Visitor Todd S sent a note about a mysterious picture in the Truman archives that turned out to be a mislabeled pic of the Vermeil Room in 1952 1948. While I was nosing around, I also found a pic of the Library in 1948, something else I didn’t have. Now if I could only find some ground floor pics from the 1902 renovation….
Also, I added a several more images from the Johnson archives, and a pic that John in NOLA sent a while ago of the Nellie Custis (Washington) sofa.
Visitor Luke asks the question:
I have noticed that some rooms no longer have under-curtains/sheers at the windows. Why do you think this has been done?
My thought is that the various reasons for sheers have slowly gone away: privacy, limiting heat transfer, limiting UV penetration (which fades fabrics). Removing them makes the rooms seem more open, and provides better light and better views. And privacy isn’t much of a concern in the public rooms.
Prompted by an e-mail asking when LBJ exchanged the Boudin red Oval Office carpet for the old Truman bluish-greenish-grayish carpet, I began trolling the Johnson Library archives and found numerous good photos that I’d never come across before, including a May ’64 pic that show the red carpet in the Oval Office and a Nov ’67 pic that suggests that Johnson may have used it in the Fish Room (today’s Roosevelt Room).
UPDATE: Just found a photo of the OO with red rug in February 1965, much later than I thought it was there.
Article on the Zweifels’ White House in Miniature, currently on display at the Bush Library and Museum in College Station, Texas.
I added a couple of pictures to the Bowling Alley page and, based on some new info, I put labels on the ground floor map to show where (I think) the Bowling Alley and Flower Shop are.
I added a 1906 pic of the North Portico and a terrific 1858 pic of the South Portico that I found in the Library of Congress. These go nicely with the text I added in the wee hours last night.
This just made me notice that the North Portico was redesigned as part of the Truman renovation. The steps on the sides where changed to be more expansive, something that had escaped me before. So I added a couple of other pics to illustrate that better.
I pulled a few quotes from an account of Charles Dickens’s visits to the White House quoted in the 1908 Inside History of the White House. They color the pages on the North Lawn, North Portico, Entrance Hall, and East Sitting Hall.
