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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Life photos

I've added a few more photos from Life via Google.

However, after adding this photo, I realize it can't possibly be the room now known as the president's private study. However, it also can't be the traditional president's secretary's office or what is now the president's dining room.

Marine One

I finally added Peter Sharkey's wonderful model of the new Marine One to the 3-D Models page. He created it quite a long while ago, but it looks great. I even did an X-ray view that looks very cool. (When I say I "did" it, I mean I clicked an option that says "X-Ray view." Pete is the genius here.)

Election day celebration

Visit the What's New page for an election day extravaganza sourced from Architectural Digest and documenting Bush 2, Reagan, and Kennedy rooms. Some of these images were already posted in inferior form; the AD scans are top quality and just beautiful.

Also: don't forget to vote!

Planeta Fascinante

The latest issue of my favorite Spanish-language magazine, Planeta Fascinante, is on the stands, and I naturally rushed out to get it. So there I am, reading "Se pueden leer los pensamientos?" ("Have you lost your thoughts of Mentos?"*) and I turn the page to find none other than Peter Sharkey's 3-D White House diagrams!

The article concerns the security of the White House and its anti-bomber defenses. Unfortunately, the editors seem to have taken the liberty of moving the Despacho Oval from the Ala Del Oeste to the Salon Amarillo, for some reason. But the images look great, don't they?

Congratulations, Pete!

* My Spanish, she is a little rusty.

Sub-Basement

Pete sent me a note about a great gallery of pics taken by a singers at the White House (thanks, Bob and Cherrie!) in, apparently, April. They show not only the state rooms where they performed but the sub-basement dressing room! I've added a couple to the semi-secret Sub-Basement page.

There's one where people are seated under a coat rack, which you can also see in the 1992 HABS photo under the stairs. That suggests that there's actually very little space down there.

Also, I've widened the blog. I've learned a lot about blog templates and CSS since starting yet another website awhile ago.

New photos

I added a number of new photos from a White House visitor named Daniel (go forward from here in his gallery) and a couple from older archives that I had a hard time placing. Most are in the residence.

Also, I've received quite a number of photos by e-mail lately. Be assured that I'm looking at them, but I don't always have time to respond or place them yet.

Time's photo blog

Time's photo blog is an interesting thing. On occasion, I've gotten some very good WH interior photos from the site, altho they tend to be odd and ambiguous. Today's photo is of a "lower press office," which I assume to mean an office belonging to the press secretary's staff located in the ground floor of the West Wing and not an office shared by press correspondents from The Peoria Thrifty Nickel and Inside Edition.

UPDATE: Anonymous explains that it's actually a press secretary staff office off the briefing room.

A couple of days ago—as was noted in comments by Winnipeg's Mike B—Time labeled a picture of the Diplomatic Reception Room as the "Indian Treaty Room" (which is a big meeting hall in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across from the White House). Anyone who reads the comments on this blog knows that I have no room to criticize anyone for mislabeling WH locations, but that was an odd one.

Generally, the pictures are not of the action of an event but of preparation for it or of figures at the margins, often members of the press themselves. They expanded it to allow for pictures of the "race to the White House" and not just the WH itself, which is a little annoying. Sometimes I think it's really meant as an artsy outlet for the creative tendencies of the WH press photographers, but some of the shots are just boring or newsy.

Mentions

Hey, super trivia deep background king Ken Jennings mentioned us. He's looking for portraits of presidents suitable for reproduction. (I know, I know: most first ladies found their husbands suitable for reproduction. He already thought of that joke. He has a brain the size of Andrew Jackson's cheese wheel.)

The WaPo also mentioned us, in regard to the movies and TV page.

And the AP references the Queen's Bedroom page.

More Reagan than you can shake a stick at

Logan P sent me a double helping of Reagan-era color photos from two different sources, one of which is the Dec 1981 issue of Architectural Digest (which, coincidentally, I had just bought on Ebay and which hadn't arrived yet). That gave me my first look at the Master Bedroom Chinese wallpaper in color (a little underwhelming, actually) and Nancy's study (a little overwhelming--it's not Reagan red; it's mint green!).

I'm pursuing permission from AD (Conde Nast, actually), but I'll post them soon either way and take them down if I have too. I think they fall into fair use anyway, given that the site is purely educational, the pictures are of public interest, and the images I post are too small for print purposes, but I don't want to step on copyrights where they apply.

Check the What's New page.

Update: Okay--posted 'em. Boy, they look great. Thanks again, Logan!

The new curtains

Got a note from visitor Lee pointing out the new curtains around the White House and directing me to some pics of the Library, Vermeil Room, and East Room on Flickr. Good find, Lee! I've posted them and am trying to get permission to keep them from the owner, but I can't find an e-mail address. (Mail me, Amber!)

PS-- Dennis is still reporting issues with the Blogger comment system. But I don't get any problem even when logged out and commenting as a regular user. Anybody else having trouble? I'll check the Blogger help.

Tourist pics

I posted a couple more tourist pics of the public rooms: a 2001 Christmas pic of the Blue Room and one of the Vermeil Room. At the same time, I fixed the credits of these and other tourist photos to link to the site where they came from and, if I hadn't already tried to contact them, sent a note requesting official permission to use them.

I think I'll add a spot on the About page requesting folks to send links to their WH tourist photos. I'm afraid I might get 300 pictures of "Tiffany" and "Josh" posing in front of Christmas trees, tho.

PBR Photographer identified

I got a note from Jeffrey James Bryan Carpenter requesting credit for the terrific photos that illustrate the Press Briefing Room. I don't recall where those pictures came from, so I never knew who to credit. If any other visitors find uncredited photos of theirs that I've used to illustrate the White House, please contact me. I'm very happy to give credit and link the credit to any page you like or to remove them from the site.