Margaret Truman Read Free Page A

winner was a Charleston, South Carolina, man, Irish-born James Hoban. Among the losers was a gifted amateur architect, Thomas Jefferson, who had submitted his design under the pseudonym A. Z.
    Hoban’s building was smaller and plainer than L’Enfant’s palace. Washington requested that it be made larger and grander. He also wanted it built of stone but the cost was prohibitive, so the inner walls were made of brick. The outer walls were sandstone, which had to be whitewashed to keep out the moisture. Before long, people were calling the place the White House.
    III
    George Washington, who had been so involved in the design of the President’s House, never got to live in it. On November 1, 1800, his successor, John Adams, became its first occupant. The day after his arrival, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”
    Abigail Adams, who arrived two weeks later, may have shared his sentiments, but she was not oblivious to the shortcomings of their official home. About half of the thirty-six rooms were still unplastered and only six were fit to live in. Abigail found the house cold and dark and so large, it would take thirty servants to run it. In a letter to her daughter, she wrote: “the great unfinished audience-room, I make a drying-room of, to hang up the clothes in.”
    IV
    As a Democratic-Republican, John Adams’s successor, Thomas Jefferson, might have been expected to refuse to live in the President’s House. Although Jefferson described the house as “big enough for two emperors, one pope and the grand lama,” he not only moved in, he set to work to make the place more habitable. His first order of business was removing the wooden privy that stood beside the house in full view of passersby. It was replaced by two water closets (toilets) installed at each end of the second floor.
    Jefferson also commissioned the construction of wings on the east and west sides of the mansion to house the president’s coaches, servants’ quarters, and other important but not necessarily attractive areas. The wings were one-story extensions connected by colonnades to the basement of the White House, which was at ground level.
    The President’s House took another step closer to becoming the elegant residence George Washington wanted it to be when James and Dolley Madison arrived in 1809. The Madisons liked to entertain, and they set about turning the mansion into a suitable setting for their parties.
    Dolley focused her attention on three rooms along the south side of the house. Jefferson’s former office became—and still is—the State Dining Room. A sitting room next to it was converted into Mrs. Madison’s parlor. (It is now the Red Room.) The oval-shaped Elliptical Saloon, the present Blue Room, became the main drawing room.
    The splendid rooms provided a superb backdrop for the Madisons’ parties, which were the most glittering in Washington. Nothing short of a grave illness could keep people away.
    V
    James Madison’s first term marked the high point of the President’s House thus far. His second term, which coincided with the War of 1812, marked the low point. In the summer of 1814, a British army burned the Capitol, the President’s House, and several other government buildings.
    Rebuilding the President’s House became a matter of national pride. Congress appropriated the necessary funds, and the original architect, James Hoban, was invited to reconstruct his mansion and to finish its still unbuilt north and south porticos as well.
    The work was still going on when Madison’s successor, James Monroe, arrived in 1817. Monroe ordered the work speeded up and was particularly insistent that the East Room be ready for the large receptions he planned. The workmen had gotten as far as