Washington Winter Show 2012

THE FOUR OVAL ROOMS OF THE WHITE HOUSE 38 This page is sponsored by Dr. and Mrs. C. Coleman Brown T he oval-shaped room appears in the British and European design vocabulary well before the middle of the eighteenth century. Irishman James Hoban (1758–1831), the original architect and builder of the White House, had apprenticed with and worked for Ireland’s leading neoclassicist, homas Ivory. Hoban was also well versed in the earlier, more ornamental Anglo-Palladian style, which George Washington had found appealing and incorporated into his banquet room at Mount Vernon, built in 1783-84. When Washington and Hoban planned the White House, it can be no surprise that their ideas were rooted in Anglo-Palladianism and neoclassicism. They found a model in the Leinster House in Dublin, built 1745–47. The bow-rooms of that house translated at the White House into ovals. 1 The association of an oval-shaped room with the American presidency is earlier than the White House. When in 1790–91 President Washington remodeled the rented President’s House at 190 High Street, Philadelphia, he demolished the entire rear wall of a first-floor parlor and rebuilt it in a semicircle as a backdrop for his weekly formal levees. On levee afternoons, as many as forty men stood in an oval formation along which the head of state passed, greeting each visitor with a pleasantry. Because the remodeling did not significantly enlarge the size of the room, Washington’s wish to design the space to suit the levee is the most likely reason for the drastic alteration. Today, the ruins of Washington’s semicircular wall can be seen at Independence National Historical Park, where they were recently unearthed by archaeologists. The remodeled semicircular levee room in Philadelphia was very likely an antecedent for the Blue Room in the White House. 2 by William Seale Plan of the State Floor of the White House [detail] from Plan of the President’s House, Washington, 1792 James Hoban (1758–1831) Ink wash and pencil on paper Credit: Massachusetts Historical Society