual records of what the rooms looked like at certain periods. The McKim, Mead & White renovation in 1902 completely changed the style of the interiors at the White House, and photographs from the 1890s show the interiors that the Roosevelts, with McKim, sought to remove. The quilt now puts color in black-and-white

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Fabrics used in the State Rooms and found in the quilt (above) can be also identified on the pillow sham (opposite). While the quilt’s backing is a plain red cotton, the reverse of the pillow sham is a red velvet and cream striped fabric.

ABOVE AND OPPOSITE BOT TOM: BRUCE WHITE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION

WHITE HOUSE FABRICS IN THE QUILT AND PILLOW SHAM

TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The red velvet and cream striped fabric found on the reverse of the pillow sham is clearly seen on the chair in which First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley is seated in a well-known photograph taken in 1900 in the White House Conservatory.

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The green floral fabric found throughout the quilt matches the upholstery seen in an 1893 photograph of the Green Room. The floral motif is most recognizable on the large piece of furniture in the middle of the room called an indiscret, a couch with three separate seating places fixed on a central axis.

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GREEN AND BLUE ROOMS: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The light blue damask fabric found throughout the quilt is seen on chair and sofa cushions, on the circular divan, and on the walls in long rectangular plaster frames. The fabric dates from an iteration of the Blue Room completed in 1899 during the administration of President McKinley for which Alice Kennedy completed the upholstery. Today the Blue Room is decorated in deeper, more vibrant, shades of blue, but the Kennedy quilt serves as a visual record of the shade used at the very end of the nineteenth century.

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The East Room during the McKinley era was decorated in gold and white. A photograph taken between 1900 and 1910 reveals a heavily decorated space with large potted plants and groupings of upholstered chairs. The floral and medallion fabric on the chairs in the foreground matches the bright gold fabric pieces in the quilt.

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Q U I LT D E TA I L S : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

The most prominent remnant in the quilt is the red and white (or ivory) colored fabric used in the Red Room in the 1890s and seen in this photograph made in 1900. Johnston and Kennedy are known to have redecorated the room in 1894. The red fabric on the quilt is easily recognizable on the large chair in the foreground of the photograph.

photography, allowing us to reimagine the rooms in their full and sumptuous Victorian color schemes.16 There are almost eighty more different fabric pieces on the quilt that have not yet been definitively matched with fabrics seen in historic photographs. The lack of patterns in the fabrics makes matching difficult. Some pieces of rich, dark red and blue velvet in the quilt may have been from the solid-colored rich velvet that was used to upholster furniture in the East Room and, on the Second Floor, the East Sitting Hall and Corridor. But without documentation of the colors used, these pieces cannot be conclusively linked.

ALICE KENNEDY’S QUILT Crazy quilts, so popular in the extravagant Victorian era, lend themselves more to decoration and display than commemoration. Sentimental album and friendship quilts, by contrast, with their signatures, dates, and handwritten messages, were made to memorialize an event or a group. Alice Kennedy’s crazy quilt, however, may be an exception, due to the origin of the fabrics. With all the pieces presumably coming from fabrics used in her upholstery jobs for the White House, the quilt preserves memories. At some point she purposely collected these scraps with the intent to use them in some commemorative way. That she chose to piece them together as a quilt memorializes her service to the White House. Not only does the quilt provide a visual and tactile connection to the interiors of the White House before the 1902 Roosevelt renovation, but it stands as testimony to the skill of a female upholsterer who held a prestigious contract with the White House in an era and field still dominated by men.

District of Columbia city directories for 1874–1940. 6.

“White House Furniture in a Fire While Undergoing Repairs,” Baltimore Sun, September 29, 1902, 2. See also “White House Loses by Fire,” Washington Post, September 29, 1902, 3; “Loss to White House,” Boston Daily Globe, September 29, 1902, 9.

Annual Report upon Improvement and Care of Public Buildings and Grounds: Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1903 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903), 2582, 2586–2592, 2602–2610, 2650, 3972, 3976, 3990, 3994–3996, 4004, 4036, 4038, 4042.

“Bankruptcy Notices,” Washington Post, January 7, 1905, 14.

Colonel Theodore Bingham to A. J. Kennedy, February 1898, Letters Sent Relating to Executive Mansion Functions, December 16, 1897–December 31, 1900, Record Group 42. 154, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Two pre-1903 photographs of the East Room decorated for Army-Navy receptions with flags and drapery reflect Kennedy’s work. They were acquired by the White House Historical Association from the Queen estate auction.

10. “Memorandum of Arrangements Made by A. J. Kennedy for the Large Receptions,” December 3, 1903, Records of Official Functions with the Official Diary of the President, 1901–16, Record Group 42.159, National Archives. 11. Many of these items are listed in Annual Report upon Improvement and Care of Public Buildings and Grounds: Chief of Engineers for 1903, 2582, 2586–2592, 2602–2610, 2650, 3972, 3976, 3990, 3994–3996, 4004, 4036, 4038, 4042. 12. “Funeral of Charles F. Kennedy,” Washington Post, August 26, 1899. 13. Judicial Reception, 1904, Records of Official Functions with the Official Diary of the President, 1901–16, Record Group 42.159, National Archives; “Greet the Judiciary,” Washington Post, January 22, 1904, 11; “Greet the Judiciary,” Washington Post, January 27, 1905, 9; “Reception to Judges,” Washington Post, January 18, 1907, 1, 12; “Guests Invited to the White House Reception,” Washington Post, February 21, 1908, 11; “Guests Invited to the White House Reception,” Washington Post, January 22, 1909, 5. 14. “Crazy Quilts,” Art Amateur 7, no. 5 (October 1882): 107; “Needlework Novelties,” Arthur’s Home Magazine 52, no. 4 (April 1884): 262. 15. Seale, President’s House, 1:213, 520–21; William Seale, The White House: History of an American Idea, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2018), 53–55, 98–102. 16. Much of the matching of fabrics to photographs was conducted by Robin M. Hanson during the technical studies of the quilt. See Robin M. Hanson, “The Role of Historic Documentation in a Contemporary Textile Project,” Textile Specialty Group Postprints 15 (2005): 19–29; Hanson, “More Than Simply Treatment.”

RED AND EAST ROOMS: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

NOTES 1.

Auction notice in the object folder for the quilt in the Office of the Curator, The White House.

2. Robin M. Hanson, “More Than Simply Treatment: What a Conservator Can Tell You About an Object,” Cultural Resource Management 22, no.7 (1999): 19-21. 3. District of Columbia city directories offer indisputable evidence that Alice E. Kennedy that was the other half of the firm Johnston and Kennedy as well as an independent upholsterer. Abraham J. Kennedy is listed as an electrician. 4. William Seale, The President’s House, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 1:513–14. In the District of Columbia city directories for the years Alice Kennedy was active, almost all the upholsterers listed are men, save for her and about five other women who were listed periodically over the twelve years, 1894–1906. 5. The biographical information on Alice E. Kennedy and her family is synthesized from the U.S. Census for 1850–1940 and

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DAVENPORT & COMPANY Furniture Designs for Theodore Roosevelt’s WHITE HOUSE RENOVATION An Archival Treasure Trove in the White House Collection laur en m c g w i n

for the last quarter of the twentieth century, tucked away in an old industrial building in Boston, an archival treasure trove of White House decorative arts history lay waiting to be discovered. Previously believed to have been lost, documents from archives of A. H. Davenport and Company, a prominent furniture and interior design firm, were found in 2006 when the building and its contents were purchased at an estate sale. These documents included thirty-four original furniture design drawings, four room photographs, and three blueprints for a renovation and expansion of the White House ordered by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. The documents were put up for auction as a single lot at Christie’s on December 3, 2007.1 Through the White House Historical Association’s George B. Hartzog Jr. White House Acquisition Trust, the lot was purchased for the White House collection. The documents, thus rescued, now provide valuable documentation of the 1902 renovation and some new insights into its progress.

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The Davenport documents were not entirely unknown to the Office of the Curator, The White House. A generation earlier, in 1978, representatives of the successor to Davenport and Company, Irving and Casson, had contacted the White House curator, Clement Conger, about the documents related to the Roosevelt renovation. Although not willing to part with the originals, Irving and Casson donated fourteen printed and framed copies of the White House–related drawings, along with upholstery fabric samples, to the White House collection. These copies have served as an important study resource over the years, but the contents and even the whereabouts of the twenty additional design drawings slipped from memory. A few years later, in the 1980s, the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum in Rochester, New York (see page 62), purchased a large collection of Davenport materials from Irving and Casson. In 2012 these materials were sold to Historic New England. This nonprofit historic preservation organization now also holds a large collection of archival material once belonging to A. H. Davenport and Irving and Casson, including a wide array of furniture designs, more than 1,500 of them cut and pasted into nearly two hundred albums, for more than four hundred customers, including the White House.2 That the 1902 White House renovation drawings were withheld from the sale to the Strong Museum suggests that they were highly prized, perhaps because they related to Davenport’s most prestigious and remembered commission.

FROM VICTORIAN TO BEAUX-ARTS For eighty-five years following the 1817 rebuilding, subsequent to its burning by British troops in the War of 1812, the White House remained substantially unchanged. By 1901, the year Theodore Roosevelt moved in, it was no longer adequate to serve as both a home for a first family of eight and an office for the president’s growing staff. The private quarters and office spaces were cramped, and the Victorian decor was outdated and undignified. Charles Moore, a journalist and city planner, proclaimed the White House “exhibited all the shabbiness which comes of turning a residence into an office.”3 In April 1902, First Lady Edith Roosevelt consulted with the fashionable New York architectural firm McKim, Mead & White on the possibility of undertaking a renovation project. After reviewing the spaces, Charles Follen McKim developed

a major renovation plan that would update and refurbish the interior rooms from the “dark period of art history” that was the Victorian era.4 In 1881, during the Chester A. Arthur administration, when the White House was last refurbished, Victorian era decor was at its height. The “artful” home was crammed with poorly made, mass-produced objects that were intended to impress.5 Interiors, included those of the White House, were inundated with accumulations of bric-a-brac, busy wallpaper and fabric patterns, and heavy upholstery. Once considered the height of fashion, the Arthur decor was highly criticized by architects and designers only twenty-one years later. Glenn Brown, the architect and superintendent of the Roosevelt renovation, commented, “It may be a source of wonder how the decorations and furnishings reached such a stage of bad art. . . . Furniture which crept into the White House from time to time, while possibly well made, was crude in the extreme, with poorly designed frames and no taste in the color or materials of the covers.” The furniture, he said, was “not suitable for even the basement rooms.”6 Moore confirmed Brown’s opinion: The fact is that although something more than a half-million of dollars was spent on the furnishings of the White House during the first three quarters of a century of its existence, there were not . . . half a dozen pieces of furniture which were intrinsically worth keeping. . . . Had the White House ever been suitably finished and furnished, there would have been no question of restoration. But instead of construction there was decoration, and the furnishings yielded to the passing fancy of the day instead of having organic relationship with the building.7 The architects Charles Follen McKim, William Rutherford Mead, and Stanford White adhered, instead, to the modern principles of clean, uncluttered spaces, simple refined ornamentation, and harmonious interiors. They incorporated these principles in their designs for the Boston Public Library (1895), Brooklyn Museum (1897), and New York City’s Pennsylvania Station (1910). Their principles exemplified the style of the Beaux-Arts movement, which they studied under Henry Hobson Richardson. Beaux-Arts architecture hearkened back to classical Greek and Roman forms and was inspired by a variety of French and English

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previous spread

Davenport & Co.’s proposed design for a pair of mahogany console tables in the State Dining Room is one of many drawings added to the White House collection in 2007. They were made by the company as part of a White House commission during the Theodore Roosevelt renovation of 1902. The mirror and casters shown in this design for the console tables were not included in the final pieces because of time and budget constraints.

ALBERT H. DAVENPORT AND HIS FURNITURE COMPANY

above

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

A view of a Second Floor bedroom made in 1892 captures the dark and cluttered Victorian decor that the architects and designers who planned the Roosevelt renovation sought to eliminate.

neoclassical styles, making a grand but also stylistically eclectic impression. Originating in France at the Ècole des Beaux-Arts, the style was popular in America between 1880 and 1930. In addition to European influences, American architects looked to the origins of their own nation and sought to create a national identity through Colonial Revival furniture.8 The Beaux-Arts Movement became synonymous with the American Renaissance— the blending of different past styles into one form. Having many historical influences, the interior renovation of the White House under McKim, Mead & White was eclectic in form and style. However, this architectural firm was also one of the first that promoted creating unified, harmonious interiors.9 Charles McKim, the lead architect in the White House project, especially, believed that furnishings should relate to the architecture and that rooms should relate to each another. McKim had no interest in restoring the original interior designs of James Hoban, the first White House architect, which had been destroyed in the fire of 1814. Rather, McKim’s plan called for retaining only the general layout and the exterior. He aspired to cement his role as a serious interior designer through the White House commission, and to do so he sought to hire only the finest American furniture makers.10 At a time when craftsmanship had given way to mass-production, McKim turned to A. H. Davenport and Company, which had established itself as a premier luxury furniture maker.

Albert H. Davenport’s career in the furniture business began at the Ezra Brabrook Furniture Company in Boston, where he worked as a clerk for twenty years. Brabrook died in 1880, and his will specified that his company be managed by Davenport. With the help of outside investors, Davenport soon purchased the thriving business and renamed it A. H. Davenport and Company.11 Known in the 1880s as the “Mammoth Furniture Establishment,” Davenport’s factory employed 150 people—including carvers, cabinetmakers, designers, salesmen, upholsterers, and finishers—at the time he took over the company.12 After a fire destroyed his Boston factory in 1884, Davenport moved production into an East Cambridge manufactory building once occupied by the F. M. Holmes Furniture Company. Davenport maintained a Boston showroom and also opened a store in New York to reach a wider and richer clientele and to attract the attention of large architectural firms. By 1881, Davenport was receiving such prestigious commissions as a 225-piece suite of Gothic and Elizabethan Revival–style furniture for the Iolani Palace in Honolulu ordered by King Kalakaua.13 Davenport’s reputation for quality furniture had spread far and wide. By the twentieth century the prestigious A. H. Davenport and Company was working with only the best architectural firms—H. H. Richardson, Peabody Sterns, Richard Morris Hunt, and McKim, Mead & White. The White House collaboration with McKim, Mead & White, which officially began with a contract dated September 29, 1902, was one of the most important commissions of Davenport’s career. While two other American furniture makers were hired to furnish the State Floor—Herter Brothers supplied the wood paneling in the East Room and State Dining Room and fabric for the Red Room and Green Room walls, and Leo Marcotte & Company produced the Blue Room and Red Room furniture—Davenport provided 137 pieces of furniture for the State Rooms and private rooms, more pieces than the other two furniture manufacturers combined.14 The total appropriation for the renovation was $475,445, with only $80,000 reserved for furnishings and light fixtures. Work was slated to be completed in just six months, in time for the winter social season.15 From the appropriation, McKim paid Davenport $14,984 for furnishings for

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the State Dining Room, Private Dining Room (now called the Family Dining Room), Green Room, the president’s study, two southeast bedrooms, two northeast bedrooms, and one southwest bedroom, plus an additional $7,486 for the president’s new office in the new West Wing.16

INSPIRATION FOR THE WHITE HOUSE FURNITURE

Grand Tour clientele, and he often accompanied the wealthy to Italy, where he became acquainted with classical architecture and the arts. On these tours he collected art and inspiration for his palatial Italianate interiors, with furnishings scaled to match, that became so widespread in England that they were designated as “Kent style.”21 Like their eighteenth-century counterparts, the Davenport console tables came in pairs and had Italian marble tops and carved eagles that faced away from each other for symmetry, but unlike Italian and English versions, they were not ornately carved and gilded. Davenport’s tables also borrowed designs from neoclassical elements of the Federal period—Sheratonstyle round, tapered, and reeded legs with carved acanthus leaves at the top; rosettes; and alternating anthemion (honeysuckle) and bellflower motifs on the scrolling gilt brass rail. With the widespread dissemination of pattern books, Davenport was able to collect a wealth of sources to inspire his designers. His extensive library contained pattern books for Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and Thomas Hope furniture, as well as books depicting the history of English furniture and colonial furniture of New England.22 Furthermore, the architect and designer Stanford White, partner in the firm McKim, Mead & White, had an Italian sideboard and pair of console tables with eagle pedestals in the dining room of his New York home, which, along with Davenport’s books on English furniture, were used as models by the Davenport designers for the White House tables. Another drawing in the White House

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The design of the eagle console tables in the State Dining Room were influenced by the Italian carved and gilded eagle table owned by Stanford White (see photo on page 50).

WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION

The original Davenport design drawings now in the White House collection illustrate select pieces of furniture made for the State Floor rooms and private Second Floor rooms. One of the first rooms to be addressed in the renovation was the State Dining Room. This room was not large enough to accommodate large dinner parties. Distinguished guests overflowed into the Cross Hall and East Room in an “uncomfortable” and “undignified” manner.17 McKim, Mead & White enlarged the State Dining Room by moving the Grand Staircase from the west hall to the east hall.18 The new dining room featured stained oak paneled walls made by Herter Brothers; an elaborate Georgian-style ceiling with Doric cornices; silver electric lighting fixtures; green velvet window hangings; sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries purchased from A. Kimbel & Sons; and furnishings in the Colonial Revival style, including six armchairs, fifty side chairs, one extension table, one sideboard, two console tables, five pairs of window curtains, and one screen. The Colonial Revival style glorified America’s past as a way to inspire a national identity, but authenticity was not much of a consideration. Any style that appeared from early America was considered “colonial,” even early nineteenth-century furniture.19 Colonial America became romanticized as a simpler, nobler, more honest, and distinctly more American time in the past, and the furniture of the era was thought to reflect those characteristics onto their owners by association.20 The White House was no exception, and Davenport excelled at creating furniture in the Colonial Revival style for the Roosevelt renovation. Most distinctive are the mahogany console tables and sideboard, notable for their large carved eagle pedestals. Not only did these massive eagles inspire patriotism, but they also fit the “colonial” style. Known as “eagle tables,” they conveyed a form and style that originated in Italy and was popularized in England by the painter, decorative designer, and architect William Kent. Kent catered to the

collection shows notes with design suggestions taken from “Mr. White’s all gold sideboard.” While there is no evidence that White (or the firm’s other partner, Rutherford Mead) was involved with the Roosevelt renovation,23 his partnership in the architectural firm that hired Davenport makes it possible that he could have offered these design suggestions or made them known to the Davenport designers.

FRANCIS H. BACON, FURNITURE DESIGNER

ASCSA ARCHVIES

Francis Bacon served as the lead furniture designer for Davenport’s White House commission.

Choosing the interior furnishings for the White House renovation was a collaborative process between the architects and designers. The lead designer at A. H. Davenport and Company was Francis Bacon, the brother of the architect Henry Bacon, who designed the Lincoln Memorial. Francis Bacon helped Davenport expand his business through his many connections, specialized expertise, and cultural experiences, and it was he who designed the furniture for the White House commission. He would create designs for the architects to approve or revise, and then work up the final designs with measurements and notes for the Davenport workmen to execute. Bacon was an architect in the Beaux-Arts style. He earned his degree in 1877 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was classically trained to make measured drawings, and he helped pioneer the art of drawing full-scale architectural details in America.24 Immediately after graduation, Bacon worked briefly for McKim, Mead & White before the Herter Brothers offered him a higher salary to design furniture for William H. Vanderbilt’s Fifth Avenue mansion. Bacon was also an archaeologist, and between 1881 and 1883 he took a break from design to travel with the Archaeological Institute of America on the Assos Expedition in Turkey, where he learned firsthand the elements of classical architecture. When he returned, he joined the architect Henry Hobson Richardson as a draftsman. That same year Davenport began his first of many projects with Richardson, supplying furniture to the recently built Albany City Hall and Billings Library at the University of Vermont. It was during these

early projects that Davenport met Bacon and in 1885 offered him the position of chief designer at his furniture company.25 Bacon spent the rest of his career designing furniture, explaining, “After a few months [with Richardson] I saw the long road ahead before I could become financially independent in architecture, so having had a taste of furniture and interiors with Herter, I got an introduction to A. H. Davenport and entered his employ, abandoned architecture for the decorating and furniture business.”26 One of the most important skills Bacon brought to A. H. Davenport and Company was his ability to translate handcrafted elements into his designs. Rather than churning out mass-produced furniture at the expense of quality, Davenport, with the help of Bacon’s designs, used modern technology to advantage. The furniture makers may have used power-driven machines to produce the furniture form, but through handcrafted finishing touches, attention to detail, and luxury materials, most of their furniture, especially their custom pieces, was elevated beyond the cookie-cutter pieces produced for the everyday home.

THE WHITE HOUSE FURNITURE DESIGNS The designers at Davenport had ambitious plans for the new White House furniture. An examination of the design drawings in the collection show that the finished piece did not always match the initial design. Pressured by Theodore and Edith Roosevelt, McKim was forced to compromise on elements of design on most of the finished pieces. President Roosevelt wrote to McKim that he wanted the renovation to be done “as quickly and cheaply as possible.”27 The designers and McKim may have had a grand vision of what they wanted, but schedule and cost made them scale back. By October 1902 McKim had already overextended the budget without a clear end in sight, causing Edith Roosevelt to insert herself as overseer of furnishing the rooms.28 The highest quality custom-made pieces were made for the State Floor rooms, such as the State Dining Room, Private Dining Room, and the Green Room, but even those pieces are missing elements seen in the designs. The furnishings for the Second Floor were of a noticeably lower quality. Instead of statement pieces, these rooms just needed to be furnished as functional bedrooms.

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STATE FLOOR FURNISHING PLAN

B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

Davenport’s furnishing plan for the State Floor (LEFT) was limited to showing the State Rooms that the company was commissioned to refurnish during the Theodore Roosevelt renovation: the State Dining Room, Private Dining Room, and Green Room. The White House Davenport collection includes thirty-four original furniture design drawings for custom-made pieces of furniture. The placement of many of these pieces is specified in this plan.

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STATE DINING ROOM Eagle Tables Elements from several Davenport drawings were used to produce the final mahogany console tables and sideboard, illustrating how the designers progressed and experimented with their ideas. The Sheraton-style legs without casters, front rail design with rosettes within Doric columns, and reeding held together with X-shaped ribbons were taken from designs 1 and 3 and combined with the eagle and flat pedestal base seen in designs 2 and 4. A small note in the Davenport drawing collection (6) includes handwritten suggestions and measurements for the eagle table, the design to be similar to “Mr. White’s all gold sideboard,” from Italy, seen in his New York home’s dining room (5). Mrs. Roosevelt personally oversaw the furnishing of the new rooms, and once her approval was given the designs were marked “OK” and moved on to production. The designs 1 and 3 were initially approved with the eagles perched on globular forms but were later modified to resemble the Italian eagle tables on flat bases from White’s collection. Perhaps the design had become too ambitious for the constraints placed on the manufacturers, and the final design had to be rethought.

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The finished watercolor of the side eagle table (OPPOSITE 7) suggests the designers intended the brass fittings on the legs to match the brass rail, but because of cost and time considerations these fittings were dropped.

Seating Davenport’s scheme for seating accommodated 107 chairs (LEFT), eliminating the need to seat guests at large dinners in the Cross Hall.

Paneling

IMAGE #4 HISTORIC NEW ENGLANDIMAGE / #5: MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK A L L O T H E R S : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

One of three blueprints in the Davenport collection shows the paneling designs for the four elevations in the State Dining Room (BELOW). Unpainted during the Roosevelt era, the paneling is painted off-white today.

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STATE DINING ROOM Fifty mahogany armchairs upholstered in tapestry were placed along the wall and at the new dining table. The cost was $40 per chair, for a total of $2,000.29 The cabriole legs and pad feet characterize these chairs as in the Queen Anne style, but there the resemblance to the eighteenth-century style stops. The Queen Anne style emphasized curvaceous lines, compass seats, and vase-shaped splats, mainly made of walnut, whereas the State Dining Room chairs were mahogany with rectangular seats and backs upholstered in tapestry attached to the frame with buttoning (TOP). To stand out from mass-produced furniture, Davenport used luxury items like tapestry, a heavy and patterned handwoven textile that historically only the wealthy could afford.30 The tapestry design shows a distinct scene of flowers in a classical urn standing on a plinth with scrolling acanthus leaves. The design was approved, and samples of the tapestry were submitted, but the final tapestry showed a less specific scene. Rather, the upholstery was cut from a large overall pattern of stylized scrolling leaves and flowers that varied in placement from chair to chair. The original design may have been difficult or time-consuming to source and produce, so Davenport may have had to use a tapestry pattern on hand that was similar to the designers’ vision. The Queen Anne–style side chairs, an eighteenth-century influence, were paired with six William and Mary–style heavily carved oak armchairs, like those from the seventeenth century (BOTTOM). The design for this armchair is the most sophisticated and detailed drawing in the collection. Within the Historic New England’s vast collection of Davenport sample books is a chair made for F. E. Peabody described as “similar chair made for White House” and “Posts to be 1/8" heavier than detail for White House,”31 illustrating how Davenport recycled designs for different clients but also customized them with variant degrees of ornament.

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A L L D R AW I N G S T H I S S P R E A D : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

Mahogany Armchairs

Dining Room Tables

PHOTOGRAPH: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The two design drawings for the State Dining Room’s table also show the designers’ modifications to the design. Labeled “Small Table in State Dining Room for the President’s House,” the first design (TOP) depicts a rectangular double pedestal dining table with two leaves, meant to extend it from 7 to 9 feet, in the Georgian-period style (“copy of English table”). The pedestal bases are supported by four paneled and splayed legs attached to a single turned column and ending in casters. The second design (CENTER) shows a different view, with notes about cutting proportions and a reference to meeting about the proposed ideas (“Will see you Monday about this matter.”). In the end, the large single table was made into two smaller tables with the splayed legs, bearing carved acanthus leaves, attached to a square support with four fluted columns, seen in photographs of the State Dining Room from 1904 . A year later, four additional tapered square legs with casters were added to each table corner, perhaps for additional support (BELOW). The president and first lady did not like these rectangular tables and eventually replaced them with an 1890s round table similar to the one used in the Private Dining Room during the Chester A. Arthur administration.32

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PRIVATE DINING ROOM

Like the State Dining Room, the adjacent Private Dining Room was furnished in the Colonial Revival style, in this instance the combination of seventeen pieces of Sheraton- and Chippendale-style furniture. The Sheraton-style pieces include a mahogany sideboard (TOP) with simple inlaid ovals of satinwood and carved neoclassical bellflowers on the legs, a china cabinet, and a serving table with two lower shelves. The chairs prominently feature the Chippendale-style angular crests with protruding ears, including ten side chairs with carved ribbon splats and two carved ladderback armchairs, all upholstered in leather with straight Marlborough legs (CENTER). The armchairs and two side chairs were placed at a round pedestal table with brass lion paw’s feet (OPPOSITE BOTTOM). The rest of the chairs were along the wall. The console table (BOTTOM), with its carved eagle heads on scrolled leg supports, was inspired by the American Empire pier table made by Anthony Quervelle for the East Room during the Jackson administration.33 Paired with the console table, the gilded mahogany mirror with Chippendalestyle broken pediment (BOTTOM) was labeled “Colonial” for its carved eagle at the center.

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A L L D R AW I N G S T H I S S P R E A D : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

Furnishings

PRIVATE DINING ROOM Eagle Motif

PHOTOGRAPH: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

To Charles Moore, the eagle was an American symbol representing the idealized colonial times, even though the eagle motif was derived from classical Greek and Roman antiquity. “The chairs, the table, and the mirror-frames,” he wrote, “all reproduce patterns representing the best workmanship of colonial days; and even the eagle, appearing in various places to mark the official character of the residence, is the reproduction of a design . . . that has persisted almost unchanged from colonial times even to our day.”34 The eagle also appears as a high relief sculpture over the mantel (BELOW), previously adorned with wallpaper. The drawing by a Davenport designer signed “Moraff ” shows that the original design for over the mantel featured a cornucopia and scrolling foliage (TOP); it was replaced with the spread eagle within a laurel wreath. The neoclassical molding and patera for the drawing were produced, as were the panel wall moldings shaped like a group of three reeds tied together with crisscrossing and angular ribbons—a design also found on the State Dining Room console eagle tables. This attention to detail illustrates how the designers and architects worked together to create a harmonious connection among the renovated rooms in the White House.

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GREEN ROOM

TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The last major room Davenport furnished on the State Floor was the Green Room, using eighteenth-century English and French furniture for inspiration. The commission included one sofa with two pillows, four armchairs, and four side chairs, all painted white with floral upholstery (RIGHT), as well as six “light” chairs with caned seats and backs and six gilded chairs upholstered in silk. There are only two Davenport drawings related to this room in the White House collection. The first is for a mirror and console table set (OPPOSITE) that was never made, and the other for the painted sofa (BELOW) that was made but noted as “destroyed” in later inventories.

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A L L D R AW I N G S T H I S S P R E A D : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

While only selected rooms on the State Floor were refurnished during the renovations, a new furnishing plan for the Second Floor detailed the furniture to be placed in every room. With staff offices moved from the Second Floor to the West Wing, the entire floor could now be devoted to meeting the family’s needs for bedrooms, dressing rooms, and sitting rooms. The president kept an office here as well. The four guest bedrooms (NOS. 1, 2, 9, AND 10) above the East Room were previously office space. As bedrooms, they were furnished with a total of thirty-two pieces of furniture plus bed springs, mattresses, and carpets.35 Consequently, most of the drawings purchased at the Christie’s auction depict the Colonial Revival mahogany bedroom furniture Davenport made for the private family quarters. First Lady Edith Roosevelt made adjustments in pencil on the draft before approving the plan. For example, she crossed out several easy chairs and noted that old easy chairs from the previous administration should be used or fixed.

B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

SECOND FLOOR FURNISHING PLAN

SOUTHEAST BEDROOMS 1 & 2

A L L D R AW I N G S T H I S S P R E A D : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

The small bedroom on the southeast side (identified as “no. 1” on the plan) contained painted furniture, including a bureau (RIGHT), and a brass bed. The large southeast bedroom (no. 2) did not contain a bed made by Davenport, but the bed drawn for this room (OPPOSITE LOWER LEFT) was made for bedroom no. 9 (OPPOSITE LOWER RIGHT). The firm did provide all the other furniture in mahogany—a toilet table with a gilt mirror (BELOW), a standing mirror with cheval glass, a wardrobe with large central mirror (LOWER RIGHT), a writing table, a night table, a round table, a chest of drawers with attached cheval mirror, and a washstand.

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NORTHEAST BEDROOMS 9 & 10

PHOTOGRAPH: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The bedroom suite for the small northheast bedroom (no. 10) was painted green and white and included a writing table, a brass bed with hair mattress, a night table, two chairs, and a bureau. This last piece, the only design drawing for this room in the collection, shows that the bureau originally had two drawers on top instead of one full-width top drawer (TOP LEFT). The large northeast bedroom (no. 9) contained eleven pieces of mahogany furniture, three of them shown with design drawings—a canopy bed, a toilet table with gold mirror, and a chest of drawers (TOP RIGHT). The chest of drawers was made with a cabinet in the upper section instead of the top two drawers shown in the design, and the gold mirror over the toilet table was made with a cherub at the top instead of the classical profile. The canopy bed drawn for this room was not made, but instead the bed drawn for bedroom no. 2 was used in this room. It is interesting that the same bed design, labeled “White House,” appears affixed to a scrapbook of A. H. Davenport design drawings in the Historic New England collection (see page 62). Dated June 5, 1905, this design is also given the pattern number 3464, indicating it was shown to other clients.36

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BEYOND THE WHITE HOUSE COLLECTION: The Journey of a Second Davenport Collection from the Strong Museum to Historic New England

the collection, and there were personal connections, too. Davenport had furnished the Rochester home of George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, with pieces designed by Francis Bacon,4 and Mrs. Strong’s Eastman stock, valued at $77 million at her death, had helped build the museum.5 The museum’s original broad mission—to interpret everyday life in post–Industrial Revolution America—could not long be sustained. In 2003 the trustees refined the mission to focus on Mrs. Strong’s primary interest in toys and dolls. It deaccessioned materials irrelevant to this new mission, and in 2012 Historic New England purchased the Davenport materials. Today, as the Strong National Museum of Play, the museum pursues Margaret Woodbury Strong’s interests by focusing on “the cultural history of play and how it encourages learning, creativity, and discovery.”6

The bed design, cut and pasted into one of more than two hundred Davenport design albums in the Historic New England collection, shows how designs were repurposed for other clients. Labeled “number 3464,” this bed is shown as being for the White House bedroom no. 9, but was never made for the White House.

NOTES 1.

Betsy Brayer, Margaret Woodbury Strong and the Origin of the Strong Museum (Rochester, N.Y.: Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, 1982), 21–25, 29–31, 33.

2. Quoted in Donovan A. Shilling, “Margaret Woodbury Strong and Her Museum of Fascination,” Crooked Lake Review, Spring 1997, online at www.crookedlakereview.com. 3. Rita Reif, “Antiques View: A World of Fantasy,” New York Times, October 24, 1982. 4. Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, “Francis H. Bacon: Bearer of Precious Gifts from the Dardanelles,” posted June 9, 2019, From the Archivist’s Notebook website, https://nataliavogeikoff.com. 5. Shilling, “Margaret Woodbury Strong and Her Museum of Fascination.” 6. Julia Novakovic, “A Museum Is Born: The Strong National Museum of Play,” posted July 24, 2018, Strong National Museum of Play website, museumofplay.org.

white house history quarterly

HISTORIC NEW ENGLAND

while the white house collection of Davenport and Company designs has been the main focus of this article, it is also important to note that a large portion of the company’s design drawings has had an interesting journey to where they now reside in the collection of Historic New England.In the 1980s, materials from the archives of A. H. Davenport and Company were acquired by the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, of Rochester, New York. This new museum, showcasing the collection of the Rochester native for whom it was named, specialized in mass-produced decorative arts and everyday objects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At her death in 1969, this eccentric philanthropist had left a fortune to establish what she called the “Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum of Fascination,” so the public could see and enjoy the 300,000 objects she had amassed.1 Margaret Woodbury was born in 1879 to wealthy parents who developed her passion for collecting at an early age. On trips around the world, her parents allowed her to choose souvenirs and keepsakes as long as they would fit in her carrying bag. “My fondness for small objects grew,” she wrote.2 Left a fortune by her parents, Margaret Woodbury Strong made collecting objects of everyday life her passion. Her collection was massive—buttons, mineral samples, coils, shells, doorknobs, inkwells, trade cards, mechanical banks, kitchen appliances, tools, smoking pipes, and miniature windmills. It took curators and trustees thirteen years to appraise, inventory, organize, and shape Strong’s collection. As curators worked to fill in the interpretive gaps for exhibits documenting nineteenth-century design and industrialized American life,3 representatives of Irving and Casson, the successor to Davenport and Company, offered materials from the Davenport archives, and the curators said yes. Davenport’s designs, sales journals, scrapbooks, photographs, and ephemera dating from 1900 to 1945 were intended to help balance

THE DAVENPORT LEGACY These original drawings from the Davenport archives, now in the White House collection, illustrate how a prominent American furniture company used designers to produce custom furniture reflecting a variety of stylistic influences. McKim, Mead & White achieved its vision of a simpler, harmonious, and more functional White House. While over the years most of the Davenport furniture has been moved to off-site storage, a few pieces remain in the residence. The Private Dining Room console table stands opposite its Anthony Quervelle inspiration on the Ground Floor Corridor; a carved and gilded pier mirror hangs in the Map Room; and the timeless eagle console tables and sideboard have claimed their space in the State Dining Room for more than a century. NOTES 1.

William Allman, former curator, The White House, telephone interview by author, July 31, 2019.

2. Lorna Condon, “Building the Irving and Casson–A. H. Davenport Archive,” Historic New England 15, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 24. 3. Charles Moore, “The Restoration of the White House,” Century Magazine 65, no. 6 (April 1903): 825. 4. Glenn Brown, Memories, 1860–1930 (Washington, D.C. W. F. Roberts, 1931), 110. The renovation involved expanding the interior rooms as needed while maintaining the general layout of the floor plan. The exterior would remain intact. On the west side, the greenhouses would be replaced with a temporary annex building for the president’s executive office. The West Wing became the entrance for business, the East Wing for visitors, and the North Entrance and the South Entrance for the first family. William Seale, The President’s House, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 1:634. 5. Marilyn Johnson, “The Artful Interior,” in Doreen Bolger et al., In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986), 111. 6. Brown, Memories, 111, 114. 7. Moore, “Restoration of the White House,” 811, 825. 8. Betty C. Monkman, “The White House Collection: The Beaux Arts Furnishings of 1902,” White House History, no. 11 (Summer 2002): 62. 9. Johnson, “Artful Interior,” 127. 10. Seale, President’s House, 1:632–34. 11. Nancy Carlisle, “John Ellis and A. H. Davenport: Furniture Manufacturing in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1850–1900,” in Boston Furniture, 1700–1900, ed. Brock Jobe and Gerald W. R. Ward, Colonial Society of Massachusetts Publications 88 (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2016), 356, online at www.colonialsociety.org/publications.

16. Annual Report upon Improvement and Care of Public Buildings and Grounds: Chief of Engineers for 1903, 2654–62; Farnham, “A. H. Davenport and Company,” 1053. 17. Brown, Memories, 114. 18. Seale, President’s House, 1:635. 19. Mary Miley Theobald, “The Colonial Revival: The Past That Never Dies,” Colonial Williamsburg Journal, Summer 2002, online at www.history.org/Foundation/journal. 20. Marilyn Johnson, “Art Furniture: Wedding the Beautiful to the Useful,” in Bolger et al., In Pursuit of Beauty, 162. 21. M. R. R., “A George III Console Table,” Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis 19, no. 3 (July 1934): 36. 22. Farnham, “A. H. Davenport and Company,” 1052. 23. Seale, President’s House, 1:631. 24. Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, “Francis H. Bacon: Bearer of Precious Gifts from the Dardanelles,” posted June 9, 2019, From the Archivist’s Notebook website, https://nataliavogeikoff.com. 25. Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, “Dictionary of Architects, Artisans, Artists, and Manufacturers,” in Bolger et al., In Pursuit of Beauty, 418. 26. Francis Bacon, “Class Notes Letter,” Technology Review 40 (February 1938): vii. A copy is in the MIT Libraries, Institute Archives and Special Collections (MC0394), Cambridge, Mass. 27. Theodore Roosevelt to Charles Follen McKim, Washington, May 10, 1902, Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., quoted in Seale, President’s House, 1:637. 28. Seale, President’s House, 1:645. 29. Annual Report upon Improvement and Care of Public Buildings and Grounds: Chief of Engineers for 1903, 2656. 30. Farnham, “A. H. Davenport and Company,” 1053. The design shown in the Davenport drawing is noted as being “like Carnegie chairs,” perhaps from a previous commission. The original Davenport design for the Queen Anne–style side chairs was used later in Irving and Casson advertisements, which boasted, “Mahogany chair with tapestry and Queen Anne style legs—one of 82 prepared by us for the State Dining Room of the White House in 1902 and still in use.” The number of chairs produced was exaggerated, and the final pattern actually used in the White House was not shown, most likely because the tapestry was changed after the design phase. See Irving & Casson advertisement, Boston Herald, May 14, 1978, E2, online at www. genealogybank.com. 31. “Irving and Casson—A. H. Davenport, Collection I, Albums— Design Drawings,” “Chairs, Rockers,” 128, Historic New England website, online at www.historicnewengland.org. 32. Seale, President’s House, 1:645. 33. Betty Monkman, The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2014), 188; Annual Report upon Improvement and Care of Public Buildings and Grounds: Chief of Engineers for 1903, 2656. 34. Moore, “Restoration of the White House,” 829. 35. Annual Report upon Improvement and Care of Public Buildings and Grounds: Chief of Engineers for 1903, 2662. 36. “Irving and Casson—A. H. Davenport, Collection I, Albums— Design Drawings,” “Beds,” 178, Historic New England website.

12. Anne Farnham, “A. H. Davenport and Company, Boston Furniture Makers,” Antiques, May 1976, 1048. 13. Carlisle, “John Ellis and A. H. Davenport,” 356. 14. Annual Report upon Improvement and Care of Public Buildings and Grounds: Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1903 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903), 2654–62. 15. Seale, President’s House, 1:630.

white house history quarterly

The Story of French SCENIC WALLPAPERS in the White House Risks and Rewards

B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

r o b ert m . kelly

white house history quarterly

opposite

Rescued from the walls of a Maryland home slated for demolition, Zuber & Company’s “Views of North America” is installed on the walls of the White House Diplomatic Reception Room, September 8, 1961. previous spread

Zuber’s “Views of North America,” seen in this 2019 photograph of the Diplomatic Reception Room, has now hung in the White House for nearly sixty years. below

The Kennedy renovation ultimately included the installation of two French Scenics: “Views of North America,” seen below left in 1962, and “American Independence” in the Presidents Dining Room, below right, in 1961.

p e t e r h i l l wa s a p r e a c h e r . But, he was not preaching in April 1961. He was rolling up his sleeves at the old Stoner House at 15 East Main Street in Thurmont, Maryland. He began pulling scraps of wallpaper—most large, some small—from the wall. By September, “Vues d’Amérique du Nord” (Views of North America) was being put back together on the walls of the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. Two months later, a variant, titled “L’Indépendance américaine” (American Independence). was installed in the space newly designated as the President’s Dining Room.1 Few would disagree that “Vues” and “Indépendance,” both created by the French firm Zuber et Cie in the mid-nineteenth century, have added immensely to the decor of the White House. This is their story.

SCENIC WALLPAPERS

O P P O S I T E : J O H N F. K E N N E D Y P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M RIGHT: WHITE HOUS E HISTOR ICAL ASSOCIATION

Scenic wallpapers, called scenics (also known as panoramics) are as old as the White House. In the

early 1800s practically all wallpaper was block-printed. In this process, designs are carved into wooden blocks. The blocks are dipped in ink and deposited on paper, leaving an imprint, much like a rubber stamp. Like other wallpaper, scenics are made to decorate walls. But their scale is unusual: a scenic could consist of up to thirty-two strips requiring as many as one thousand blocks and more than two hundred colors. Despite these impressive numbers, it is important to stress that in their day scenics were frankly commercial products.2 All inks used in block-printing are distemper, a simple water-based mixture of warm glue, size, chalk, and fine powdered pigments. After printing, the water dissipates, leaving a film with minute cavities. These refract light, resulting in a matte finish. This velvety aspect accounts for much of the mystique of scenics. However, the inks remain water-sensitive and therefore alarmingly vulnerable, especially in portions showing sky. These shade from a rosy pink horizon up to the deepest cerulean

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rotundas in city centers all over the world.4 Patrons climbed to a circular platform where they looked out on a celebrated scene, where, as Fulton’s patent puts it, “no door breaks the circle intended for the view.”5 This is precisely the difference between a panorama and a panoramic. A parlor without windows or doors would be unimaginable (not to mention uninhabitable!). The designs for “Vues” were created by Jean-Julien Deltil. His interpretation was based closely on the work of Jacques-Gérard Milbert, a civil engineer and artist.6 Milbert often hiked along the Hudson River. He thoroughly enjoyed the “ever new and magnificent landscape.”7 His account captured the vibrancy of a new nation with ambitious goals and became the template for all that followed. The Zuber et Cie prospectus for “Vues” promised that the

white house history quarterly

Scenic wallpapers evolved from a popular early nineteenth-century form of entertainment in which large panoramic scenes, painted on canvases and displayed inside a rotunda, were viewed from an elevated round platform. This example is a section of Burford’s Panorama, Leicester Square.

ALAMY

blue in a blending technique (irisé) that is a specialty of Zuber et Cie. The subjects of the first generation of scenics included exploration, battles, and the heroes and heroines of popular fiction. Indeed, “Vues,” created in 1834, was one of the last of these narrative types. Scenes within a panoramic, such as “Niagara Falls,” are tableaux; the framing devices (piles of rocks and clumps of trees) provide séparation; and the foreground where the action takes place is the terrasse.3 In a masterstroke, the last strip joins the first. These features insured that scenics could be freely adapted to any room. Scenics grew out of wallpaper traditions. Yet the most decisive precedent came from a different field—popular entertainment. The painted-canvas panoramas of Robert Barker and Robert Fulton were presented inside

L E F T : P H O T O G R A P H B Y FA N N Y L A T O U R C O U R T E S Y G I B B S S M I T H , L A Y T O N, U TA H / R I G H T : Z U B E R

Zuber and Company’s modern artisans use original techniques to print papers today. Antique printing blocks, which the French Ministry of Culture has designated Historical Monuments, are used to apply distemper paint in the block-printing of designs onto rolls of paper. Some designs require more than a thousand blocks to print.

new panoramic would “bring out the true character of the country.”8 “Vues” sold well at first, especially in France. But the suggested retail price of 90 francs in 1834 fell to 72 francs by 1851.9 The romanticism of the early panoramics had become less fashionable. Only eight years after the creation of “Vues,” panoramics with plant-dominated subjects were introduced with “Isola Bella.” The timeless quality of these landscapes was appealing in contrast to the elaborate costuming of the early panoramics, which dated quickly. Zuber et Cie’s solution to this problem had been to update the clothing. But for “Vues,” there was an additional twist: backdating. In 1852 much of the terrasse was masked out and War of Independence combatants were painted in. In the variant (“Indépendance”) the Bay of New York remains, but now the

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Marquis de Lafayette captures a cannon near the Palisades of New Jersey. A few strips over, George Washington enters Boston triumphantly on horseback. He rides past a domed statehouse that did not exist until 1798. From then on, the public could buy either block-printed “Vues” or hand-painted “Indépendance.” But public interest was dwindling. As the historian Bernard Jacqué notes, “This experiment [hand-painting] ceases after 1860; panoramics, whatever their theme, are now out of fashion.”10 Wallpaper remained popular in the nineteenth century.11 Although there is no record of scenic wallpapers at the White House, narrative panoramics were placed by former presidents in the spacious central halls of their retirement homes. The costs of “Telemachus” (for Andrew Jackson) and “Paysage á Chasses” (for Martin Van Buren) were

typical: around $3.00 per roll as opposed to around $1.25 per roll for regular wallpaper at The Hermitage and Lindenwald, respectively.12 The scenic era had been over for quite some time when Kate Sanborn’s book Old Time Wall Papers was published in 1905.13 No doubt this renewed attention saved many antique scenics. These were nursed back to health and tucked into comfortable homes on Long Island and along Philadelphia’s Main Line. Soon a scenic revival developed amid a Colonial Revival. Woodblocks came out of storage. In 1923 “Vues” was restored to the Zuber et Cie catalog.14 The following year Nancy V. McClelland’s important Historic Wall-Papers was published.15

In 1927, a newly block-printed version of “Indépendance,” based on the hand-painted version mentioned above, was created at Zuber et Cie due to McClelland’s personal intervention.16 This too, joined the growing catalog. Why was this revival so strong? The reasons must include the scholarship of Henri Clouzot and the establishment of the German wallpaper museum in Kassel in 1923.17 But the clamor for block-printed scenics by paying customers appears to have been the keystone. In 1929, fifty-five sets of “Vues” and twenty-two sets of “Indépendance” were sold in the United States.18 The demand for “Vues” continued. From 1948 to 1969, 507 sets were sold, an average

top

A full panoramic view of Zuber’s “Views of North America,” the French scenic installed in the Diplomatic Reception Room in 1961. Individual scenes or “tableaux” within the panoramic are separated by rocks and trees used as framing devices. bottom

A full panoramic view of Zuber’s “American Independence,” the French scenic that was installed in the President’s Dining Room in 1962. To address the dated costumes in “Views,” Zuber masked out the tableaux and painted in Revolutionary War soldiers and scenes, making them both historic and timeless.

ZUBER

of nearly twenty-five each year.19 As already stated, wallpaper in general had boomed in the nineteenth century, especially in the second half. But there was a severe course correction. Wallpaper did not go out of use after 1900, but it did go out of style. Suddenly repetitive patterns of any sort on the walls of upscale homes looked wrong. Pattern was replaced to some extent by interesting textures. These included ingrains, burlap, grasscloth, and more obscure textiles such as crash, crepe, and cambric. Furnishing at the White House reflected these trends. Pattern was still used in private quarters, such as Woodrow Wilson’s bedroom.20 A

woodsy Tapestrolea (burlap) was put into the newly built Oval Office in 1909. Other burlaps and grasscloths were installed on the Second Floor of the Residence.21 The first interior decoration rooted in scholarship seems to have arrived with Lou Hoover’s Green Room of 1930, closely followed by the Monroe Drawing Room on the Second Floor.22 But, following the trends mentioned above, wallpaper was hardly to be found in the public rooms. It continued to be scarce, subdued, and tactile. At this point the trajectory of the modern Diplomatic Reception Room needs to be picked up. From its earliest days the room had been a Cinderella to its glamorous sisters directly overhead.

It progressed from servant’s hall in the 1820s to furnace room in the 1840s. When the architect Charles F. McKim evaluated it in 1902, in preparation for a major renovation at the direction of President Theodore Roosevelt, a network of utilitarian pipes continued to dangle overhead. But, in the Roosevelt renovation, the room came of age.23 In the 1950s the Diplomatic Reception Room was reimagined by Mamie Eisenhower as a Federal parlor. This new setting was validated by the seriousness of the American antique furniture donated by the National Society of Interior Designers. An understanding between this group and the White House may have influenced the future decisions about wall treatments. Apparently, the room could be added to but not subtracted from.24 By the spring of 1961, wallpaper, albeit an unusual type of wallpaper, was poised to return to the public rooms with a new administration.

It is time to return to Peter Hill. In the spring of 1961 he was 32 years old and an energetic trader in antiques. He learned of an estate auction and came to the Stoner House expecting to buy furniture. When he came through the front door he came face-to-face with “Vues.” Within days the house (with its “Vues”) was going to be replaced by a Thurmont Super Thrift grocery store. Hill seized the risk. One of his fellow traders was John Pearce, husband of Lorraine Pearce, the newly appointed curator of the White House. John Pearce soon accepted Hill’s invitation to get a close look at his proudest and newest acquisition. It had cost him $50 and a few days of frantic labor.25 Wallpaper is seldom known for fine materials or workmanship, but its placement—how and where it is used—can make all the difference to a

decorative ensemble. When the setting of the Robert Barker and Robert Fulton panoramas of vividly entertaining scenery are recalled, it is not hard to see how the Diplomatic Reception Room, oval and windowless, was thought appropriate for the views of North America that Hill had so recently salvaged. As for the dining room, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, the leader of the restoration taken on by the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, was known for her sense of style. She was equally known for defending whatever privacy she could retain. It seems possible that her desire for a beachhead led to the invention of the President’s Dining Room. As above, its shape may have contributed to the decision to use a scenic. The curving sections of the south wall, reminiscent of the oval and circular forms of the architect James Hoban’s plan, may have seemed tailor-made for such a decoration.26 It is important to remember that the

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The White House set of “Views of North America” was acquired by a young antiquer during an auction held at the Stoner House in Thurmont, Maryland, (above) just days before it was demolished to make way for a grocery store.

JOAN KNOT T

THE DISCOVERY AND INSTALLATION

WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION

Multiple sets of Zuber’s “American Independence” were acquired for display in the President’s Dining Room, seen here during the Gerald R. Ford administration, c. 1974.

house had been gutted relatively recently. The furnishing during the renovation by President Harry S. Truman had been respectful but constrained by time and money. Jaqueline Kennedy’s credo for the restoration was grounded in her insistence that everything put into the White House should have a reason for being there.27 This affinity for “what ought to be” arguably chimed well with the idealized America of the Milbert and Deltil interpretation. Mrs. Kennedy must have checked with others. Though Henry F. du Pont, a prominent member of the committee, had never lived at Eleutherian Mills, he must have known well the antique set of “Vues” hanging in his ancestral home. Certainly he appreciated scenics. By 1960 he had put a half dozen sets of antique wallpaper into his home-turned-museum, Winterthur. Nor was he content with two scenics at the White House. He wrote to Mrs. Kennedy that he had accepted a set

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of “Les Fêtes Grecques” (The Greek Festivals, made by Dufour) on his own authority because it would be “just right” for the Queens’ Bedroom.28 But this was judged one scenic too many. An antique set of “Indépendance” came to the attention of the committee just as it was offered to the public by the Pratt auction house. Archival photos show a bedraggled decor with widely overlapped seams tacked to a wall. One of the inner circle, Jayne Wrightsman, was negative. Another, John Sweeney, was dispatched by du Pont to examine “Indépendance.” Sweeney praised it. By the time these opinions were sorted out, the paper had been sold to a Dr. Goffi.29 Dr. Goffi was spoken to. In short order he had “kindly but reluctantly” relinquished the wallpaper for $2,384 to Brooke Astor. But, a significant problem remained: the Pratt set was 35 feet wide and the dining room walls were 72 feet wide.30 Before long another set of “Indépendance” was acquired. The next problem: at least one of the scenics had been installed previously on short walls. Since the walls of the dining room are lofty, sky portions from a third set were needed.31 Once these sets were in hand, they were mixed and matched and decisions were made about the placement of tableaux. During the installation another discovery was made: a Germanlanguage Viennese newspaper from 1924 was found clinging to the back of a strip of “Indépendance” by the paperhanger Gerhard Franz. This detail all but confirms that at least one of the sets of “Indépendance” is a hand-painted version predating the carving of the blocks in 1927. The expenses covered by Brooke Astor grew to include extensive touching up.32 Fifteen years went by. A great change occurred on May 28, 1975, when “Indépendance” was taken down at the request of the Gerald R. Ford family. The walls were painted a sunny yellow, but not for long. The Jimmy Carter

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TOP: WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD BOTTOM: GETTY IMAGES

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave the nation a first glimpse of the newly installed Zuber “Views of North America” on January 15, 1962, during her famous televised tour of the White House (left). In the years that followed, the scene became an iconic backdrop as eleven presidents received countless heads of state in this room—including, fittingly, President and Mrs. Emmanuel Macron of France, who were welcomed on an official State Visit by President and Mrs. Donald Trump in April 2018 (above).

family retrieved “Indépendance” from storage, and the scenic was back on the dining room walls by April 15, 1978.33 Eighteen more years went by. In 1996, the Bill Clinton family wanted to move “Indépendance,” perhaps to a hallway near the Oval Office. However, the claybased adhesives securing the underlayments of the wallpaper were tenacious; the scenic was fragile; and it was judged that “Indépendance” might not survive the experience. The solution was simple: battens were installed, and “Indépendance” was covered with silk.34

REFLECTIONS This account forms a narrative of affinity, commerce, risk, and reward. French professionals like Milbert were keenly interested and even envious of the natural wealth and bright promise of the United States. The artist Deltil and the entrepreneur Jean Zuber were kindred spirits. The risk that French paperstainers took in undertaking even a single panoramic should not be taken lightly. The world cheered. But this acclaim was earned. Peter Hill also took a risk. We might smile at the amount, but $50 probably meant a lot to him in 1961. He attended business schools but did not graduate. Instead, he grew passionate about religious studies and preaching. He supported his wife Ingre and young daughter Anne Marie by antiquing. His risk of $50 ended in a reward of $17,500, the price agreed to by the National Society of Interior Designers, which bought “Vues” on behalf of the White House. Hill rebated $5,000 to the society.35 No less risky were Jacqueline Kennedy’s gambles: she transformed a former Cinderella room into a diorama where the ideals and natural resources of America are displayed along with some of the nation’s finest furniture. She had an affinity and an instinct for “the best”— for things as they ought to be. And she had the courage to reach for it. The addition of the scenics to the White House was fortuitous. But these installations could not have happened without authoritative sanction, an abundance of nerve, and artisanal know-how. It is these qualities that explain how two views of America were successfully put up in the one household in the United States that can creditably claim to represent all the houses of the United States.

NOTES 1.

“Vues” is no. 80, 310-11 in Odile NouvelKammerer, ed., Papiers Peints Panoramiques (Paris: Flammarion, 1990; revised and published in English as French Scenic Wallpaper, 2000); “Indépendance” is no. 50, 294. Unless otherwise noted, all the scenic wallpapers discussed here are by Zuber et Cie.

2. Catherine Lynn, Wallpaper in America (New York: Norton, 1980), 209, 225; Bernard Jacqué, “An Economic Approach to Scenic Wallpaper,” in French Scenic Wallpaper, ed. Nouvel-Kammerer, 71–102. 3. Odile Nouvel-Kammerer, “Wide Horizons: French Scenic Papers,” in The Papered Wall: History, Patterns, Technique, ed. Lesley Hoskins, 2nd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 98, 103. 4. Large panoramas appeared in New York in 1795, 1796, and 1804. Peter West, ed., Panoramas, 1787–1900, vol. 5, Texts and Contexts: American Panoramas (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013). The “moving panoramas” so popular in the United States from 1835 to 1855 had a strong influence on developments in Europe.

19. Jacqué, “Economic Approach,” 76. 20. William Seale, The President’s House: A History, 1st ed. (Washington: White House Historical Association, 1986), 2: illustration 37. 21. William Seale, The President’s House: A History, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008). The burlap in the Oval Office was washed away during the Christmas Eve fire of 1929 (2:20, 148); grasscloth was installed on the Second Floor Corridor (2:35); and a yellowish buckram was on the walls of President Woodrow Wilson’s study during World War I (2:70); see also 1:653. 22. Ibid., 2:161–65. 23. Ibid., 1:635. 24. James A. Abbott and Elaine M. Rice, Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1998), 120; “Thurmont Wallpaper Rests in White House,” Frederick (Md.) News, October 17, 1961, 8. 25. “$50 Investment in Antique Wallpaper in Thurmont House Reaps $12,500,” Frederick (Md.) News, August 12, 1961, 2; “Thurmont Wallpaper Rests.”

5. Quoted in François Robichon, “From Panoramas to Panoramic Wallpaper,” in French Scenic Wallpaper, ed. Nouvel-Kammerer, 167.

26. Seale, 2nd. ed., President’s House, 1:33, 2:18

6. Jacques-Gérard Milbert, Itinéraire pittoresque du fleuve Hudson et des parties latérals: L’Amerique du nord (Paris: Chez Henry Gaugain et Cie, 1828–29). For a searching examination of sources for “Vues,” see Robert P. Emlen, “Imagining America in 1834: Zuber’s Scenic Wallpaper ‘Vues d’Amérique du Nord,’” Winterthur Portfolio 32, nos. 2–3 (Summer–Autumn 1997): 189–210.

29. Details in this and next few paragraphs are found in the President’s Dining Room file in the Office of the Curator, The White House (OCWH) or as summarized in correspondence from Robert M. Kelly to associate curator Betty C. Monkman, November 25, 1996.

7. Quoted in Emlen, “Imagining America,” 196. 8. Quoted in Bernard Jacqué, “Manufacture au Mur: From the Workshop to the Wall; A Material History of Wallpaper, 1770–1914” (PhD diss., University of Lyon, 2003), sec. 2.5.15 9. Jacqué, “Economic Approach,” 97. 10. Jacqué, “Manufacture au Mur,” sec. 3.5.1. 11. Robert M. Kelly, “Toward a History of Canadian Wallpaper Use: Mechanization, 1860–1935,” Material Culture Review / Revue de la culture matérielle 80 (March 1, 2015). 12. “Telemachus” was made by Dufour. Cost estimates are based on correspondence from Harriet Butler to Martin Van Buren in the Winterthur Library, Winterthur, Del., and bills in the archives of the Ladies Hermitage Association, Hermitage, Tenn. 13. Kate Sanborn, Old Time Wall Papers: An Account of the Pictorial Papers on Our Forefathers’ Walls (New York: Literary Collector Press, 1905). 14. Jacqué, “Economic Approach,” 74.

27. Abbott and Rice, Designing Camelot, 25. 28. Quoted in ibid, 177.

30. Preliminary Catalog of Accessions 1961, no. 961.97.1: “Four panels, 6'4" in height, varying widths from 5' to 9".” OCWH. 31. The additional sky was left over from an installation of “El Dorado” and was acquired from Mrs. Augusta Nightingale of Beverly Farms, Mass. A set of “Indépendance” was offered to the White House by Ben Grisby for $3,000. OCWH. 32. The installation by Gerhard Franz and touch-up by Robert Arlt cost another $3,000. “Vues” was installed and touched up by Peter Guertler’s crew. OCWH. Guertler and Franz were tradesmen from the New York area frequently patronized by Sister Parish, longtime personal interior decorator for Jacqueline Kennedy. Specialists like these are only occasionally employed by the White House. The bulk of the painting and decorating for this complex of 132 rooms is done by a small crew headquartered in the Paint Shop on the Ground Floor. 33. Files in OCWH. 34. Kelly to Monkman, November 25, 1996. 35. “$50 Investment”; “Thurmont Wallpaper Rests.”

15. Nancy V. McClelland, Historic Wall-Papers: From Their Inception to the Introduction of Machinery, introd. Henri Clouzot (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1924). 16. Jacqué, “Economic Approach,” 74. 17. Henri Clouzot had already published scholarly works on French wallpaper by the time he wrote the introduction for Historic Wall-Papers. 18. Jacqué, “Manufacture au Mur,” sec. 3.5.1., footnote 2243 (MPP Z 90-91). In 1929, 1,631 scenics were sold. The most popular was the smallish “Italian Landscape” in grisaille—497 sets.

white house history quarterly

“Here lives A GREAT Chandelier Cleaner” The White House Career of Stewart C. Stevens

RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

stewart c. stevens with lynet ta s t ev ens

left

Stewart Stevens and his wife, Janice Marie, c. 1969. They were married sixty years and raised six children. previous spread

Stevens sits atop scaffolding while cleaning an East Room chandelier, 1982. opposite

Attached to the window surround with a harness, Stevens cleans an exterior window on the North Facade, 1983.

D.C. During this time, children had to purchase Washington D.C. Transit bus tickets to get to school. Those who could not afford to buy a ticket did not go to school. I was going to middle school and working nights at a bowling alley in College Park, Maryland. It was very hard to do both, so one day, when I was around 15 years old, I went to my mother and asked her to sign a permission form for me to go into the army, because I was not doing well in school. I joined the National Guard and was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for basic training. After basic training I went to Augusta, Georgia, for military police training. I did very well in training because I had always wanted to be a police officer. While on thirty-day leave before going to Germany, my sister introduced me to my first love, my only love, Janice Marie. In Germany, I was one of the youngest guys in the 520th Military Police Battalion, where I spent nine months before I was sent to the 130th Station Hospital. This was the hospital where General George Patton died.

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A U T H O R’ S C O L L E C T I O N

i f y o u a s k a n y o n e whether they have ever heard of me—Stewart C. Stevens, Senior, the White House Chandelier Cleaner—they probably would say, “Who is he?” For the most part I am not well known. I have been a behind-the-scenes guy in my job in the most famous house in the world. But I am thankful for the opportunity to have been in a position that would make some people wonder, “How did a black man in the 1970s come to work in such ‘high’ places?” I would like to answer by telling you the story of my life. I have had several names in my lifetime. During my childhood, my family called me Calvin. At school, my teachers and classmates called me Stewart. Later, the presidents and White House staff addressed me as Steve. But I am introducing myself to you as Stewart Calvin Stevens, Senior, White House Chandelier Polisher and Cleaner. I was born in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., in a community known as Marshall Heights. It was predominately black, and most families had a whole bunch of children. In only three to four rooms there might be ten to twelve children. The fourth son of Stewart R. Stevens and Rachel E. Green Stevens, I had seven sisters and five brothers. It didn’t matter the time or day, my dad was always working, but we were poor. On some days we did not have anything to eat. There were days that we did not even have heat. My family did not have much, but we had plenty of love! I graduated from John Carroll Nalle Elementary School in my neighborhood and then went on to Hugh Mason Browne Junior High School, which was named for a civil rights activist and educator. Browne was located miles away on the east of the Anacostia River on Benning Road, Washington, D.C., an area known as a historic district. I had to take the bus from the Central Avenue, Southeast, side in Washington,

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When I returned home from Germany, I told Marie that as soon as I got a good job, we would get married. At the time, there was one black police department and a black fire department in Washington, D.C. I took the test for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, but once I learned they were not hiring black men, my brother and I started a window-washing business. Success was difficult because of competition from larger, established white house history quarterly

companies, but we subcontracted work, and that is how we got to work at the New Executive Office Building near the White House, which houses offices of the Executive Branch. One day, while I was washing windows at the NEOB, Charlie Rotchford, the building manager, approached me. He asked if I wanted to work at the White House. I replied, “Yes Sir!” He asked if I had ever been in any trouble and I told him, “No Sir!” He asked me if I had been in the military and I told him, “Yes Sir!” Then he sent me to his office in the Old Executive Office Building, where he gave me some papers to take home. I came back the following day with the papers, and he issued me a temporary pass to use until I could be cleared by the Secret Service to work at the White House. Once I had a temporary pass, I had access to the White House. It was unusual that I was not recommended by a friend or family member for this position. In my case, I knew no one. In fact, although I was born, raised, and lived in the nation’s capital, I had never even visited the White House. So, I started washing windows, and I was doing a good job. After working at the White House for about six months, I went to the Usher’s Office and met with Rex Scouten, the chief usher. I told him that I had been washing windows for some time but there wasn’t enough work to keep me busy. He looked up at me very surprised. I told him that the chandeliers were very dirty, and I had experience in cleaning chandeliers. He warned me, “These are very old chandeliers, but I’ll let you try to show me that you can clean one.” The painters put up scaffolding, and I proceeded to clean the chandeliers in the Cross Hall. The chandeliers were so dirty they actually looked as if they had mud on them. The word soon spread over the White House that the clean chandeliers looked good (some even said they had never looked so good before).

me a brass belt buckle that said “Steve.” I would shine my belt buckle each day before going to work, and soon everyone came to know me as Steve. The Secret Service officers would even say, “Hey Steve, let us see that belt buckle so we know it’s you,” and everyone would laugh. My family was discreet and did not discuss my job, but I knew they were proud of me. One thing that really kept me motivated was Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech: “Even if it falls your lot to be

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Stewart Stevens was often away from his family sixteen hours a day, but his family was supportive and proud of his work. His children included daughters Lynetta (top, c. 1963), Marisa (above right, 1993), and four sons (above left, counterclockwise from left) Lamonté, Mark, Eric, and Stewart Jr., 1974.

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As a White House worker, you feel such pride because your home is on display. It has to be pretty and must show polished furniture, waxed and glossy flooring, cleaned and polished chandeliers, and definitely no cobwebs. You take such pride in it. It goes beyond your paycheck and is more as if it were your own home and your work on display, so you go beyond your call of duty. I was often asked to perform other duties such as working as a carpenter’s helper or assisting with the setup of podiums and stages for special events. I enjoyed working at State Dinners and became good friends with Eugene Allen, the well-known longtime White House butler. Some of the performers I had the pleasure of meeting were Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Aretha Franklin. Dignitaries who visited the White House during my tenure included Anwar Sadat, Bruno Kreisky, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and Nelson Mandela. On one memorable day, on February 21, 1974, I walked from the White House over to the Treasury Department to cash my salary check. While walking through the Treasury corridors, I noticed a check with documents attached. I picked it up and could not believe my eyes. The check was for $14.5 million. On the paper there were typed instructions that said, “Deliver to Room 204.” I proceeded to take the check to that office. About two weeks later, Rex Scouten called me into his office and told me that the Treasury Department had sent me an award of $50 (which turned into a measly $40 after taxes were taken out). As I look back, I wonder how much finder’s fee I would have received if I had not been a White House employee. I was away from my family an average of sixteen hours per day, but the hours were made less stressful because I had a very patient and understanding wife. This brings me to how I got my White House name. My wife bought

Stewart Stevens cleaned the great lunette window outside of the West Sitting Room for more than thirty years while secured to the window with a safety belt. He is seen above in c. 1983 and waving to the camera (above right), c. 1997. Once his wife gave him a brass belt buckle that said “Steve” he became known as “Steve” at the White House.

a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.’” So, I thought to myself daily, “If it falls my lot to be a chandelier cleaner and a window washer, clean chandeliers and wash windows so that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say here lives a great Chandelier Cleaner.” My job was tedious and dangerous. For example, one picture shows me cleaning outside of the North Entrance while I was up in the air on the ladder. There was a glass enclosure directly under me, and if I had fallen, I would have been killed. Christine Crans-Limerick, the housekeeper, had an assistant who was supposed to learn everybody’s job to fill in if that person was not there, but I told the assistant that I wasn’t going to show him my job because he wouldn’t be able to do it. So the chief usher called white house history quarterly

me into his office and said, “Steve, everybody here has to show the assistant housekeeper their job so that if you are not here the job can be done.” The next day, the assistant housekeeper wanted to go with me upstairs so I could show him how to do my job. I showed him the procedures to do the job proficiently and safely so he would not fall. One of the procedures involved leaning back as far as you can once you are outside the window. Once you are out there, it feels almost like you are hanging in thin air. Safety hooks on windows were attached to safety belts and the bucket on the inside. We went through the procedures, but, as I expected, he was unable to perform the task or master my job as the window washer. I worked for seven presidents. Each one was different, yet they were similar in some ways. I had respect for each and every one of them. The mementos I received from each president over the years include photos and signed portraits. Typically, whatever affected the president or the first family during his time in office affected the entire staff. Be it

Among Stewart Stevens’s many responsibilities was the cleaning of the set of three massive chandeliers purchased for the East Room from Edward F. Caldwell & Co., New York, during the Theodore Roosevelt renovation. Made of cut glass and gilded brass and measuring 10 feet, 9 inches long by 5 feet, 8 inches wide, the electric light fixtures were purchased by the U.S. government in 1902 for $19,061.50.

easygoing president, and the first lady was rather quiet and shy. President Ford really liked to play golf. Unfortunately, he would always hit someone with the ball. The Fords were a wonderful family, and the president gave me several watercolor paintings signed by him. President Jimmy Carter would go to the Oval Office carrying his Bible with

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a time of war, special or sentimental moments such as the passing of a loved one, any other crisis affecting them personally, or any adverse crises affecting the country, it also affected the White House staff. The end of a presidential administration could be a time of real sadness for the staff after four or eight years with the first family. We felt as if we were losing a part of our own family. Behind the wrought-iron fence was our eight-hours (or at times sixteen-hours) a day family. The first president I worked for was President Richard M. Nixon. I was hired in the middle of his term in 1970, so I did not form as close of a relationship as I did with some of the other presidents. But he was a very nice president, and every Christmas he would give all of the employees a gift for each of their children. I certainly remember bringing home a toy for each of my four children at that time. President Gerald R. Ford was my next president. He was a pleasant and

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B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

and replace it with hardwood flooring. President Reagan liked the new floor so much that he sent each one of us a piece of the cork floor in a hard, plastic container, thanking us for a job well done. President George H. W. Bush was my fifth president. He was very friendly with the White House staff. Once, he invited us to pick partners so we could have a horseshoe match. He gave the winners presents like fishing rods and other sports gear. The idea was supposed to be that you had to beat him to win, but he was a decent man, and whether you won or lost he gave you a present. President Clinton was friendly and down to earth. He would ride the elevators with staff and joke around with everybody. The relationship between President Clinton and me was truly special. When I lost my mother, he came down the hall with the Secret Service on the way to the Oval Office, noticed me washing windows, and stopped to say, “Steve, hold your head up because I have been there like you and everything is going to be okay.”

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above left

Stewart Stevens with President and Mrs. Reagan in November 1988. above right

After helping White House carpenters remove an old cork floor in the Oval Office in 1982 during the Reagan administration, Stevens received a piece of the cork along with a letter of thanks from John F. W. Rogers, deputy assistant to the president for management.

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him each morning at 6:00 a.m. promptly. I would be there to open the door for him. He would always say “Good morning Steve.” It made me feel very good to have the president of the United States address me by my name. It was exemplary of any president to put a name to a face and treat an employee with respect as a person, not just for their job, although all the presidents and the first ladies knew what an excellent job I did when they saw the chandeliers sparkling and the windows cleaned. What I admired about President Carter was how, after his presidency, he came back to the Southeast neighborhood in Washington, D.C. (not far from where I grew up) to design and build affordable homes for low-income families. President Ronald Reagan was the fourth president for whom I worked. At the time there was a cork floor in the Oval Office that had served six presidents, but the cork was starting to crack. The president decided that he wanted to put in a new floor. I helped the carpenters bust up the old cork floor

STEWART C. STEVENS’S Advice to Young Men and Young Women In the Workplace Keep a clean record and reputation. Stay away from workplace gossip. Work diligently! Find time to observe others and learn new skills. You will remain a valuable asset to your organization. Practice being courteous and kind. Maintain a separation between your personal life and your work life. Practice integrity, honesty, and truth. Dress for success! Respect yourself, and others will too!

President George W. Bush was my seventh and last president. While working for his administration, there was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, as well as the Pentagon. On the morning of September 11, 2001, word got around that a plane was on the way to the White House. Everyone was ordered to leave except the Secret Service. I did not know of the danger until the Secret Service told me to run. When I got outside of the East Gate, I noticed all of my co-workers standing outside in Lafayette Park. Had it not been for the Secret Service, I could have still been inside the White House. While working for President Bush’s administration, I was standing on a 12-foot ladder washing windows and missed one of the rungs on the ladder as I stepped down. The fall tore a tendon in my knee. I reported it to my supervisor and went to a physician, who informed me that I would need to have surgery. I took time off for therapy for over a year. After being off so long, I got a call from Mrs. Crans-Limerick regarding my return to work. That’s when my wife told me, “I don’t think you should go back because your job as you once knew it is over. You will never be able to climb ladders and scaffolds again.”

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I retired and bowed out gracefully to spend the remaining years loving my wife up until her death, July 4, 2013, after sixty years of marriage. I spend all my spare time with family and friends, traveling and telling the story of my life, and reminiscing on my time as the White House Chandelier Cleaner and Window Washer. note This article is an adaptation of The White House Chandeliers: My Experiences While Working for Seven U.S. Presidents by Stewart “Calvin” Stevens.

E X E C U T I V E O R D E R 1114 5 Providing for a Curator of the White House and establishing a Committee for the Preservation of the White House Source: The provisions of Executive Order 11145 of Mar. 7, 1964, appear at 29 FR 3189, 3 CFR, 1964-1965 Comp., p. 184, unless otherwise noted. WHEREAS the White House, as the home of the highest elective officer of the United States symbolizes the American ideal of responsible self-government WHEREAS certain historic rooms and entranceways in the White House • possess great human interest and historic significance • traditionally have been open to visitors • have provided pleasure and patriotic inspiration to millions of our citizens • have come to be regarded as a public museum and the proud possession of all Americans, and WHEREAS the Congress by law (Act of September 22, 1961), (75 Stat. 586) has authorized the care and preservation of the historic and artistic contents of the White House and has given the President certain responsibilities with regard thereto: NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, it is ordered as follows: Section 1. (a) There shall be in the White House a Curator of the White House. The Curator shall assist in the preservation and protection of the articles of furniture, fixtures, and decorative objects used or displayed in the principal corridor on the ground floor and the principal public rooms on the first floor of the White House, and in such other areas in the White House as the President may designate. (b) The Curator shall report to the President and shall make recommendations with respect to the articles, fixtures, and objects to be declared by the President, under section 2 of the Act of September 22, 1961, to be of historic or artistic interest. Sec. 2. There is hereby established the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, hereinafter referred to as the “Committee”. The Committee shall be composed of the Director of the National Park Service, the Curator of the White House, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the Chairman

of the Commission of Fine Arts, the Director of the National Gallery of Art, the Chief Usher of the White House, and so many other members as the President may from time to time appoint. The Director of the National Park Service shall serve as Chairman of the Committee and shall designate an employee of that Service to act as Executive Secretary of the Committee. Members of the Committee shall serve without compensation. [Sec. 2 amended by Executive Order 11565 of Oct. 13, 1970, 35 FR 16155, 3 CFR, 1966-1970 Comp., p. 976] Sec. 3. (a) The Committee shall report to the President and shall advise the Director of the National Park Service with respect to the discharge of his responsibility under the Act of September 22, 1961, for the preservation and the interpretation of the museum character of the principal corridor on the ground floor and the principal public rooms on the first floor of the White House. Among other things, the Committee shall make recommendations as to the articles of furniture, fixtures, and decorative objects which shall be used or displayed in the aforesaid areas of the White House and as to the decor and arrangements therein best suited to enhance the historic and artistic values of the White House and of such articles, fixtures, and objects. (b) The Committee shall cooperate with the White House Historical Association, a nonprofit organization heretofore formed under the laws of the District of Columbia. (c) The Committee is authorized to invite individuals who are distinguished or interested in the fine arts to attend its meetings or otherwise to assist in carrying out its functions. Sec. 4. Consonant with law, each Federal department and agency represented on the Committee shall furnish necessary assistance to the Committee in accordance with section 214 of the Act of May 3, 1945, 59 Stat. 134 (31 U.S.C. 691). The Department of the Interior shall furnish necessary administrative services for the Committee.

“There Shall Be in the White House A CURATOR of the White House” BETTY C. MONKMAN

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At the request of the White House chief usher, to whom many questions about objects in the White House were routed, the National Park Service undertook a comprehensive study of the collection in 1946. Objects were accessioned according to museum methods, catalog cards were prepared, and an extensive search of original documents in the National Archives and other repositories was made.4 These research documents provided a basis for more extensive study of the existing collection as well as future acquisitions. In the 1950s, Margaret Brown Klapthor, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, conducted research on the White House and its historic collections, particularly its china collection,5 and she installed in the museum’s First Ladies Hall many nineteenth-century White House architectural elements and furnishings that had been lent or transferred to the Smithsonian. Then, in 1961, the White House had its first official curator. From 1961 to the present day only eight people have held the title of White House curator.

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The White House Office of the Curator occupies a small space on the Ground Floor of the Residence (seen here in 2001). previous spread

Executive Order 11145, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, officially established a permanent curatorial staff position within the White House.

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p r i o r t o 1 9 6 1 t h e r e wa s n o professional curatorial staff in the White House with responsibility for the White House collections, their care, preservation, and interpretation. That year, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s interest in the history of the White House and its historic objects led to the hiring of the first curator. In 1964, with an executive order, President Lyndon B. Johnson legally established a permanent curatorial staff position within the White House. Although sporadic inventories of objects in the President’s House were made as early as 1801, no attempts to comprehensively catalog or photographically document the collection were undertaken for nearly a century. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a Washington journalist, Abby Gunn Baker, identified various table services, and in 1918 First Lady Edith Bolling Wilson created a China Room that displayed historic presidential china.1 Lou Henry Hoover initiated a study of the furnishings and had photographs taken of rooms and historic objects, but these documentary materials left the White House at the end of the Hoover administration.2 Also in the 1930s, the Frick Art Reference Library photographed and documented presidential portraits in a handsome volume, which was used by White House staff to respond to inquiries. It was updated in 1950.3

LORRAINE W. PEARCE Curator 1961–1962

Curator Lorraine Pearce examines silver in a White House storage room, 1961.

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Appointed by Jacqueline Kennedy as the first White House curator in March 1961, Lorraine Pearce was recommended to the position by Henry F. du Pont, chair of the Fine Arts Committee for the White House and founder of the Winterthur Museum, Gardens and Library, where she had been a fellow after graduating with an MA from its program in American culture and decorative arts at the University of Delaware. Pearce began to process the mass of mail from the public that had accumulated since Mrs. Kennedy announced her project to refurnish the White House with objects that had once been there and to acquire examples of early nineteenth–century American fine and decorative arts. As curator, Pearce evaluated objects offered to the White House. She also searched the house and its storage areas for pieces with historic significance and sought to document their acquisition. Working with du Pont and the first lady, she established principles and policies relating to the collections and the refurbishment of the State Floor rooms. Pearce’s Winterthur research on the French émigré cabinetmaker working in New York City, CharlesHonoré Lannuier, resulted in the acquisition of fine examples of his work for the Red Room. Among Pearce’s lasting contributions was her assignment to write the text and select objects for inclusion in the first White House guidebook, a project suggested and strongly supported by Mrs. Kennedy. The White House: An Historic Guide was published in 1962 by the White House Historical Association with the assistance of the National Geographic Society. Now in its twenty-fourth edition, the book continues the tradition of the first edition. Pearce left the White House in the summer of 1962, later teaching courses on decorative arts and opening an antique shop. She died in 2017.6

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WILLIAM VOSS ELDER Curator 1962–1963

William Elder with July Fourth by Grandma Moses, which hung for a time in Caroline Kennedy’s bedroom.

Born in Baltimore and educated with a degree in art history from Princeton University, with additional studies at the University of Pennsylvania, William Elder began his work as registrar in the Office of the Curator in October 1961, having been recommended by a professor. He cataloged incoming donations as well as those historic objects that had remained in the collection. He was appointed curator in 1962, working closely with Mrs. Kennedy and evaluating and recommending acquisitions. He reported to her a year later that the cataloging had been completed for those items received during the Kennedy administration as well as for half of the objects in the White House prior to 1961. An expert on Baltimore-made decorative arts and Maryland architecture, Elder left in 1963 to assume the position of curator of decorative arts at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where he enlarged its collection, wrote, lectured, and founded the Friends of the American Wing. He retired from the museum in 1997 and died in 2014.7

James Ketchum shows historic objects to First Lady Lady Bird Johnson in the Blue Room, 1965.

Hired in late 1961 to handle correspondence after the Life magazine article announcing Mrs. Kennedy’s refurbishing project appeared in September 1961,8 James Ketchum was a National Park Service employee and a Colgate graduate. He was promoted to registrar and in the fall of 1963 received an appointment as curator. Under an Executive Order issued by President Johnson in 1964, the curator was made a permanent position on the White House staff and an advisory committee, the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, was created to protect the museum character of the public rooms and advise the president, first lady, and curator on acquisitions. Ketchum worked closely with First Lady Lady Bird Johnson and the committee to acquire important works by American artists not represented in the collection and life portraits of mid-twentieth-century presidents and first ladies. Major additions include a late eighteenth-century English silver coffee urn owned by John and Abigail Adams and two early nineteenth-century marble mantels designed by the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe for the Washington home of the city’s first mayor. A preliminary catalog of the decorative arts collection and the publication of a list of books recommended by historians for the White House Library were completed. Ketchum left the White House in 1970 to become curator of the United States Senate, where he worked until retiring in 1995.9

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JAMES R. KETCHUM Curator 1963–1970

CLEMENT E. CONGER Curator 1970–1986 A longtime State Department employee who established its Diplomatic Reception Rooms in the early 1960s, Clement Conger was appointed White House curator in 1970 after President and Mrs. Richard Nixon had seen and admired his work. With the strong support of Patricia Nixon, he led an ambitious acquisition program that resulted in substantial pieces of American decorative arts coming into the permanent collection. These included fine examples of Federal-period furniture made by New York and New England cabinetmakers, and nineteenth-century American paintings. The Map Room was transformed into a sitting room with eighteenth-century American furniture. Working with the architectural consultant Edward Vason Jones, Conger oversaw the refurbishment of rooms on the State and Ground Floors, and several rooms in the private quarters also received attention. Conger lectured widely throughout the country, appealing to donors and raising private funds for acquisitions and room projects. He continued his work in the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, leaving the White House in 1986 and retiring from the State Department in 1992. That year he received the Henry Francis du Pont Award from Winterthur Museum for distinguished contribution to the American arts. He died in 2004.10 Clem Conger (left) reviews plans with Edward Vason Jones in the Green Room during the Nixon-era renovation of the State Rooms, 1973.

T O P : N E W Y O R K T I M E S P H O T O B Y G E O R G E TA M E S BOTTOM: PHOTO BY MICHAEL GEISSINGER

REX W. SCOUTEN Curator 1986–1997 Long associated with the White House, Rex Scouten served as a Secret Service agent for President Harry Truman in the 1950s, after graduating from Michigan State University. He became an assistant White House usher in the early 1960s, served in the White House liaison office of the National Park Service, and in 1969 was appointed by President Nixon as chief usher, the manager of the White House Residence and its staff. In 1986 he was selected White House curator, and he worked with First Ladies Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Hillary Clinton. During the 1992 commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the laying of the White House cornerstone, Scouten worked closely with the White House Historical Association, the American Institute of Architects, and the Smithsonian Institution to plan several public programs. He advocated for the establishment of an endowment for acquisitions and State Room projects and later served on the board of directors of the White House Historical Association and supported its White House Endowment Fund. Scouten retired in 1997 and died in 2013.11

Rex Scouten (left) consults with White House painters.

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BETTY C. MONKMAN Curator 1997–2002

WILLIAM G. ALLMAN Curator 2002–2017

William Allman seen here in the Green Room, authored the updated edition of Official White House China.

William Allman was appointed curatorial assistant in 1976 after working as a National Park Service employee at the Executive Storage Facility. With a BA in history from the University of Maryland and an MA in American civilization from The George Washington University, he was involved in the planning and implementation of the early computerization of the annual inventory of White House objects in the late 1970s and subsequent upgrades. Allman authored the catalog section to The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families and led the 2016 revision of Official White House China. Collaborating with Laura Bush and the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, he shaped the refurbishing of the Lincoln Bedroom in 2005 and later worked with Michelle Obama on the refurbishment of the Family Dining Room to include the addition of several works by twentieth-century artists. He was co-curator of the major exhibition of White House decorative arts, Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House, at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2011–12. Allman has lectured and written widely on the White House collections. He retired in 2017.13

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Betty Monkman, seen here in the Blue Room in 1999, wrote the first book on the White House decorative arts collection.

Betty Monkman began her museum career when she joined the Office of the Curator as registrar in 1967. With a BA in history from the University of North Dakota and an MA in American civilization from the George Washington University, she was promoted to associate curator in 1980. She oversaw the effort to have the White House accredited as a museum by the American Association of Museums (now the American Alliance of Museums), a status first awarded in 1988. She was promoted to curator in 1997. Interested in the interpretation of the White House and its collections, Monkman curated the first exhibition on the White House, The White House 1792–1992: Image in Architecture at The Octagon. Her support for publications on the collections resulted in books on White House glassware, art, and outdoor sculpture exhibitions. She contributed to a revised edition of Klapthor’s book on White House china in 1999, wrote articles for White House History, and lectured on the collections. Her book The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, first published in 2000, was the first book on the decorative arts collection. While working closely with members of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House and First Lady Hillary Clinton, Monkman managed the refurbishing of the Blue Room in 1995 and sought to acquire paintings of various regions of the country. Since her retirement in 2002 she has consulted with the White House Historical Association on the revised design and writing of The Living White House and was the managing editor and contributor to the fiftieth anniversary edition of The White House: An Historic Guide.12

LYDIA B. TEDERICK Curator 2017–

O P P O S I T E B O T T O M A N D A B O V E : G E O R G E W. B U S H P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D MUSEUM PHOTO BY TINA HAGER

Lydia Tederick came to the Office of the Curator as an intern in 1979 while a graduate student in art history at the George Washington University. After receiving her MA degree, she was hired as a curatorial assistant in 1980 to research the growing art collection. She conducted research on the art collection for the 1992 publication Art in the White House: A Nation’s Pride and contributed to its catalog of paintings, sculpture, and drawings. She has subsequently overseen two expanded editions. Taking a special interest in the print and photograph collections, Tederick has written articles on photographs of the Lincoln White House and the artist William Orpen for White House History Quarterly, for which she serves on the Editorial Advisory. She supervised the conservation of paintings and works on paper and the reframing of many works of art to reflect the period in which they painted. She was appointed curator in 2017 and is overseeing State Room projects and the review and planning of updated collection storage spaces within the White House.14

NOTES 1.

Melissa Naulin, “Creating a Room of Its Own: The Evolution of the White House China Room,” White House History Quarterly, no. 53 (Spring 2019): 24–39.

2. Elizabeth Dinchel, “First Lady Lou Henry Hoover and the First White House Catalog,” White House History, no. 45 (Spring 2017): 30–39. A facsimile of “White House Furnishings,” 1932, is reproduced in this issue of the journal. 3. “Paintings in the White House, 1931,” Frick Art Reference Library. Unpublished copy in Office of the Curator, The White House (OCWH). 4. Original documents are in the National Archives. Copies are in OCWH. 5. Margaret Brown Klapthor’s research was published as Official White House China, 1789 to the Present (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975). 6. Lorraine W. Pearce, oral history, November 21, 1995, White House Historical Association, Washington, D.C.; Lorraine Pearce, The White House: An Historic Guide (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 1962); Richard Sandomir, “Obituary for Lorraine Pearce,” New York Times, April 7, 2017; Bridget Reed Morawski, “Obituary for Lorraine Pearce,” Washington Post, April 19, 2017. 7. William V. Elder, oral history, December 15, 1965, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum,

Present Curator Lydia Tederick, seen here in her office in 2005, has taken a special interest in the print and photograph collections.

Boston, Mass.; Jacques Kelly, “Obituary for William Voss Elder,” Baltimore Sun, April 21, 2014. 8. Hugh Sidey, “The First Lady Brings History and Beauty to the White House,” Life, September 1961, 54–63. 9. James R. Ketchum, oral history, December 12, 1995, White House Historical Association; Ketchum, oral history, July 22, 2000, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, Austin, Tex.; Ketchum, “The White House Collection: Preliminary Catalogue Furniture, Furnishings, Fine Arts, Documents Acquired 1961–November 1964”; Report of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, 1964–69. Copies of the preliminary catalogue and report of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House are in OCWH. 10. Clement E. Conger, oral history, December 7, 1995, White House Historical Association; Adam Bernstein, “Obituary for Clement E. Conger,” Washington Post, January 12, 2004; John Files, “Obituary for Clement Conger,” New York Times, January 13, 2004. 11. Rex W. Scouten, oral history, July 30, 1996, White House Historical Association; Adam Bernstein, “Obituary for Rex Scouten,” Washington Post, February 22, 2013. 12. Recent editions of works by Betty C. Monkman include The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2014);

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Monkman, The Living White House, 14th ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2017); The White House: An Historic Guide, 50th anniversary ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2011), now in the 24th ed., 2017. 13. William G. Allman, Official White House China: From the 18th to the 21st Centuries (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2016); Allman and Melissa C. Naulin, Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2011); “White House Curator to Retire after Working with First Ladies for Decades,” Washington Post, May 9, 2017; William G. Allman, interview by Stewart McLaurin, 1600 Sessions, September 13, 2017, online at the White House Historical Association website, www. whitehousehistory.org. 14. William Kloss et al., Art in the White House: A Nation’s Pride, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2019); Lydia Tederick, “Photographs of the Lincoln White House,” White House History, no. 24 (Fall 2008): 26–43; Tederick, “Painted at the Paris Peace Conference: A Portrait of President Woodrow Wilson by William Orpen,” White House History Quarterly, no. 51 (2018): 54–59.

PRESIDENTIAL SITES Quarterly Feature

STEPHEN DECATUR’S Porcelain and Silver Find a Home at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage The Journey of a Historic Collection from the President’s Neighborhood to a Presidential Site

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

LAUREN MCGWIN

p r e s i d e n t a n d r e w ja c k s o n ’ s 4 2 5 -a c r e adding one-story wings for a library and farm office plantation home near Nashville, Tennessee, known as on the east and a dining room and pantry on the west, The Hermitage, is today a museum that interprets the with a new kitchen and smokehouse behind the house. life of the seventh president in his retirement years. In the front, a two-story portico with Doric columns The estate was a source of great pride to Jackson and created an impressive entrance. Then, on October is one of the best preserved early presidential homes. 13, 1834, the mansion burned. A chimney fire gutted The plantation was originally 1,120 acres, primar- the roof and upper story and damaged the first floor. ily planted in cotton, and worked by upward of 150 Jackson immediately set about rebuilding the mansion enslaved people, whose stories are also told at this on the same footprint, raising the ceiling of the first National Historic Site. In addition to the mansion, floor to 14 feet, adding an elliptical staircase in the there are barns and outbuildings, including the cabin center hall, and enhancing the two-story portico with where Andrew and Rachel, his wife, first lived after he six Corinthian columns. His architects, Joseph Reiff purchased the property in 1804. It was later converted and William C. Hume, transformed The Hermitage into a Greek Revival mansion, its facade painted a light to slave quarters.1 The mansion today is the third version on the site. tan to give the appearance of stone from antiquity. All The first was a two-story Federal-style brick home, was ready to receive the former president when he arcompleted in 1821. It had a standard central hall plan, rived home in the spring of 1837. He lived there until with two rooms on either side on both the first and he died in 1845, and was buried in the domed tomb second floors. Jackson expanded the house in 1831, beside Rachel.2

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Today the Hermitage houses an impressive collection of decorative arts long held by the Jackson family. Three generations lived there, the last departing in 1893. Public tours allow visitors a glimpse of Andrew Jackson’s home life and postpresidential years through its furnishings, primary documents and books, and fine and decorative arts. Among them are silver vegetable dishes and white-andgold porcelain that survived the fire to tell the story of President’s Jackson’s kindness to Susan Decatur, widow of Commodore Stephen Decatur, the great naval hero recalled today for being killed in a duel.

SUSAN DECATUR AND PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON Susan Decatur, described as a “truly and elegant woman” by her contemporaries,3 was accustomed to privilege, wealth, and high standing in society, but her life changed forever when her husband was mortally wounded in a duel on March 22, 1820. Unable to bear living in the grand house on Lafayette Square without her husband, she moved to Georgetown and subsequently rented the house to a series of tenants. As required of any landlord, she made repairs and additions, and costs accumulated. Back buildings added to the house in 1821 to accommodate the servants of the first tenants, Baron Hyde de Neuville, French minister to the United States, and his wife, placed Susan Decatur in debt to the Baltimore moneylender Robert Oliver. By 1822, when her second and most troublesome tenant, Baron de Tuyll, the Russian minister, moved in, she owed Oliver $23,000, an amount that just kept increasing year after year.4 She wrote in frustration to Secretary of State Henry Clay in 1827, “That property has already prov’d so ruinous to me that I determin’d . . . never to disburse another dollar upon it.”5 As a widow, Susan became responsible for managing and paying her husband’s estate fees, and with the help of George Bomford, an old friend of her husband and his executor, she sought to salvage her holdings. On May 6, 1820, she auctioned off select household possessions she would not take with her to Georgetown, making $2,421.95 to tide her over.6 However, Baron de Tuyll caused a major setback when he announced he was breaking his lease and moving out early. She explained to a relative: Baron de Thuyll [sic] has given me notice that he intends leaving the Country in April, and I

shall probably be twelve months before I can get another tenant; during which time I shall not have a dollar of income; and really know not what I shall do—It has taken the whole of the rent which I have recently receiv’d to pay off the little debts that were laying over from last year, and I have not thirty dollars left.7 Adding insult to injury, Baron de Tuyll ordered his steward the day after he left to dig up the shrubbery and flowers planted at the house to sell for his own profit. Susan was enraged and in writing to Clay exclaimed, “I am sorry to say, the conduct of Baron de Tuyll has been . . . that of a bear.”8 While dealing with Baron de Tuyll, Susan realized she would never quite gain the financial momentum she needed only by renting her house, so in 1824 she initiated a claim to Congress for prize money she believed was deserved for her husband’s burning of the U.S. frigate Philadelphia, which had been captured by Tripoli, in 1804. Desperately believing this prize money would be her lifeline, she contacted prestigious people to help her case with Congress, including President Andrew Jackson. The case was already five years without a resolution when in 1829 she wrote the new president, “May I therefore entreat you, My Dear General, to remind Mr. Hoffman (the Chairman) of it, and of the great importance it is to me to have it settled as speedily as possible—for I can with truth assure you that I have not a single dollar! and I implore you to use all your influence to have me reliev’d from such a painful and humiliating situation!”9 From the beginning of his administration, Jackson supported Susan Decatur’s claim for the prize money, even addressing it in his first annual message as president: I cannot close this communication without bringing to your view the just claim of the representatives of Commodore Decatur, his officers and crew, arising from the recapture of the frigate Philadelphia under the heavy batteries of Tripoli. I deem it my duty to recommend it to your favorable consideration. Besides the justice of this claim . . . it is the fruit of a deed of patriotic and chivalrous daring which infused life and confidence into our infant Navy and contributed as much as any exploit in its history to elevate our national character.10

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The Hermitage c. 1856 as President Andrew Jackson would have known it in his retirement. To the right of the house can be seen the small Greek temple that Jackson had designed to cover the grave of his wife Rachel, who died a month before he left The Hermitage to begin his term as president. Although the artist has shown the sides of the house as white, only the front and back facades are actually painted white and the sides are unfinished brick.

of my calamity continue to inhabit the same planet!12

A N D R E W JA C K S O N F O U N D AT I O N

This self-imposed isolation meant that Susan never returned calls,13 and she blamed the former administration for excluding her from society by allowing those involved in the duel that killed her husband to walk freely and by encouraging her friends in the Diplomatic Corps to drop her acquaintance. In hopes of recovering her status, Susan invited Jackson and his family for tea “to shew them that I am in some degree restor’d to Executive favor!”14 The friendship continued, as did Susan’s financial problems. By the beginning of 1833, she had accumulated a debt of $47,277.89 (equal to $1,410,409.41 in 2019), prompting Oliver to cut her off from any further loans and resulting in numerous bills of complaint and court suits. On May 13, 1833, Susan sought President Jackson’s help with her financial troubles by offering to sell her prized furnishings and household goods that were not sold at the 1820 auction:

With the hope of easing her financial troubles, Susan Decatur offered to sell some of her finest possessions to her friend President Andrew Jackson. The list she offered to him included 8 “plated vegetable dishes, with solid silver edges and handles” and a “desert sett of the finest quality of French China”: 4 dozen plates, 1½ dozen deep plates, 8 dishes, 3 baskets, 2 sauce tureens, and 3½ dozen dinner plates.

Jackson tried to supply Susan Decatur with hope in all his letters, and throughout the years of his presidency the two maintained a close friendship. She took his side in the so-called Peggy Eaton affair, and, while cabinet wives snubbed the second wife of the secretary of war, she received Margaret Eaton’s calls, despite anonymous threats.11 In turn, Susan Decatur’s association with the president bolstered her diminished standing in society. After her husband’s death, she had ostracized herself for fear of crossing paths with those responsible for the duel. She wrote: I might perchance some day or other find myself in the society of persons whom it is my strongest inclination, and my most sacred duty forever to avoid!—and to the effect this object, I never go into the street—I never go to any public place—I never travel in any public convey. . . . This is the course I have pursu’d for nearly eight years—and this is the course I mean to pursue so long as I and the authors

I again trespass upon your kindness in regarding the favor of you to let me say a few words to your relative to my disastrous affairs! Mr. Oliver has cut off what little means of subsistence I have hitherto had, and I am totally destitute! I have two or three rich articles of furniture which I have so far saved from the general wretch, but which I now must immediately dispose of for my daily bread! They are well suited to the President’s House being extremely elegant and at the same time highly useful, and it wou’d be really an act of charity if you wou’d have the goodship to take them—I pray you may dear sire, to come and look at them. . . . Mr. Oliver, although he lent me the money under the mask of friendship, to sell my Husband’s Estate, has prov’d himself to be a rapacious hard hearted usurer.15 Several days later on May 18, Susan sent President Jackson a list of items she believed would be useful for him, She wrote: I now enclose a list of the articles which I shew’d to you a day or two since—they cost me very near five hundred dollars; and I shou’d feel very much oblig’d to you if you would take the whole for three hundred and fifty—I am

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sure you wou’d find them useful; and if not, I have no doubt that any new member coming into your Cabinet, wou’d be glad to take them off your hands—I therefore pray you to let me send them to you—These are the only articles I have left of all my comforts; and there are no persons in George Town who can afford to purchase them—and I am literally without a dollar to send to market, and am living upon the patience and kindness of my Butcher and Baker.

That very day President Jackson sent Susan a check for $350 and made arrangements for the silver and porcelain to be packed and shipped at his own expense. He confessed to his private secretary, Major Andrew Jackson Donelson, that he wanted to offer Susan a “greater price . . . for her benefit,”17 but pride must have allowed her to accept only the original asking price. It is evident President Jackson purchased the silver and porcelain from Susan Decatur as an act of friendship and not out of necessity. After most of the White House china was destroyed during the 1829 inauguration reception, Jackson ordered a complete dinner service from Robinson Tyndale in Philadelphia, and in 1833 ordered a State Service from another Philadelphia company, L. Veron & Company, that were then painted in France.18 Instead, he presented the items as gifts to his niece and daughter-in-law. In a memorandum he specified how the pieces would be divided.19

THE DECATUR SILVER AND PORCELAIN As the much-admired wife of Commodore Decatur, Susan Decatur exemplified fine taste and high social status, and she selected only the finest of furnishings. During the first decade of her marriage she and her husband did not have a permanent home, as he was at sea, fighting in the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812. Traveling from her father’s home in Norfolk, Virginia, she visited him when she could, whenever he was docked in New York or Philadelphia. It was during one of these visits that she purchased eight silver vegetable dishes from a New York retailer for $250.20 Silver, the ultimate status symbol, was highly sought after for its functionality and beauty, and Susan Decatur’s eight silver vegetable dishes—four round and four rectangular—are of the highest quality. They were made in London, the center of the most fashionable and desirable silver designs, and bear the mark of Rebecca Emes and Edward

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above and below

Jackson’s purchase of the Decatur porcelain and silver is recorded in two surviving documents. On the very day Susan Decatur offered to sell her items, President Jackson made a check out for $350.00 (below) to S. Decatur and wrote a memo specifying how the purchase was to be divided (above): “The china with the fruit baskets for Mrs. Emily Donelson— the plated ware to my daughter Sarah Jackson having china enough for The Hermitage to be sent to and well boxed.”

T O P : A N D R E W JA C K S O N ’ S H E R M I TA G E / B O T T O M : L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S

Amidst the dreadful wreck of friends and fortune which I have sustain’d, I feel very grateful to you My dear General, for the kind interest you have always taken in my misfortunes; and I beg you to believe that I shall ever remain most cordially, gratefully and respectfully yours. S. Decatur.16

T O P : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / B O T T O M : A N D R E W JA C K S O N ’ S H E R M I TA G E

above

Two of the eight English Regency silver vegetable dishes purchased by President Andrew Jackson are seen on display at The Hermitage today. They bear the mark of Rebecca Emes and Edward Bernard (bottom left) and the Decatur family motto Pro libertate et patria dulce periculum (bottom right) above the monogram of Andrew Jr. and Sarah Jaockson, “ASJ,” which was added later.

Barnard, a partnership that began in 1808 and, as a large manufacturing firm, exported silver to retailers in America and India.21 The Decatur silver dishes are designed in the refined English Regency style with its simple ornamentation: plain surfaces edged in gadrooning; handles flared upward and terminating in acanthus leaves; and stag-head finials, each highly crafted and slightly different with a character of its own. The dishes are silver plated; the handles and stag finials are solid silver. The Decatur family crest affixed to the front of the dishes shows stylized pomegranates with a griffin above a ribbon inscribed with the family motto, Pro libertate et patria dulce periculum (For liberty of my country danger is sweet). After Jackson gave the dishes to his daughter-in-law Sarah Yorke Jackson, the monogram “ASJ” for Andrew Jackson Jr. and Sarah Jackson was added below the crest.22 In 1815 Commodore Decatur was appointed to a prestigious position on the Board of Navy Commissioners, and he and Susan took up residence in Washington, D.C. The couple lived in one

of the Seven Buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue before moving to Lafayette Square, to a home designed for them by Benjamin Henry Latrobe.23 From the moment they entered Washington society the Decaturs were celebrities for the commodore’s heroism and highly regarded office. They traveled in the city’s political and social circles, and when Susan Decatur sought to purchase a china service of French porcelain, President James Monroe kindly included her order in the order for the President’s House. To replace the furnishings, all of which had been burned during the war, he had hired the American firm Russell and La Farge, located in Le Havre, to select elegant items in France.24 An invoice from September 15, 1817, listing President Monroe’s account with Russell and La Farge, includes “To amount of 1 case porcelain for Mrs. Decatur as per Invoice” for 803 francs.25 This white-and-gold French porcelain service was used by the Decaturs at their Seven Buildings lease and later at their home on Lafayette Square.

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EMILY DONELSON AND THE DECATUR PORCELAIN

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Susan Decatur’s purchase of a French porcelain service was included in an order placed by President James Monroe for the President’s House with Russell and La Farge in 1817. Their invoice listing the details of President Monroe’s account includes “To amount of 1 case porcelain for Mrs. Decatur as per Invoice” for 803 francs.

NATIONAL ARCHIV ES

In May 1833, after President Jackson purchased Susan Decatur’s French porcelain, he gave the service to his niece and White House hostess Emily Donelson. Emily lived at the White House with her husband Andrew Jackson Donelson, Jackson’s secretary and nephew, and their four children. They likely used the Decatur porcelain while there for personal, not official, use. Today at The Hermitage there are sixty-six pieces of white-and-gold French porcelain, including dinner plates, soup plates, platters, serving dishes and baskets, and pots de crème, all of various sizes. A similar fruit basket and compote now in the White House collection are said by Jackson heirs to have been used during the Jackson administration. But because none of the porcelain is marked and the known provenance is only to the Jackson family, it is uncertain whether any of the pieces, or which ones, are from the Decatur purchase.26 In August 1834 Emily visited Tennessee with President Jackson and stayed at The Hermitage to be near her sick husband and son. It is possible that she brought the Decatur porcelain service with her

to be used or stored at The Hermitage during her stay. When the president and her husband returned to the capital, she remained at The Hermitage, claiming the heat of September was too much for her to travel.27 Then, in October the mansion burned. Jackson wrote from Washington to ask about the house’s contents and inquired specifically about “Mrs. Donelson’s Box of china.” Fortunately, it had been in the cellar and survived in perfect condition.28 After the fire, Emily Donelson returned to the White House, but her health began to deteriorate. Two years later, in June 1836, she moved to Poplar Grove (now Tulip Grove), her newly constructed Greek Revival home just a mile from The Hermitage, and there she died, of tuberculosis, in December.29 It is unknown whether Emily took the Decatur porcelain with her back to the White House, if she took it to Tulip Grove, or if it remained stored at The Hermitage. Unfortunately, the inventory of furnishings in the Executive Mansion taken at the end of the Jackson administration in 1837 has been lost, and little is known about the interior of Tulip Grove while Andrew Jackson Donelson lived there.30

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The French porcelain service sold by Susan Decatur to President Jackson was originally used by the Decaturs at their leased home in the Seven Buildings and at their residence on Lafayette Square. Although the pieces purchased by Jackson were not marked and cannot be identified in The Hermitage collection today, they are thought to have resembled the above examples currently in the White House collection.

SARAH YORKE JACKSON AND THE DECATUR SILVER In 1833, President Jackson gave his daughter-inlaw, Sarah Yorke Jackson, the eight silver vegetable dishes he had purchased from Susan Decatur. Sarah Yorke had married President Jackson’s adopted son Andrew Jackson Jr., in 1831, and after honeymooning at the White House for a year, the couple moved to The Hermitage to manage the plantation. They visited the White House again from February to August 1833, to be there for President Jackson’s second inauguration. It was during this visit that President Jackson purchased the Decatur silver and gifted it to Sarah. When Sarah and her husband returned to The Hermitage in August, she took the silver with them to use for fine entertaining.31 In October, when the chimney fire caused major damage to the mansion, the west wing dining room and pantry, where the silver was likely stored, remained largely intact. Sarah and her two children returned to the White House, while Andrew Jackson Jr. stayed on to manage the rebuilding. He was haunted by the fire and wrote to his wife, “The other night I dreamed that the house was on fire I immediately jumped up and called for you, I was going to hunt for the boy and little Rachel but soon found it was all a dream and just such dreams I have about you all every night.”32 Jackson Junior traveled to and from the White House and, after Andrew Jackson Donelson resigned to care for his dying wife, Emily, was appointed the president’s secretary. The family remained at the White

House until the end of President’s Jackson’s term in March 1837. During this time Sarah served as White House hostess while also overseeing the refurnishing of The Hermitage by purchasing pieces from Philadelphia.33

THE HERMITAGE AFTER ANDREW JACKSON Even though Andrew Jackson Jr. had managed the plantation for years, he mismanaged his finances. After President Jackson’s death in 1845, Jackson Jr.’s debt accumulated and his other business ventures proved unsuccessful. In 1856 he was forced to sell The Hermitage to the state of Tennessee. The family remained as tenants, Sarah Yorke Jackson living there until her death in 1887.34 Two years later the Ladies’ Hermitage Association, now the Andrew Jackson Foundation, was formed and acquired The Hermitage from the state with the mission to honor President Andrew Jackson by preserving his home.35 The Ladies’ Association renovated the house and grounds and raised funds through concerts, shows, and luncheons. Although the state of Tennessee bought the land and house, the furnishings remained with the Jackson family, and in 1897, the Ladies’ Association began purchasing back Jackson furnishings, including the Decatur silver dishes.36 The association’s minutes record that on April 17, 1899, “The committee was appointed to see Co. Jackson about the purchase of more relics—to go to his house and see the [silver] dishes of Commodore Decatur.” At the next meeting in May, a member of

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W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

the committee reported, “The Commodore Decatur silver dishes, offered by Co. Andrew Jackson were in a beautiful state of preservation.” The dishes were purchased for The Hermitage collection in June.37 In the 1950s the Ladies’ Hermitage Association presented one of the round dishes to the Smithsonian Institution.38 The remaining seven vegetable dishes in The Hermitage collection are well-preserved representations of high-quality silver and the tale of President Jackson’s act of kindness to a friend in need.

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NOTES

opposite

Clockwise from top right: Today pieces purchased by President Jackson from his friend Susan Decatur are proudly displayed on the table set in the dining room of The Hermitage. Visitors to the site may also view the pantry in which the Jacksons stored their tableware. The original wooden trunk made for the Decatur silver pieces remains in The Hermitage collection and bears a plate engraved with the Decatur name.

Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage Official Guidebook (Nashville, Tenn.: Beckon Books, 2018), 11, 25, 26, 29, 33, 35, 38, 104–05.

2. Ibid., 34–41, 47. See also “The Hermitage Mansion Story,” The Hermitage website, https://thehermitage.com. 3. Louis McLane to Kitty McLane, January 1, 1818, Louis McLane Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Louis McLane was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Delaware from 1817 to 1827. This letter to his wife describes Madame Decatur going through the president’s receiving line at a New Year’s Day reception at the White House. 4. Receipt of total debt to Robert Oliver as of December 31, 1832, Chancery Records, 1804–63, Rules 3, No. 231, Record Group 21, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 5. Susan Decatur to Henry Clay, September 15, 1827, Henry Clay Papers, Library of Congress. 6. May 6, 1820, The Account of the Estate of Stephen Decatur, Probate Court Records of the District of Columbia, no. 807, Legal, Diplomatic and Fiscal Section, Record Group 21, National Archives. 7. Susan Decatur to Mary McKnight, Georgetown, November 6, 1825, Decatur Family Papers, Collection 2043, 76:27, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.

Jackson Papers, ser. 1. 16. Susan Decatur to Andrew Jackson, Georgetown, May 18, 1833, Papers Relating to Jackson Purchase of Decatur Silver and China, Andrew Jackson Foundation, Nashville, Tenn. 17. Andrew Jackson to Major Andrew J. Donelson, May 18, 1833, Washington City, Andrew Jackson Foundation. 18. William Allman et al., Official White House China: From the 18th to the 21st Centuries, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2016), 49. 19. Andrew Jackson memorandum, May 18, 1833, Andrew Jackson Foundation. 20. For the price of the silver dishes, see Susan Decatur to Andrew Jackson, May 18, 1833, “List of China & Plated dishes,” Andrew Jackson Foundation. Mary Hill McKnight, the eldest niece of Stephen Decatur, wrote that she spent considerable time with Susan Decatur during the War of 1812. When visiting her husband at the port of New York, Susan stayed in Newark, New Jersey, at the home of his brother, John P. Decatur. In Philadelphia she resided with her sister-in-law, Ann Hurst. Priscilla Decatur Twiggs, February 5, 1832, Decatur Family Papers; Eleanore P. Gadsden, “The Relationship Between Susan Decatur and the Decatur Nieces,” Stephen Decatur House Archives, Decatur House, National Trust of Historic Preservation, Washington, D.C.

8. Susan Decatur to Henry Clay, Georgetown, March 30, 1826, Clay Papers. The letter continues to describe Susan’s grievances against Baron de Tuyll: “The Steward during this winter, fitted up a parlour for himself, and Baron Tuyll refus’d to pay for it— the Steward then applied to me to pay for it; but I did not choose to indulge him in the expense . . . as I had already made great sacrifices of my interest for the Baron’s convenience—When the term for which he had engaged the House had expir’d, I had an opportunity to let it for three years to one of the other ministers, but to save Baron Tuyll the trouble of moving (as his health was bad) I let him engage it . . . moreover I permitted him to build a temporary green house for his amusement last winter, by which I forfeited my policy of insurance, and was oblig’d to incur a most inconvenient disbursement in taking out a new and more expensive one.”

21. Marsha Mullin, vice president, collections and research, and chief curator, Andrew Jackson Foundation, e-mail interview by author, August 26, 2019. Information about Rebecca Emes and Edward Barnard from “Taperstick,” Search the Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum, online at http://collections.vam. ac.uk.

9. Susan Decatur to Andrew Jackson, December 31, 1829, Georgetown, The Papers of Andrew Jackson Digital Edition, ed. Daniel Feller, main series, vol. 7, 1829 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2015), 659, http:// rotunda.upress.virginia.edu.

24. Betty C. Monkman, The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2014), 53, 59.

10. Andrew Jackson, “First Annual Message,” December 8, 1829, American Presidency Project, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, online at www.presidency.ucsb.edu. 11. The anonymous letter sent to Susan Decatur at her Georgetown residence on December 12, 1829, said: “I take the liberty to tell you that you will injure your cause by associating with Mrs. E_____ your best friends are her enemies.” Andrew Jackson Papers, ser. 1, General Correspondence and Related Items, 1775–1885, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. For more information about the Peggy Eaton affair, see “‘A House Divided Cannot Stand’: Andrew Jackson Donelson and the Pressures Placed on a Presidential Nephew,” White House History, no. 36 (Fall 2014): 63–71. 12. Susan Decatur to Henry Clay, November 25, 1827, Clay Papers. 13. On January 4, 1827, Mrs. Basil Hall wrote, “She asked us to spend the evening of the tenth with her, or any other evening that suits us better. . . . I knew that she would not return my visit before I came. The reason of this peculiarity is that her husband was killed in a duel, and she fears if she were to go into company either morning or evening that she might meet either his second, who she considers as having been very much to blame, or his antagonist.” Margaret Hall, The Aristocratic Journey: Being the Outspoken Letters of Mrs. Basil Hall Written During a Fourteen Months’ Soujourn in America, 1827–1828 (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1931), 172–73. 14. Susan Decatur to Andrew Jackson, May 26, 1829, Union Hotel, Papers of Andrew Jackson Digital Edition, ed. Feller, main series, vol. 7, 1829, 243. 15. Susan Decatur to Andrew Jackson, Georgetown, May 13, 1833,

22. Alexander Slidell MacKenzie, Life of Stephen Decatur, A Commodore in the Navy of the United States, (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1846), 351. 23. James Tertius de Kay, A Rage for Glory, reprinted in The Stephen Decatur House: A History (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2018), 110–11. See also Michael Fazio, “A Rational House with Complications: Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s Design,” in ibid., 145–219.

25. Records of the United States House of Representatives, 18th Cong., 1st sess., C20.4, HR 18A-C20.4, Record Group 233, National Archives. 26. Mullin interview. 27. Pauline Wilcox Burke, Emily Donelson of Tennessee (Richmond, Va.: Garrett and Massie, 1941), 2:70. 28. Andrew Jackson to Andrew Jackson Jr., October 23, 1834, quoted in ibid., 2:71. 29. Ibid., 2:127. 30. Andrew Jackon’s Hermitage Official Guidebook, 127. It is possible that Emily’s porcelain service once belonging to Susan Decatur may have been passed to one of her four children, but no documentation has surfaced to indicate for certain where the Decatur porcelain now resides. 31. Carl Anthony, “Sarah Yorke Jackson,” posted August 22, 2014, National First Ladies Library website, www.firstladies.org/ biographies; “The Hermitage Mansion Story,” The Hermitage website. 32. Andrew Jackson Jr. to Sarah Yorke Jackson, Hunters Hill, November 25, 1834, Jackson Papers, ser. 1. 33. Allida Black, “Rachel Donelson Jackson,” in The First Ladies of the United States of America, 13th ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2017), 18. 34. “Notes from the Curator: Andrew Jackson Junior,” posted April 4, 2015, The Hermitage website. 35. Andrew Jackon’s Hermitage Official Guidebook, 139. 36. Mullin interview. 37. Ladies’ Hermitage Association, meeting minutes, April 17, 1899, May 3, 1899, June 7, 1899, Andrew Jackson Foundation. 38. Mullen interview.

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Remembering WILLIAM SEALE MARCIA M. ANDERSON WITH WILL SEALE III

The White House, I think, it can be said without hesitation, is the best documented house in the world . . . it can be approached from many perspectives. It is the job of this publication to explore them.—William Seale over the course of thirty–six years and fifty-six issues, our founding editor William Seale was dedicated to that exploration, completing the foreword to this issue of White House History Quarterly only days before his death on November 21, 2019. It was an adventure that I had the good fortune to share for two decades, and one through which William Seale succeeded in bringing to light not only the “many perspectives” of historians, archivists, and curators, but also those of journalists, first family members, White House aides, artists, chefs, and social secretaries—and even a contemplative nun. Dr. Seale once explained that his purpose in founding White House History was to create a publication that would present the history of the official presidential residence, which “Americans consider uniquely personal,” without “exploiting it in any way.” He said that he wished to create a journal for every reader with scholarly articles that would “not be scholarly in the exclusive sense.” It was his determination to present the broadest view of this personal American subject that led to issues devoted not only to such expected topics as the Lincoln and the Kennedy eras, but also to the unexpected— memories of visiting the White House, the White House in the movies, first ladies’ fashions, and the

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wildlife that inhabits the grounds. He delighted in publishing newly discovered photographs and connecting the previously unconnected dots in the human and architectural history of the house, and even more so in resurrecting forgotten speeches and obscure diaries. In the words of the author Joseph K. Oppermann, “Though others have urged study beyond the most prominent figures, no one has so thoroughly and eloquently heralded the contributions of the less recognizable or ignored as did William Seale.” William Seale described himself simply as a “historian with a primary interest in writing and a strong interest in the interpretation of historic sites,” and he noted that the White House was a vehicle for much of his work in historic interpretation. He wrote a total of twenty-seven books, but, in the realm of White House scholarship, he is best known for his two-volume work, The President’s House: A History. The scope of his work on our journal can easily be expressed in numbers—more than four hundred articles totaling more than 4500

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above

William Seale surrounded by some of his books at the 2017 National Book Festival at the Library of Congress.

right

William Seale with rescued dogs as depicted by artist John Hutton, with whom William Seale often collaborated on pieces for White House History.

pages—but the contributions he made through the body of his scholarly work to the study of American history and White House history, are incalculable. Through his own writings and his leadership in White House History Quarterly, William Seale fulfilled the charge First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy made to the White House Historical Association upon its founding—to promote public understanding of the historic White House. It will be his legacy that this endeavor, now so well established, will be carried forward by the Quarterly and the scholars whose work he nurtured. With his death, the world has lost a brilliant historian and talented writer; his colleagues have also lost a mentor, a cheerleader, and a friend who always made us laugh. In recent years, William Seale often talked with satisfaction of what he saw as the “growing reach of the Association.” As a longterm witness to his impact on the field, I also see that it is the long reach of his friendship that ties so many of us together in the future pursuit of the endeavor. “Everyone who knew him,” says his son Will Seale III, “can bear witness to his life-long passion for preserving, documenting, and interpreting American history, but what everyone loved most about him was the generosity of his friendship.” “Any discussion of William Seale’s life,” Will continues, “would be incomplete without mentioning his love of animals—dogs in particular. He assigned human personalities to his dogs—often likening their characteristics to major figures in history— and he could converse with dogs as though they were fully engaged and responding in English. He would often speak for them, giving each their own accent and point of view. He loved their innocence, their simple needs, their humility, loyalty and vulnerability. He never chose his dogs; they chose him. Most he found ambling down the dirt road in front of his beloved farmhouse in East Texas, hungry, frightened, and confused as to why their owners had pushed them out of a car and driven away, never to return. He cared nothing about their looks, their pedigree, or their background. He loved them all instantly and unconditionally. He even loved the mean ones. He saw the best in every dog, and during his life he loved dozens of them. “William Seale treasured his family and friends and colleagues with the same full heart and childlike enthusiasm that he had for his four-legged band of mutts. Whether you wrote an article for him a month ago or met him more than seventy years ago,

you were uniquely important to him. He knew you, liked you and thought of you often. Being quite a character himself, he loved what made you interesting, unique and funny, whether you were proud of it or not. Whatever it was that made you rich, good looking or blue-blooded might have been interesting to William Seale the historian, but he sought to go behind the curtain to know his friends on a meaningful, lasting basis.” “My father grew up in Beaumont, Texas. When he wasn’t on his horse, he was nose down in history books. His mother begged him to go to law school, worrying that he would never make a living from history. She lived to see his groundbreaking book The President’s House celebrated in the East Room of the White House by President and Mrs. Reagan. He accepted accolades and honors with bashful, self-deprecating surprise. He was the worst self-promoter ever born. He devoted his career to the scholarly pursuit of truth, and it is in that vein that he always remained true to who he was, unaffected by the tides of style and popular opinion. He was no slave to fashion, but he was consistent: he mixed plaid with stripes, patched holes in his shoes with business cards, and loved his $5 straw hat from Walmart.” “Happiness was at the farm with my mother surrounded by his merry band of mutts, and working to give voice to the quiet, forgotten corners of America’s history.”

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REFLECTIONS

As a New Year Begins in White House History . . . with this column in our last Quarterly, I paid tribute to our longtime editor Dr. William Seale. Since that time, Dr. Seale has passed away but he leaves an extraordinary legacy of scholarship and knowledge for the benefit of future generations of White House scholars and those interested in the history of the People’s House. I described him previously as my “White House history hero,” and indeed he always will be. Thanks to the generosity of philanthropist David Rubenstein, the Association’s David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History is a center for research, scholarship, education, digital resources, and public programing. Our national search for a new Senior Vice President and Director of the Rubenstein Center has resulted in the appointment of Dr. Colleen Shogan who joins us this month from a distinguished career at the Library of Congress. Dr. Shogan will become part of a dynamic team, giving leadership to this important part of our mission. A key initiative of the Rubenstein Center in 2020 will be programming and research focused on the history of enslaved persons in the President’s Neighborhood—those who lived and worked in what is now Lafayette Park to build the White House, as well as those who were

enslaved to our early American presidents, living and working in the White House. This very important initiative will be highlighted with a new section of our whitehousehistory.org website. On Presidents’ Day, February 17, 2020, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, the Association will reveal the design for our 2020 White House Christmas ornament, which will feature President and Mrs. Kennedy. The ornament will go on sale that day in our Washington, D.C., shops and on our website. The White House Historical Association has recently registered its own official tartan with the Scottish Register of Tartans. The tartan design is a tribute to the eight Scottish stonemasons who traveled to Washington in 1794 at the request of the commissioners of the District of Columbia to embellish the Aquia, Virginia, sandstone selected by George Washington for the exterior of the house with the finest stone carving in eighteenth-century America. Thirty four American presidents, from James Monroe to Donald Trump, have claimed Scottish heritage. The five colors woven into the Association’s tartan represent the most fundamental colors associated with the architectural fabric of the White House itself. Three colors represent the

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iconic formal parlors on the State Floor: the Red Room, Green Room, and Blue Room. Evocative of the famous Bellangé suite purchased in 1817 by James Monroe and recently refurbished with the support of the White House Historical Association, the vibrant blue is inspired by that of draperies, upholstery, and carpet of the Blue Room. The green represents the Federal style Green Room, which, when decorated by President Monroe in 1818, became the first State Room to be named for the color of its textiles. Red symbolizes the color of the American Empire style Red Room, first furnished with bold red silks in 1845 during the James K. Polk administration. The gray represents the Aquia sandstone and the artistry of the Scots stonemasons. Finally, the white represents the white exterior of the of the White House, which was first whitewashed by the stonemasons to protect the porous Aquia sandstone, and later painted white, inspiring the name by which the house is known today. above Stewart McLaurin at the Dacha Navy Yard mural of Jacqueline Kennedy. opposite The White House Historical Association’s official tartan incorporates the iconic colors of the White House State Rooms and architecture.

WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION

STEWART D. M C LAURIN PRESIDENT, WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY Quarterly

Quarterly features articles on the historic White House,

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY

especially relating to the building itself and life as lived there through the years. The views presented by the authors are theirs and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the White House Historical Association.

front cover: Newly regilded and reupholstered

pieces of the Bellangé furniture suite surround the fireplace in the fireplace in the Blue Blue Room, Room, 2020. 2020. [Bruce White for the White House Historical Association]

back cover: back cover: The Diplomatic Reception Room, 2019. [Bruce White for the White House Historical Associathe white house historical tion] association was chartered on November 3, 1961, to enhance understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment the house historical of the white historic White House. Income from the sale of association was Quarterly chartered and on November 3, 1961, White House History all the Association’s to enhance understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment books and guides is returned to the publications program of the White from the sale ofand and is historic used as well to House. acquireIncome historical furnishings White House for History Quarterly and all the Association’s memorabilia the White House. books and guides is returned to the publications program and is used as well to acquire historical furnishings and address inquiries to: memorabilia for the White House. White House Historical Association, P.O. Box 27624 address Washington,inquiries D.C. 20038 to: White House Historical Association, books@whha.org P.O. Box 27624 Washington, D.C. 20038 © Copyright 2020 by the White House Historical books@whha.org Association. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or © Copyright in 2020 theor White House Historical transmitted, any by form by any means, electronic, Association. All rights reserved. No part this publication mechanical, photocopying, recording, orof otherwise, may be reproduced, in a retrieval system, or without prior writtenstored permission of the White House transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, Historical Association. mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the White House issn: 2639-9822 Historical Association.

issn: 2639-9822

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From the tableware to the draperies and chandeliers to the historic suites of furniture, this issue of White House History Quarterly features the broad subject of how the President’s House is furnished, exploring the turning points and new discoveries in the growth and evolution of the decorative arts collection. We present the story of the historic Bellangé suite, ordered for the “Oval Room” by President James Monroe in 1818 and now re-gilded and reupholstered to its original splendor. The Bellangé fire screen, re-acquired for the White House collection in 2012, is seen fully restored for the first time on our front cover. Other highlights include the history of the White House Office of the Curator, features on a chandelier cleaner, “summer dress,” a quilt made of upholstery scraps, the unusual journey of a porcelain and silver collection, and the discovery and installation of the elegant Zuber & Company’s “Views of North America,” which was hung by Jacqueline Kennedy in the Diplomatic Reception Room, where it is seen above in 2019.