The White House began as a blank canvas for a new nation. Since then, every president — along with every first lady — has left a distinctive mark on the building.
In 1791, George Washington selected the site for the presidential residence just up the Potomac River from Mount Vernon, working with master planner Pierre L’Enfant. The following year, Thomas Jefferson submitted a design for the executive mansion but lost an anonymous competition to architect James Hoban. In 1800, Abigail Adams — the first first lady to live in the partially completed house — used the East Room to dry John’s laundry. “There is not a single apartment finished,” she wrote. “The great unfinished audience-room I make a drying-room of, to hang up the clothes in.”
In 1814, British troops arrived with a very different vision for remodeling the young seat of presidential power. On Aug. 24, President James Madison watched the British advance from the front lines during the Battle of Bladensburg. He sent word to First Lady Dolley Madison that the enemy was moving toward the capital. With only hours to act, she gathered whatever she could and rushed it to safety. When British forces reached the White House, they set the mansion ablaze, destroying its interior and leaving only the exterior walls standing.
Dolley Madison and others saved several of the White House’s earliest treasures through their courage and quick action. Among them was Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington, which Dolley removed from its frame, rolled up, and carried away shortly before the fire reached the building.
Today, that portrait sits at the center of the White House’s decorative collection. It also opens “Art For the White House,” historian Leslie Greene Bowman’s account of the institution’s evolving collection and its “Changing Portrait of America.”
“It’s huge,” Bowman says of the painting as she looks toward Lafayette Square, one block from the Executive Mansion. In 1800, a year after Washington’s death, Congress appropriated $800 to purchase Stuart’s 1797 portrait — the first work of art acquired for the White House collection. It now hangs in the East Room, the same space where Abigail Adams once strung up laundry.
“It’s full length. It has all the trappings of the Grand Manner,” Bowman told The Post, describing the portrait.
“But look at how [Washington] is dressed. He’s in a black, simple robe, like a magistrate. No crown. No ermine. No scepter. No purple. No brocade… He’s not saying, ‘look at me.’ He’s gesturing. All of this American symbolism is woven into it. This is the Constitution. This is the American Revolution. He stands as a civil servant.”
Bowman is speaking from the dining room of historic Decatur House, the oldest surviving private residence in the president’s neighborhood.
“People at one time thought Stephen Decatur might be president,” Bowman said. “He built it as a home for fine entertaining. But he was killed in a duel before he could become president, which was tragic.”
Today, Decatur’s former home serves as the headquarters of the White House Historical Association, the organization behind Bowman’s book and, since its founding in 1962, an adviser to the presidential collection. Bowman served for nearly 30 years on the Committee for the Preservation of the White House under five presidents and helped the White House acquire significant recent additions to its historic holdings.
The White House has always been a work in progress. Over the years, it has been the subject of more presidential intervention — and more public controversy — than many people realize.
After the financial panic of 1837, Martin Van Buren was accused of indulging in “worldly pomp and gorgeous splendor” after redecorating the White House with crystal chandeliers and silver satin wallpaper. During his three-day “Gold Spoon Oration,” Whig congressman Charles Ogle of Pennsylvania branded the president a “Democratic peacock in full court costume,” a speech that likely contributed to Van Buren’s reelection defeat. “Will Americans support their chief servant in a palace as splendid as the Caesars?” Ogle asked.
“There’s a tightrope between civilian simplicity and conveying the importance of the office,” Bowman told The Post. “There’s an inherent dissonance between what a great nation we are versus the humility of being a civil servant. We don’t want to look like a palace. We don’t want a king. But we do want something to invest our chief executive with this new world order that we’ve created.”
The presidents, she adds, “were also thinking about European models. They wanted to be accepted on the world stage. And there was the need on the world stage to have a seat of power.”
Each president has arranged that seat of power according to his own taste. President Grant installed faux timbers across the White House ceiling and redecorated the interior in a style critics compared to a “Mississippi riverboat.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt removed the Victorian furnishings and moved his offices from the second floor into a new “temporary” West Wing. He needed additional bedroom space for his six children, although some politicians refused to meet with him anywhere outside the mansion itself.
Then there was the gilded presidency, marked by a remarkable collection of lavish purchases: a gilded-bronze “surtout de table” depicting bibulous bacchantes, gold mantel clocks showing the Roman goddess Minerva and the Carthaginian general Hannibal, along with sculptures of sphinxes and obelisks. The centerpiece was a 53-piece suite of gilded furnishings by Bellangé of Paris, upholstered by Cartier.
All of this extravagance belonged to President James Monroe. After the 1814 fire, Monroe took a personal role in choosing replacement furnishings. His lavish, French-inspired acquisitions proved so controversial that Congress passed legislation requiring future purchases to be American-made “as far as practicable.”
“He gets this French furniture and everybody goes, oh my God,” Bowman said. “But President Jackson goes on to spend even more money on White House furniture than any previous president.”
Like the furnishings, the art collection grew unevenly. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the White House assembled a gallery of presidential portraits of varying quality to accompany Stuart’s Washington. But objects and artworks could leave as easily as they arrived. In 1867, during what became known as the “Old Clothes Scandal,” Mary Todd Lincoln held an auction to help settle personal debts from redecorating the White House and purchasing her own gowns, furs, and jewelry.
A century later, Jacqueline Kennedy recognized those cycles of acquisition and disposal and made preservation a central priority during her three years as first lady. She established protections that remain in place today. The White House Historical Association — with its scholarly publications, restoration efforts, and public advocacy — was among her creations. She also helped establish rules for acquiring new art: works had to be by deceased artists, at least 25 years old, and selected through a committee of experts. Kennedy also sought to prevent future administrations from dispersing unwanted objects; anything a president does not display is sent to the Smithsonian for safekeeping.
Kennedy’s efforts to strengthen the White House holdings fostered a culture of philanthropy, allowing the collection to double during her brief tenure. Art representing a wide range of American styles and subjects entered the residence. “It is a museum-quality collection,” Bowman says of the White House today, which hundreds of thousands of visitors see each year. “And it completely owes its origins to Jackie Kennedy.”
The White House collection now includes more than 500 paintings and sculptures. In 2020, First Lady Melania Trump unveiled a major addition by Isamu Noguchi in the Rose Garden. During his second term, President Trump has shown particular interest in the portrait collection, displaying many works in salon-style arrangements in the Oval Office.
“It hasn’t ever really been static,” said Bruce White, the still-life photographer who has documented changes at the White House since 1998. His photographs are collected in Bowman’s book. “Every administration shifts the paintings around in the White House when they first come in.”
At the same time, White observes, “The conversations that are going on today about the house, you could read newspapers in the 19th century and hear the same kind of debates.” When it comes to the art of the presidency, every American carries a slightly different picture in mind.
