Collection An Artist Visits the White House Past
From its construction in 1792, until the 1902 renovation that shaped the modern identity and functions of the interior of the White...
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Commissioned by President Chester A. Arthur from Louis Comfort Tiffany, the glass screen is depicted here in a contemporary painting by artist Peter Waddell. Waddell’s scene focuses on the introduction of electricity in 1891. It altered the effect of the screen’s opalescent glass, which was made to filter light, as it does here in early evening.
The Grand Illumination: Sunset of the Gaslight Age, 1891. This oil painting of the Entrance Hall by Peter Waddell was made in 2006. The painting captures the lighting of a gaslight in 1891 during the Benjamin Harrison administration. The colored glass screen in the background was made by Louis Comfort Tiffany and was installed in the Entrance Hall to create a warmer welcoming for visitors while shielding the drawing rooms from the cold winter weather entering through the front door.
From its construction in 1792, until the 1902 renovation that shaped the modern identity and functions of the interior of the White...
Biographies & Portraits
Congress has always been tasked with appropriating funds for the care, repair, refurnishing and maintenance of the White House and...
The State Dining Room, which now seats as many as 140 guests, was originally much smaller and served at various times...
The State Dining Room, which now seats as many as 140 guests, was originally much smaller and served at various times...
The Blue Room with the Yellow Oval Room above and the Diplomatic Reception Room below it, form the most elegant...
Ascending from the Ground Floor Corridor, a marble stairway leads the White House visitor to the State Floor level. Off...
The Cross Hall and large Entrance Hall are at the center of the original plan by James Hoban for the...
James Hoban, the original architect of the President's House, intended that the space now called the "Green Room" be used...
Benjamin H. Latrobe's 1803 drawing of the State Floor indicates that the Red Room served as "the President's Antechamber" for the...
The origin of the "American Presidents" by Genevieve Madeline Ryan is somewhat unique. One year, Genevieve's father asked her to...
Beginning with James Buchanan’s administration in the 1850s, black entertainers have held a prime spot among White House performers. Th...