THE WHITE HOUSE
White House Dimensions and Statistics.
- The White House is 168 feet long.
- The White house is 152 feet wide with porticoes.
- The White House is 85 feet, 6 inches wide without porticoes.
- The overall height of the White House is 70 feet.
- It takes 300 gallons of white paint to cover the exterior of just the residence portion of the White House, which is just the center.
Sports and Recreation
Amenities
Technology
- The White House installed its first telegraph office in 1866.
- The White House staff started using typewriters in 1880.
- Electricity was installed in the White House in 1891.
- President Coolidge was the first president to make a radio broadcast from the White House in 1925.
- President Roosevelt broadcast his fireside chats from the Diplomatic Reception Room in the White House during the Great Depression.
- Electric vacuum cleaners were used for the first time on White House carpets in 1922.
- The White House acquired its first electric refrigerator in 1926.
- Technicians installed air conditioning in the White House's private quarters in 1933.
- President Truman used the White House as a film backdrop for presidential addresses and hosted a televised tour of the newly renovated White House with news reporter Walter Cronkite in 1952.
Construction
- In 1791, working with George Washington, artist and engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant prepared a city plan for Washington D.C. reserving eighty-two acres for a "President's Park".
- L'Enfant's original design for a "President's Palace" was approximately four times the size of the present White House. James Hoban substantially reduced the house's scale in the final approved design.
- The White House was the largest house in the United States until after the Civil War.
- The construction of the White House started in 1792, and was first occupied by President John Adams in 1800. The total cost was $232,372.
- On August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, British troops burned the White House in retaliation for an earlier burning of Canadian government buildings in York, Ontario, by the United States.
- The White House's restoration after the 1814 fire cost $236,490. The reconstruction work continued for three year, 1815 to 1817.
- The 1902 white House renovation project cost $467,105.60.
- From 1948 to 1952, extensive reconstruction work on the White House interior was done to rehabilitate the building's structural deterioration. The project cost was $5,761,000.
Presidents and First Ladies
- Thomas Jefferson once described the presidency as "a splendid misery" and Andrew Jackson described the White House as "dignified slavery".
- Thomas Jefferson replaced the custom of bowing with a handshake.
- Abigail Fillmore, a former schoolteacher, obtained congressional funds in 1850 for the first official library in the Executive Mansion.
- Eight presidents have died in office: William Henry Harrison (1841, pneumonia); Zachary Taylor (1850, acute gastroenteritis); Abraham Lincoln (1865, assassination); James Garfield (1881, assassination); William McKinley (1901, assassination); Warren G. Harding (1923, apoplexy); Franklin D. Roosevelt (1945, cerebral hemorrhage); John F. Kennedy (1963, assassination).
- President Harding often hosted poker parties in the White House.
- Very few cut flowers were used in the White House during the James K. Polk administration (1845-49) because it was a commonly held belief at that time that flowers in close quarters gave off unhealthy vapors and absorbed valuable elements from the air.
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