Washington Winter Show 2012

39 This page is sponsored by Beth Roberts THE STATE FLOOR: THE OVAL ROOM BECOMES THE BLUE ROOM The Blue Room, on the state or public floor of the White House, is the middle of three oval rooms stacked one upon the other at the center of the historic White House. Directly above it is the oval drawing room of the family quarters; below it, on the ground floor, is the oval Diplomatic Reception Room. Known earlier as the “elliptical saloon,” the Blue Room received this name in 1837, when President Van Buren (1837–41) papered, draped and upholstered the room in blue. 3 For a century, it was the only oval room of any note in the White House. As the White House itself, the Blue Room was fitted to L’Enfant’s design of the City of Washington, on one of two long, symbolic axes of the city plan. The north/south axis runs south down Sixteenth Street and crosses the center of the Blue Room, extending to the National Mall, where it intersects with the east/west axis, which runs east along the center of the Mall and pierces the rotunda of the Capitol. Washington sited the White House where it stands himself. Although rarely noticed, the linear connection between the oval Blue Room of the White House to the Capitol rotunda was clearly intentional. The presidential levees continued throughout the JohnAdams administration (1797–1801) and moved into the White House The President’s House in Philadelphia (ca. 1795–96) William L. Breton (ca. 1773–1855) Watercolor Credit: Athenaeum of Philadelphia A plan for the reconstruction of the State Dining Room. President’s House in Philadelphia. Credit: Edward Lawler Jr., 2011 © for the last few months of Adams’s term; his successor, Thomas Jefferson (1801–09), discontinued these ceremonies in the spirit of “republican simplicity.” Ironically, Jefferson introduced the oldest, continuous ceremony of the White House, in the Blue Room: there each foreign diplomat presents his credentials to the president, who stands at the center of the oval. For over two centuries, the Blue Room—30 feet long by 40 feet wide and 18 feet tall—has been redecorated many times. Of the State Rooms, it is the room that has changed the most. James Madison (1809–17), through government architect B. Henry Latrobe, chose the classical revival décor burned by British invaders in 1814. The French empire furniture of James Monroe (1817–25) was used for more than forty years , until the room’s contents were sold at auction. Lincoln kept the rococo revival furnishings installed by President Buchanan (1857–61), which appeared just as Monroe’s French empire furniture left; Lincoln liked to stretch out on the long , sinuous gilt sofa and listen to Marine Band concerts on the south lawn. The rococo revival suite remained in place almost until the end of the nineteenth century, and its pièce de résistance, the circular divan, remains in the White House collection today. In the years since the Lincoln administration, the name of the room has continued to be determined by the color of its décor. In 1902 the architect Charles F. McKim, hired by