by The President's House: 1800 to the Present : The Secrets;History of the World's Most Famous Home
McKim thought they detracted from the White House’s formal beauty and would happily have smashed them all into shards, but First Lady Edith Roosevelt was reluctant to see them go. She finally relented, but only on condition that a few of the most attractive greenhouses be moved elsewhere and the most exotic plants be used as the nucleus of a botanical garden for the city of Washington.
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Edith Roosevelt called on former White House gardener Henry Pfister to help her design a colonial garden on the west side of the White House where the Rose House had stood. She eventually put in a similar garden on the east side and proudly displayed them both at spring garden parties.
Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, was another first lady with a passion for plants and a good eye for garden design. Edith Roosevelt’s west wing colonial garden was just below Ellen Wilson’s bedroom window. As she gazed down on it on Inauguration Day in 1913, an alternative plan entered her mind. She told her daughters it would be “our rose garden with a high hedge around it.” A subsequent study of the garden on the east side of the White House marked that one for a face-lift, too.
After consulting with professional landscape designers, Mrs. Wilson decided not only to change Edith Roosevelt’s colonial garden into a Rose Garden but to add a tree-lined walkway for the president to use when he went to and from the Oval Office. Prior to that, the nation’s chief executive reached his office via the White House basement, trudging past servants’ rooms, the laundry, and assorted other utilitarian spaces.
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When Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived in the White House in 1933, he decided it was time to redo not only the White House but also the grounds. He hired the most distinguished landscape architect of the day, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., son of the man who had designed New York’s Central Park.
Olmsted approached the task cautiously, with great respect for the old house’s traditions. Most of his ideas were gradually introduced, giving the White House grounds the overall appearance they retain to this day. While the property boasts several very colorful gardens, trees have always predominated. One of the oldest of these leafy creatures, an American elm planted by John Quincy Adams, lasted until 1991, when time and disease caught up to it.
Rutherford B. Hayes had hoped to see every president honored with a tree representing his native state. The Ohio-born Hayes started the ball rolling by planting a small forest of Ohio buckeyes, better known to the rest of us as horse chestnuts.
At last count there were forty-one presidential trees, but some first families, such as the Bushes and the Clintons, have more than one to their credit. During their two terms in the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton planted a number of white dogwoods, a willow oak, a littleleaf linden, and an American elm. Jerry Ford planted an American elm along the north driveway to celebrate the country’s bicentennial in 1976, and George H. W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth II planted a littleleaf linden to commemorate her visit to the White House in 1991.
I’m happy to say that Harry Truman has not gone unrepresented. He is responsible for the sturdy and perennially green English and American boxwood that graces the North Portico. In addition, Dad participated in the preservation of the celebrated Jackson magnolia. When the White House was reconstructed under his auspices, Dad watched with approval while the gardeners dug the old tree from the ground near the South Portico and replanted it in a safe place. When the restored White House opened for business on March 27, 1952, the venerable specimen was returned to its original home.
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In 1961, John F. Kennedy, perhaps inspired by his wife’s determination to overhaul the White House’s interior, decided the Rose Garden needed a new look. The gardening staff had a few adventures in the course of their digging and planting. When they replaced the old sod with new dirt, they went down four inches and found themselves an archaeological treasure trove—pieces of pots from the old greenhouses, Civil War horseshoes, and uniform buttons.
In one corner of the plot, their sharp-edged shovels inadvertently cut the cable for the hot line the president used to put the armed forces on full alert. Within seconds, the gardeners were surrounded by White House police, ready to charge them with sabotaging the nation’s security. The cable had originally been laid during World War II, and no one had bothered to note its exact location.
Ellen Wilson’s East Wing garden remained pretty much intact until the Kennedy administration. Then JFK, prompted by the transformation of the Rose Garden, decided that its counterpart on the east side of the mansion needed some sprucing up as well. Plans were drawn up but the sad day in Dallas put an end to that dream, along with so many others. Fortunately, Lady Bird Johnson took charge of the garden and saw to its completion. This enchanted spot is often referred to as the First Ladies’ Garden but it was officially dedicated by Lady Bird Johnson in honor of Jacqueline Kennedy—a fitting tribute to a first lady whose love for the White House will be remembered for a long time.
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The White House also has two very special gardens designed for the exclusive use of the first family and their guests. One is the Children’s Garden, created by Lady Bird Johnson in a secluded section of the south lawn. This tiny treasure, which has a small pond in the center, and the names, footprints, and handprints of White House grandchildren set in bronze in the flagstones, was a Christmas present from the Johnsons to the White House.
The second garden, even more secluded than the Children’s Garden, is outside the Oval Office, and is for the president’s private use. It was created during the Reagan years and remains a closely guarded little preserve—a true secret garden. Presidents occasionally use it on a pleasant day for a lunch or an informal meeting with one of the many VIPs who visit the White House.
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The gardens and grounds of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have become so popular, recent chief executives have been persuaded to open them for tours, drawing oohs and aahs of admiration from thousands. The tours are held in April and October and there is always a long line of people waiting to admire the carefully tended blossoms and critique the first family’s taste in flowers. Maybe on garden tour days the president ought to have a sign on his desk that says: THE BUD STOPS HERE.
Questions for Discussion
Why were fruits and vegetables planted in the early White House gardens?
What are the advantages of having so many trees in the President’s Park?
What is the most famous White House garden and why is it so well known?
After Richard Nixon’s decision to resign as president, he embraced his daughter Julie in one of the most poignant moments in White House history. Credit: Oliver Atkins Collection, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries
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History Happened Here
ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, there was serious concern that the White House might become the target of a terrorist attack. Minutes after an American Airlines jet crashed into the Pentagon on that horrifying morning, a squadron of F-16s armed with missiles was airborne over Washington. The pilots had just confirmed the explosion at the Pentagon when the grim voice of a Secret Service agent was heard on their headsets: “I want you to protect the White House at all costs.”
As we all know, the White House was spared. If it hadn’t been, I hate to think of the toll in human lives and national morale, not to mention the loss of irreplaceable antiques and works of art. It would have been far worse than the previous attack on the President’s House that occurred when it was a relatively new and still unfinished building.
In 1812, when America launched a “second War of Independence” against England, no one ever imagined the White House would be in harm’s way. It never seemed to occur to the politicians that they were taking on a country that had the most powerful navy in the world.
In the summer of 1814, a British fleet appeared off the Maryland coast carrying an army of 4,500 men. President James Madison called out the militia—part-time soldiers with little
training. They met the British professionals at Bladensburg, Maryland, in one of the shortest battles in American history. Although they outnumbered the British, the amateurs ran for their lives at the first volley. President Madison and members of his cabinet, who had ridden out to watch the fight, were swept away in the human maelstrom.
In the White House, First Lady Dolley Madison was trying to go about her normal routine. In the early afternoon, two dust-covered messengers came pounding up to the White House. “Get out!” they cried. “The British are on their way!”
Somehow Dolley procured a wagon, and loaded it with silver and other valuables. She filled trunks with government papers, leaving behind her own and the president’s personal possessions. But she refused to retreat, declaring that only a personal command from the president could persuade her to leave.
This command finally arrived in the person of a free man of color who came galloping up the lawn shouting: “Clear out!” The president’s friend Charles Carroll also appeared to escort Dolley to safety. As she later recalled it, Carroll was soon “in a very bad humor because I insisted on waiting while a large picture of General Washington was secured and it required to be unscrewed from the wall.”
When the White House servants were unable to take down the picture, Dolley ordered the frame broken and the canvas taken out. As she left, she snatched up another precious relic—a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence.
At eight o’clock that evening, the British army arrived in Washington. Without bothering to knock, the men burst into the White House and went to work. They smashed out all the windows and piled the furniture in heaps. Retreating outside, they seized long poles with oil-soaked rags on their ends and surrounded the house. A man with a torch ignited the rags and the poles were hurled through the smashed windows.
Torching the White House proved to be the worst mistake the king’s men made in the War of 1812. The United States had been badly divided over “Mr. Madison’s War,” as they called it in New England. Now the spirit of the nation was aroused. Fort McHenry, defending Baltimore, withstood a nightlong bombardment from the British fleet. In the dawn, a Washingtonian named Francis Scott Key saw the flag still flying and scribbled some verses that became “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A few months later General Andrew Jackson scored a decisive victory against the British at New Orleans. Confronted by a united, determined nation, London was more than willing to ratify a treaty of peace.
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The most famous room in the White House is unquestionably the Lincoln Bedroom—although Abraham Lincoln never slept in it. He used the room as his office. It was here, on January 1, 1863, that Lincoln emancipated the slaves of the eleven seceded southern states.
During the first year of the Civil War, the president had been savagely attacked by the radical members of his own party, the Republicans, for refusing to turn the war into a crusade to free the slaves. Lincoln knew that most Americans were not ready for such a move. At the same time, he detested slavery. From his youth, he had vowed to strike a blow at the awful institution if he ever got the chance.
One day, the president saw a way to do it—by giving the seceded states one last chance to return to the Union. If they refused, emancipation could be called a “war measure,” a means to subdue the rebellion.
In the summer of 1862, Lincoln read to his cabinet a draft of a proclamation warning the Confederacy that if they did not make peace by the end of the year, all their slaves would be freed. Secretary of State William Seward urged the president not to release the statement until the Union army had won a victory. Otherwise the move would seem like “the last shriek” of the expiring federal government.
Lincoln agreed and the proclamation was put aside until the Union army repulsed Robert E. Lee’s invasion of Maryland in the bloody battle of Antietam. On September 22, 1862, five days after this tremendous clash, Lincoln announced his intention to issue the proclamation.
The Confederacy remained defiant and on January 1, 1863, Lincoln, true to his word, issued the proclamation. Messengers rushed it to the State Department where calligraphers would inscribe it on official parchment. Meanwhile the White House staff prepared for the annual New Year’s Day reception. Around eleven A.M., the president and Mrs. Lincoln descended to the Blue Room to greet the diplomats and generals who headed the visitors’ line. After shaking hands for an hour, Lincoln felt blisters swelling on his hand and retreated to his office to wait for the proclamation’s return from the State Department.
Secretary of State Seward and his son Frederick brought the document over around three P.M. and found Lincoln alone in his office. They spread the proclamation on a table before the fire. Picking up a pen, Lincoln gazed ruefully at his blistered hand. “I never in my life felt more certain I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper,” he said. “But . . . my arm is stiff and numb. This signature will be closely examined. If they find my hand trembled, they will say ‘he had some complications.’ But anyway, it is going to be done.”
Lincoln signed in one unhesitating flourish and three million slaves were freed. It was all so low-key, even Lincoln found it hard to believe that he had just executed, as he later told a friend, “the central act of my administration and the great event of the nineteenth century.”
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On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. As soon as the news became public, thousands of people poured onto the White House grounds, accompanied by a band. Lincoln came to the north window and startled everyone by asking the band to play “Dixie.” He said it was one of his favorite songs.
The next night Lincoln spoke to another crowd. This time he read from a speech outlining his plans to reconstruct the devastated South. Standing among the listeners on the lawn was the actor John Wilkes Booth, who turned to a companion and snarled: “That’s the last speech he’ll ever make.”
Four days later, on Good Friday, Booth committed his terrible crime. The White House was plunged into unparalleled mourning by this first assassination of an American president. Mary Lincoln retreated to an upstairs bedroom and stayed there.
Meanwhile the mansion was draped in black. On Monday night the president’s coffin was placed in the East Room and the next day thousands of mourners filed past it. The funeral service was held on Wednesday. Afterward, the coffin was carried in a solemn procession to the Capitol, while a throng of mourners lined Pennsylvania Avenue. A dazed, sobbing Mary Lincoln remained in the White House for another six weeks. The mansion remained draped in its mourning garments until she departed.
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In 1803, when the White House was barely three years old, Thomas Jefferson received some astounding news: Napoleon Bonaparte had agreed to sell the vast territory of Louisiana to the United States for about two cents an acre. By a happy coincidence, the news arrived the evening before the president’s annual Independence Day reception, when the White House and the President’s Park were open to all comers.
At daybreak on that unique July 4, vendors began putting up tents and booths to sell food and drink. At noon the crowds came swarming onto the grounds for what was essentially a country fair. The biggest excitement came not from all this hurly-burly but from the news of the Louisiana Purchase. The sale, which doubled the size of the country, was, without question, the biggest real estate deal in history.
Another historic event occurred on this same Fourth of July. Early that morning, Thomas Jefferson’s twenty-seven-year-old secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, departed to rendezvous with a Kentucky soldier named William Clark and begin their exploration of the West. The news of the Louisiana Purchase so electrified Lewis that he left his wallet behind in the White House and had to rush back to retrieve it. This gave him a chance to exchange a second farewell with Jefferson, who was experiencing one of those rare presidential moments when everything seemed to be going right.
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When Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived in the White House on March 4, 1933, the
country was in serious trouble. For three years the Great Depression had gripped the American economy. A third of the workforce was unemployed and a staggering 9,106 banks had failed, destroying the life savings of millions.
Two days after his inauguration, FDR closed all the banks in the country to prevent frantic depositors from withdrawing their cash and triggering total economic collapse. On Sunday, March 12, the president announced that he would reopen the banks the next day. He would also give a radio address to the nation that evening to explain the legislation he had pushed through Congress to restore financial stability.
Broadcasting equipment was rushed into the Diplomatic Reception Room, the oval room facing the south grounds that Charles McKim had created out of a former furnace room. At ten P.M., a CBS radio announcer told some sixty million people listening to an estimated twenty million radios: “The president wants to come into your homes and sit at your firesides for a little fireside chat.”
That perfect name for FDR’s talk was coined by the manager of the CBS Washington bureau. He got the idea from Roosevelt’s press secretary, who told him that FDR liked to think of his audience as “a few people around his fireside.”
A moment later, FDR began: “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking. . . .” For fifteen minutes, that marvelous voice coursed across the airwaves, telling the American people that the banking system had been fixed and there was no need to withdraw any more money. In fact, the president went on, it would be safer and smarter to put money into a sound bank rather than keep it under a mattress. “You must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses,” FDR said in closing. “Let us unite in banishing fear. . . . Together we cannot fail.”