Opposite the Library a short corridor extends to the window under the roof of the front portico and on each side of this doors open into smaller bedrooms; smaller, that is, in comparison with the four large ones. Even these would be considered large in an ordinary house. One of them I assigned to the housekeeper and the other to my two sons. The boys’ room was rather dark, with its windows directly under the roof of the portico; and it was furnished, moreover, in dark red, a colour which does not add light to gloominess, but the boys got it because they were the members of the family who would care the least and who would be the most away.
The great staircase descends from the central hall just beyond these rooms and facing the staircase is the President’s Study. The eastern end of the building was all used as offices until the new offices were built and the house restored in accordance with the original plan. The Presidents with large families must, indeed, have been in an uncomfortable situation when they had to confine themselves to the rooms in the west end, the only rooms then available for living purposes. The facts are that such families found the house to be less commodious than a “five-room flat,” as the wife of one President expressed it. I believe the Roosevelts, until the house was remodelled, were unable to accommodate one guest.
There is a story that when Prince Henry of Prussia was in Washington, President Roosevelt invited him to ride. The Prince accepted and just before the appointed hour appeared at the White House in his street clothes, accompanied by a valet bearing his riding clothes. He had very naturally expected to change at the White House, but it happened that on that day there was not one room that could even be prepared for a Royal dressing-room, so the President was compelled to request His Highness to return to the German Embassy to change. I believe this incident had the effect of hastening the deliberations of the members of the Appropriations Committee of the House who were then leisurely figuring on the amount necessary for the restoration.
Senator McMillan, who was at the head of the District Committee in the Senate, and who, in his lifetime was the leading spirit in the improvement of Washington, in the revival of the L’Enfant plan, and in the creation of a Commission of Fine Arts to pass upon contemplated structures and changes, conferred with Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt and with Senator Allison of the Appropriations Committee, and by an amendment in the Senate, in the spring of 1902, to which Speaker Cannon and the House Appropriations Committee assented, the necessary funds for this restoration were eventually provided and, most fortunately, the whole work was committed to Mr. James McKim, of McKim, Meade and White, who, among all the architectural monuments to his genius which he left, left no greater evidence of his mastery of his art than this. He added the gracefully beautiful terraces on either side, equipped with electric light standards, and in accord, really, with the original plan of the house, and utilised them in a most ingenious way. He made of the one on the west a very dignified and convenient approach, through the basement, for large companies attending state entertainments. Cloak stands for the accommodation of thousands were fitted into each side of this passageway and guests now are able to dispose of their wraps and proceed to the staircase leading up to the main hall on the first floor without the slightest interruption or discomfort.
The ample and airy space beneath the high portico on the south side was used for domestic offices and servants’ quarters, thus greatly increasing the capacity of the house, and the construction of the very convenient executive office building, reached by a covered, or cloistered passage from the White House basement, was carried out on lines so like in style and appearance to the north portico, so low and classically simple, that it detracts nothing from the general effect and interferes in no way with the dignified outlines of the home of the Nation’s Chief Magistrate.
During the reconstruction the President and Mrs. Roosevelt lived either at Oyster Bay or in a house a few steps from the White House on Lafayette Square. Mr. McKim frequently consulted Mrs. Roosevelt as to interior changes and many of her views were adopted, so that the woman’s side of the new White House was well looked after.
The work took longer and cost more than was expected and this elicited much criticism of the architect as well as of the architectural result. His aim had been to make as little outward change in the main lines as possible and yet to make as great
