'Honest and Wise Men'

The Overlook

By Tom Clavin

“The Overlook” appears every Wednesday at tomclavin.substack.com. An overlook is usually a place from which one can see in many if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). All support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!

          This week is the anniversary of when a U.S. president first lived in the White House. When he moved in on November 1, 1800, John Adams declared that “None But Honest and Wise Men” would occupy the new dwelling. Not sure about the “Honest” and “Wise” parts, but it is true that only men have been presidents in residence.

          What were the previous accommodations? Following his April 1789 inauguration, President George Washington occupied two private houses in New York City, which served as the executive mansion. In May 1790, construction began on a new official residence called Government House.

Washington never lived there because the national capital was moved to Philadelphia that same year, where it remained through 1800, while a permanent capital was built. The mansion of Robert Morris, a merchant, was occupied by Washington from November 1790 to March 1797. Since the house was too small to accommodate the 30 people who then made up the presidential family, staff, and servants, Washington had it enlarged.

Construction of the White House began at noon on October 13, 1792, with the laying of the cornerstone. The main residence and foundations of the house were built largely by both enslaved and free African-American laborers, and employed Europeans. Much of the other work on the house was done by immigrants, many of whom had not yet obtained citizenship. The sandstone walls, for example, were erected by Scottish immigrants.

The initial construction took place over a period of eight years at a reported cost of $232,371.83 (equivalent to $4,007,000 today). Although not yet completed, the White House was ready for occupancy by the end of October 1800.

Due in part to material and labor shortages, the architect’s plan for a grand palace was five times larger than the house that was eventually built. The finished structure contained only two main floors instead of the planned three, and a less costly brick served as a lining for the stone façades. When construction was finished, the porous sandstone walls were whitewashed with a mixture of lime, rice glue, casein, and lead, giving the house its familiar color and name.

On Saturday, November 1, John Adams became the first president to take residence in the building. The next day he wrote his wife Abigail: "I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this House, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." President Franklin Roosevelt had Adams's blessing carved into the mantel in the State Dining Room.

Adams lived in the house only briefly before Thomas Jefferson moved into the "pleasant country residence" in March 1801. Despite his complaints that the house was too big ("big enough for two emperors, one pope, and the grand lama in the bargain"), Jefferson considered how the White House might be added to. With Benjamin Latrobe, he helped lay out the design for the East and West Colonnades, small wings that help conceal the domestic operations of laundry, a stable, and storage. Today, Jefferson's colonnades link the residence with the East and West Wings.

In 1814, during the War of 1812, the White House was set ablaze by British forces in retaliation for acts of destruction by American troops in Upper Canada; much of Washington was affected by these fires as well. Only the exterior walls remained, and they had to be torn down and mostly reconstructed because of weakening from the fire and subsequent exposure to the elements, except for portions of the south wall.

Of the numerous objects taken from the White House when it was sacked by the British, only three have been recovered. White House employees and slaves rescued a copy of the Lansdowne portrait, and in 1939 a Canadian man returned a jewelry box to President Franklin Roosevelt, claiming that his grandfather had taken it from Washington; in the same year, a medicine chest that had belonged to President Madison was returned by the descendants of a Royal Navy officer. Some observers allege that most of the spoils of war taken during the sack were lost when a convoy of British ships sank en route to Halifax off during a storm on the night of November 24, 1814.

After the fire, President James Madison resided in the Octagon House  from 1814 to 1815, and then in the Seven Buildings from 1815 to the end of his term. Meanwhile, the reconstruction of the White House lasted from 1815 until 1817. The south portico was constructed in 1824 during the James Monroe administration. The north portico was built in 1830, when Andrew Jackson was in office.

By the time of the Civil War, the White House had become overcrowded. The location of it, just north of a canal and swampy lands, which provided conditions ripe for malaria and other diseases, was questioned. Brigadier General Nathaniel Michler was tasked with proposing solutions to address these concerns. He suggested abandoning the use of the White House as a residence, and he designed a new estate for the first family at Meridian Hill in Washington, D.C. Congress, however, rejected the plan. Another option was Metropolis View, which is now the campus of the Catholic University of America. When Chester A. Arthur took office in 1881, a proposal was made to build a new residence south of the White House, but it failed to gain support.

In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt hired McKim, Mead & White to carry out expansions and renovations in a neoclassical style suited to the building's architecture, removing the Tiffany screen and all Victorian additions. Charles McKim himself designed and managed the project, which gave more living space to the president's large family by removing a staircase in the West Hall and moving executive office staff from the second floor of the residence into the new West Wing.

President William Taft added additional space to the West Wing, which included the addition of the Oval Office. President Franklin Roosevelt had the Oval Office moved to its present location: adjacent to the Rose Garden.

In 2003, the George W. Bush administration installed solar thermal heaters. These units are used to heat water for landscape maintenance personnel and for the presidential pool and spa. One hundred sixty-seven solar photovoltaic grid-tied panels were installed at the same time on the roof of the maintenance facility. The changes were not publicized as a White House spokeswoman said they were an internal matter, but the story was covered by industry trade journals. In 2013, President Barack Obama had a set of solar panels installed on the roof of the White House, making it the first time that solar power was used for the president's living quarters.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including Follow Me to Hell, published in April by St. Martin’s Press. The trade paperback edition of The Last Hill (with Bob Drury) was released in September. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to purchase a copy or to pre-order The Last Outlaws, to be published next Tuesday.