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WhiteHouse.gov

The Obama administration has lost no time in updating WhiteHouse.gov, intending to make it central to the pledge to make this the most transparent administration. So far, they seem to have removed all the pages on individual rooms, replacing them with a single page without pictures, altho there is a separate page for the Oval Office (there's a broken link on the summary page, but you can scroll down to the Oval Office section for a link to the separate page).

My hope for WhiteHouse.gov is that it becomes, among other things, the primary source of new high-resolution photographs for use by news organizations and Web-based virtual museums.

Inauguration day

On this auspicious occasion, I happily announce that Peter Sharkey has completed the new colorful, 3D Residence floor plans, which I've added to the main site as well as the mirror. The main site is very slow, however, owing to a big rise in visitorship. (Welcome!)

I can't get over how beautiful the new plans look. Many thanks again to Pete for all his hard work—which, remember, you can always see over at Wingnut's Workings. More is coming, including some details and fixes. Let us know if you notice any goofs.

By the way, if you check out Wingnut's Workings, let me know what you think of the white wall tops rather than the black wall tops.

Presidential television

The History channel is running various president-related programs in the next 24 hours, including:

• The White House: Behind Closed Doors
• The Presidents (a series)
• Modern Marvels: presidential transportation
• Secret Access: Air Force 1
• Civil War Journal
• A Presidency Revealed (a series including JFK and FDR)
• UFO Files (Cleveland was abducted by aliens)
• Star Wars Tech (presumably about Reagan)
• Batman Unmasked (Harding fought crime in a black cloak and cowl and became the inspiration for Batman; the "playboy president" persona was a ruse).

UPDATE: At 8 AM and 2 PM on Thu, they're also rerunning their excellent doco on Fort Knox. The history and architecture of the bullion depository is really fascinating.

Inauguration news and wishes

Keith Olbermann just announced that Barack Obama will keep the Bush 2 Oval Office decor. Most presidents keep the incumbent decor for a while (Bush 2 actually used the Reagan rug), but I bet he gets his own rug eventually... or at least drapes (please drapes).

If this is true, tho, it means a lot less work for Pete in updating the Oval Office model. ;-)

Whatever the case— Best wishes to the Obamas in their new home, our favorite house, this mansion of democracy, this palace of the republic, this old white house.

Also, Vice-President Dick Cheney reportedly injured his back moving boxes and will attend the inauguration in a wheelchair. Best wishes for a quick recovery.

Michael S Smith named as decorator

Visitor Halcyon notes in the comments on another post that Michael S Smith has been named as the Obama's decorator. Keep your fingers crossed that he passes confirmation by the Senate.* Halcyon says:

To me, this is good news.
Smith announced today his first project is having a very old burled Maple four poster converted from a full to a king size bed. (this last part not in the article, but a buzz from a Rhode Island Designer I know)

* I may have that wrong.

UPDATE: The Bed. AP via PinkPillbox.

Just in time for the inauguration....

In the immortal words of Stephen Sondheim, "somethin's comin', somethin' good," only this time it's not a shooting death in a vacant lot at the hands of a vengeful Puerto Rican street tough. It's a set of brand new contemporary floor plans in three dimensions and living color by Pete Sharkey.

I've added the draft versions of the new plans to the mirror site only for the ground, second, and third floors so far. I stress that these are drafts and may look a little funny. I think I will have to make them smaller eventually when I get the wings, since the wings are wider and may end up too wide to fit on screen.

Not coincidentally, I hereby award Peter Sharkey the Lorenzo Winslow Beauty in Precision Award (the "Winnie").

Cadillac limo

Jalopnik has new pics and a big press release on the new presidential limousine.

Now the question is: how can we, the White House Museum Foundation for Education and Historical Research, get our hands on the old limousine?

More miscellany

I've posted more miscellaneous photos (check the What's New page) and some changes to the China Collection page to reflect the new acquisitions.

The Lincoln White House

This diagram of the Lincoln second floor appears in Seale's two-volume WH book. It shows the old west stair as a dual initial rise and a central rise to the second floor. But we know from photographs of the grand stair that by the 1890s it was a single initial rise at the right, a left turn, then a single rise to the second floor.

However, I don't recall ever reading about that stair being renovated from dual to single. The question is, are we sure the dual rise stair was ever built? And when was it renovated to the single stair we see in the photos?

Statistics revisited

As you may have noticed from the slow site performance, page views are back up substantially and probably will stay that way thru the inauguration. Oct. 5 represents the last "normal" week. I've kept the mirror site updated.

5-Oct-08	56,761
12-Oct-08	70,975
19-Oct-08	73,760
26-Oct-08	78,386
2-Nov-08	192,762
9-Nov-08	369,645
16-Nov-08	525,377
23-Nov-08	150,528
30-Nov-08	115,720
7-Dec-08	96,561
14-Dec-08	137,404
21-Dec-08	82,121
28-Dec-08	104,769
4-Jan-09	142,713

Top search queries:

white house museum

white house floor plan

resolute desk

white house bowling alley

white house residence

oval office

white house swimming pool

whitehousemuseum

white house

president's bedroom

lincoln bedroom

Bunch of stuff

I've added a navigation link to the Sub-Basements and posted a bunch of new photos. Check the What's New page or the mirror What's New page.

King George

Interesting "what if?" article on the lineage of George Washington and who would be monarch if he had taken a crown. The nut graph (given UK-style descent):

Queen Estella would have reigned from 1918 to her death in 1931, but because her only child had predeceased her, the succession would have swung to her oldest uncle’s branch. He was also deceased, but had two living children from separate marriages. The son, though younger and from the second marriage, would have been given preference, so that would give America a King Lee from 1931 to 1969. Lee also only had one daughter. Like her father, Queen Odelle would have enjoyed a lengthy rule—1969 to 2000. And with her majesty’s passing, we would now be under the dominion of Queen Brynda.

Jack Ford

I've posted some of the photos from the 1976 Rolling Stone with Jack Ford. And I updated the mirror site.

Also, I received the 1968 Life with juicy oblique cutaways of the West Wing as well as the WH and East Wing we used to create the current East Wing floor plans.

There's also a really neat showcase of houses each president was born in (including Johnson), which together make about the ugliest neighborhood I've ever seen.* It sort of starts out as Genteel Town, proceeds to Poverty Row, then on to Middleclass Muddle, with brief jaunts up Old Money Lane. I have a feeling that continuing the trend would look like a tour of Old Money Lane.

* Insert your own "Then you haven't seen wherever" joke.

New china

Nick V alerted me to an announcement by the first lady of two new sets of china (a formal one of 320 and an informal one of 75 settings) and a Family Dining Room rug that have "been in the works for several years" but which were just delivered.

Check out that informal setting. Let me be the first to say "Waiter, there's a bug in my soup."

1934 West Wing

I've added the scan of the historical West Wing from Life (who reprinted it from Time), as well as a couple of other photos from the issue. There was even this photo of the Joseph P Kennedy family.

Resources

Received the 1976 Rolling Stone with Jack Ford in it. Pulp paper makes for bad photo reproduction, but I'll scan his bedroom at least anyway.

I also got the book White House: An Architectural History. It's got reproductions of the Truman floor plans (from the CREM report), good pics of failed expansion plans I haven't seen before, and more. I'll have to spend some time going thru it.

And last, I got the 1937 Life issue with the Roosevelt West Wing floor plan. I'll scan that and post quickly. I had hoped for a lot more; namely photos of the interiors of some of the rooms, but alas... a lack.

Replacement WH exercise

This is an interesting video done, apparently, as an architecture-school exercise in replacing the WH with a new structure. In this case, the structure chosen was a couple of elevator shafts and a staircase, I guess.

This related site is about open-source (brick-and-mortar) architecture but uses a new WH as its central exercise. (Pete, you may be interested in the SketchUp model of the area around the WH.)

This calls to mind a thought experiment. Since the capital was not moved to Cincinnati after the 1814 fire, we have a capital that sits at the extreme east of the nation. Some presidents have maintained a "Little White House" or "Western White House," primarily as vacation getaways, but do we need a genuine "Western White House" for the president to sometimes work out of and what would it look like?

Presidential limousines

Here's an interesting slide show from the NYT on presidential limousines.

Pete provides another look at the new limo.

Upstairs at the White House

Going back thru JB West's memoir, I decided to add some of the photos found in there. Several of them I haven't seen from any other source and depicted rooms at times that I don't have covered otherwise. They aren't very good quality images—screened and printed in low quality. Does anybody have the hard back version and are those photos reproduced at higher quality?

UPDATE: The hardback does have better quality photos, and I found a copy for less than $5, including shipping.

Get me Rewrite!

I've added several photos from Life showing the old Press Room from the 40s and 50s and also the West Wing Lobby from the 30s to the 60s, where journalists hung out.

I'm curious to know more about the strange stand-out wall with a bulletin board (and deer trophy). It seems to have been added in the early 40s, perhaps to avoid all the noise of opening and closing the door.

New front page - Ike China Room

I've changed the front page to an image from the Life collection, a pleasant 1958 picture of party guests looking over the china collection. And I've also freshened the blog again.

Happy new year!

Magazines and thanks!

I just got tipped off about old issues of magazines with good articles on the White House, and I managed to find them on Ebay and buy them for $17 each (including shipping):

• Life: January 4, 1937—The Roosevelt White House (with a diagram of the West Wing to die for)
• Life: July 5, 1968—Special Issue: The Presidency, with diagrams and photos (the primary source for my East Wing floor plan)
  
• Rolling Stone: July 29, 1976—President Ford's son Jack in the White House

Thanks to Alec and Rod....

...And many thanks to Sharon, Kathryn, and especially Lynne for their donations and happy new year to all!

By the way, feel free to suggest any other old White House magazine issues. The Internet is amazing. I'm telling you, this thing is going to be big.

West Wing history

Visitor Alec sent me photos of a tiny government publication from 1995 called Architecture of the West Wing of the White House. He made modifications to the c1911 diagram to make it a more authentic 1909 diagram, and I used the photos he sent to create a 1935 diagram from the 1945 one. Other photos confirmed Pete's current floor plan. See the First Floor of the West Wing History page.

Thanks Alec!

Merry Christmas

A Red, White, and Blue Christmas

Annual koshering of the kitchen with a twist I haven't seen before: covering the hanging pots.

The president's rather casual portrait for the National Portrait Gallery (not his official White House portrait, which will be painted later).

The White House in 3D - a mini-tour

I've finally managed to produce a high-quality version of the animation of Pete Sharkey's 3D President's Park with narration by me. If you go to YouTube, you should see a little "watch in high quality" link in the lower right for best quality.



The next step is naturally to go inside the White House, and with Pete hard at work on various rooms (have you seen Wingnut's Workings lately?) the only trick will be making the transitions seamless. And then, if I can get Pete to create them: historical versions of the White House in 3D. Imagine flying over Lincoln's or Jefferson's White House....

The elusive Dana Perino

I happened to catch part of The Situation Room on CNN that showed a short video of Dana Perino in her office. That's the first I've seen of that scenario and yes, she uses the same rounded L-shaped desk I've come to know and love.

Does Perino not do gaggles? Are photos not allowed in her office? She can't be camera-shy.... Given her rather fabulous good looks*, you would think photogs would be crawling over each other to snap her picture in every venue.

It also occurs to me that, judging by this photo, she is all of about 5 foot 2, so she'd have to do press gaggles in her office standing on a chair.

* This site is apolitical, but not blind.

Bowling alley renovation?

The bowling industry has offered a proposal to renovate the bowling lane in the basement of the White House, the Wall Street Journal reports. Apparently, they hope to ensure the new president won't make good on his jocular claim to replace the lane with an indoor basketball court, which met with serious offers from the NBA. This artist's conception is a little garish, for my taste.

Busy, busy, busy

C-SPAN's White House Week seems to have gained a fair amount of attention. WHM site performance is quite slow (back up to 20,000 page views a day again).

I'll make a point of bringing the mirror up to date.

White House mansion

Fred Milani's White-House-inspired mansion is for sale. Get yours while supplies last.

UPDATE: more images via Free Republic (WARNING: politics).

Presidential archives

Can I just complain for a moment at the appalling state of our nation's presidential library online offerings? I happened to click one of the credit links to a photo from the Eisenhower Library and got a "page not found" error because they've changed the site structure once again and now the photo is nowhere to be found.

My personal website [warning: politics] is almost 5 years old and not a single incoming link made during that time would be broken today. This site is 2-and-a-half years old and only two or three of links made in that time would be broken.

Further, in order to search for photos, they all direct you to a generic ARC search page and give weak instructions on how to find material related to the president in question. The few photos that are available are awful little 256-color GIFs that have scratches and dust, and no color- or fade-correction. A great deal of the work I do to create this site is just making those kinds of images presentable.

These people are the keepers of our nation's presidential heritage and history, set up and supported by the American people. Is it too much to ask that they post clean, high-resolution images on their own sites and keep them available and link-enabled? Here is a photo of the Carter Oval Office on the National Archives site*; compare it to what I finally managed to produce that wouldn't embarrass me to post.

* This is actually a University of Maryland mirror of some National Archive resources. It actually offers high-res images and makes them linkable.

Thanks!

A number of people have contributed monetarily to WHM.org recently. With the recent leap in visitorship and associated web hosting costs (which are still pretty low, tho, to be honest), it's much appreciated.

• Rebecca
• Steven
• Robert
• Beth
• Latir

Sub-Basements

You asked for it (or sat quietly with an expectant look on your face)—you got it: the inimitable Peter Sharkey has provided us with the Residence sub-basement and basement mezzanine plans from photos of the original plans (I am trying to get the source to send me scans or copies).

I have inserted them into the overall blue print and posted them on their own page. And I've created separate pages for the Dressing Room, Laundry, and AC Control Room. I'll take some time this week looking back over the Truman-era photos for more images of basement rooms.

White House Week on C-SPAN

Today is the beginning of White House Week, C-SPAN's answer to Shark Week.

They even have a floor plan. The "Chocolate Shop" is placed in the basement. I recall seeing a reference to this before; is it really different from the Pastry Kitchen on the first mez?

And there's video of the Living Room! So much for my separate-bedrooms theory....

UPDATE: Hey! They used my version of the floor plans...!
UPDATE: Hey! They credit WHM at the end!

White House in 3D

I've been playing with Peter Sharkey's 3D model of the White House again and trying to create a nice video from it, but I've been having poor luck. Google Sketch-Up is a little tricky to export from and Microsoft Movie Maker is even trickier to import into.

I've uploaded the raw Sketch-Up animation to YouTube, where it looks fairly terrible.



I've also uploaded the Movie Maker video to this site (it's about 35 MB). It looks better than the Flash-converted YouTube version, but Movie Maker does weird things like freezing on the frame after the frame the source video froze on, which sometimes puts a tree branch in the way of the view. But it's got titles and narration so it seems more polished.

I'll continue experimenting and perhaps try a different video software. I welcome any suggestions.

Capitol Visitor Center

The new Capitol Visitor Center opened the other day. I'm sure it's very nice, but what do the think the White House could do with $625 million in renovation funding? Add on 625 more balconies? Give the press corps a cafeteria? The mind boggles.

New front page - Reagan Green Room

I've changed the front page again, and again I've reused a previous image, this time the 1982 Green Room with holiday wreaths in the windows.

Also, I've added some source link details to the Resources page.

Roosevelt Room in 3D

Peter Sharkey has just released his terrific 3D model of the Roosevelt Room, which I have now added to the site. Typical of his painstaking work, it's got amazingly realistic leather chairs, flags standing at the side, great-looking artwork on the walls, and all. Just fantastic.

Thanks, Pete!

Help: photos of the old west stair

I have a couple of photos of the old west stair removed during the 19-2 (as JBK would say) renovation, and I have a visitor asking for the sources to use in a commercial project. Can anyone help point out the books or other sources? I don't have either of them labeled with a credit.

One (from Seale perhaps? what was his source?)
T'other

A return to normalcy

Visitorship seems to have more or less returned to normal. I'll maintain the mirror site for a while longer. I have a feeling that visitorship will spike again around January 20.

C-Span's White House Week

Don't forget about C-Span's "White House Week," starting December 14, which will include a tour. From the trailer, it looks pretty good. Already, I see it will give us good wide-angle view of the Flower Shop and Pastry Kitchen in addition to all the usual state rooms and family quarters. Still no hint of the Living Room and Master Bedroom or even the East and West Bedrooms on the north side, nor anything on the third floor. It would be nice to see what the Bushes have done with the Clinton's Music Room, at least. And it would be nice to the see the grounds in detail, especially the new pool house.

President's offices and servants' stair

I've added a few new photos of the President's Secretary's Office and Private Study. I've also removed the pictures of Rose Mary Woods and put them on a hidden page for reference, since I'm sure the room is not the President's Private Study, Dining Room, or Secretary's Office.

Also, I've added a couple of pics from the recent History Channel special sent by Stephen of the staircase between the Butler's Pantry and the Pastry Kitchen.

White House: Behind Closed Doors report

I just watched WH:BCD and here are a few things of interest:

• It has a nice 3D WH and takes the lid off to show various parts. However, the floor plans are not significantly different from WHM's and it does not show any parts (like the basement press offices) that I don't have documented. It specifically avoids showing the layout of the third floor even when discussing it directly and showing it from the outside.
• The servants' spiral staircase definitely ends at the first mez level and has storage shelves built into the interior[!]
• I believe we get our first glimpse at the basement mez pantry.
• In addition to the Kitchen and state rooms, we get a good look at the guest rooms, Treaty Room, West Sitting Hall, and Private Dining Room.
• Laura claims she and W stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom when they visited the Bush 1s. This contradicts her claims from Monarchy that they stayed in the Queens' Bedroom. Then again, she also says that they hosted QE2 and Prince Charles in the Private Dining Room, while a picture is shown of the QE2 lunch in the Yellow Room.
  
• There's a good moment when the narrator says the WH is wired for 21st century living and we see a workman remove a wall panel to reveal what appear to be 50-year-old screw-type fuses.
  

More Life

I've added a dozen more photos from Life, mostly on the ground floor, mostly from the Eisenhower era, and some in great color (once I heavily processed them).

Also, I've added all the recent photos to the mirror site also.

White House: Behind Closed Doors

The History Channel sneaked up on me and aired Secret Access: Air Force One and The White House: Behind Closed Doors tonight. I managed to record them, but if you missed them, you can still order the DVDs (SA: AF1 and WH: BCD).