![]() ![]() Dolley Madison ordered the painting removed from its frame in the State Dining Room and fled just before the British arrived at the President's House. He played the 1938 Steinway piano and told the story of how Dolley Madison saved Gilbert Stuart's full-length portrait of George Washington from the fire set by British troops in 1814. President Truman showed off the new East Room on international television. This piano was replaced in 1938 by another Steinway concert grand, which remains in the White House today.ĭuring President Harry Truman's 1948-1952 interior reconstruction of the White House, the East Room's "bold, high-relief ornament" was given "a certain gentle simplification" based on McKim's 1902 design. World renowned pianists came to the perform at the mansion such as Feruccio Busoni, Ignacy Paderewski, Josef Hofmann, Olga Samanoff, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and a host of others. A photographer recalled it was like eating "in a Christmas tree."Īlthough the White House staged its first formal East Room concert during Chester Arthur's administration, the space emerged as one of the world's great musical stages after Steinway & Sons presented a grand piano to the White House in 1903. ![]() Theodore Roosevelt gave a state dinner in the East Room for Prussia's Prince Henry in 1901. Louis Comfort Tiffany embellished the room even further for Chester Arthur in 1882, adding delicate ceiling wallpaper that resembled Pompeiian mosaics. Immense mirrors topped new wooden mantles, two ceiling beams were added continuing Hoban's anthemia, and Andrew Jackson's chandeliers were replaced by ornate new gas chandeliers that featured clusters of globe lights. Grant renovated the East Room in 1873-74 prior to the wedding of his daughter, Nellie. After his assassination in April 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was the third president to be mourned in the East Room. Young Tad Lincoln gave his father some much-needed amusement when he rode a chair pulled by a goat named Nanko into the East Room during a social visit. Twenty-four Empire style chairs purchased by James Monroe in 1817 were repaired so the throngs of visitors would not be kept "standing upon their legs as they do before kings and emperors."ĭuring the early days of the Civil War, Union soldiers from Kansas used the room as a bivouac. He installed the East Room's first great glass chandeliers, eventually replacing the candles with small lard-oil lamps. Spittoons, centered on protective squares of oilcloth, lined the east and west walls. Predominantly blue Brussels carpeting covered the floor. During his first term, Jackson papered the East Room walls lemon yellow and added splendid gold stars. Yet, in 1824, President Monroe entertained the Marquis de Lafayette in this unfinished room.Įlected president in 1829, Andrew Jackson arrived at the White House as a hero of the American people. An ornamental anthemion frieze, highlighted with gold leaf on a black flocked background, was the room's only ornamentation for eleven years. ![]() The walls were bare plaster and windows were unadorned, the mantles were simple painted wood, and the floor was raw boards. The East Room remained unfinished when James Monroe moved back into the house in 1817. In March 1815, architect James Hoban returned to rebuild the President's House. ![]() In August 1814, invading British troops set the house ablaze, destroying the interiors and leaving only a burned-out shell. When President James Madison and First Lady Dolley Madison moved into the house in 1809, they assigned architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe to decorate the State Rooms, but an impending war with Great Britain halted interior design plans before the East Room could be addressed. ![]()
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