48 Fun Facts About The White House

What is the street address of the White House?

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Pennsylvania Avenue runs diagonally from the White House to the Capitol and is the route of every inaugural parade.

Who was the first president to live in the White House?

John Adams moved in on November 1, 1800, while the building was unfinished; Abigail Adams hung the family laundry to dry in the bare, unplastered state rooms.

Before the White House was ready, the president lived in a mansion on High Street in which city?

Philadelphia; the High Street mansion had served as the presidential residence since 1790, and the capital moved from there in 1800.

Which president first opened the White House to public tours?

Thomas Jefferson. After his second inauguration in March 1805 much of the crowd followed him home from the Capitol, and he received them in the oval reception room.

The original whitewash that gave the house its colour mixed lime, rice glue, casein and which metal?

The porous stone needed the coating; a later theory holds the name may also owe something to Martha Washington's White House Plantation in Virginia.

Which planted area bordering the Oval Office is commonly used as a stage for press events?

The Rose Garden, beside the Oval Office. Ellen Wilson first planted roses there in 1913, and Rachel Lambert Mellon gave it its present formal layout in 1962.

How many rooms does the White House have?

132 rooms. The residence also has 412 doors, 147 windows, 28 fireplaces, eight staircases and three elevators, and employs five full-time chefs.

The Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and the Situation Room sit in which part of the White House complex?

The West Wing, which also holds offices for about 50 senior staff and was partly replicated on a sound stage for the TV series that shares its name.

What is the name of the helicopter that flies the president to and from the White House?

Marine One is the call sign of any Marine Corps helicopter carrying the president; the aircraft belong to squadron HMX-1, based at Quantico, Virginia.

Which president officially gave the White House its name?

Theodore Roosevelt officially established 'White House' as the building's name in 1901 by having it printed on presidential stationery. Before that it was called the 'President's House' or 'Executive Mansion.'

The Easter Egg Roll moved to the White House lawn in 1878 after Congress banned egg rolling where?

The Capitol grounds. After the 1876 roll tore up the Capitol lawn, Congress banned using the grounds as a playground; in 1878 the children were welcomed onto the White House grounds instead.

On which part of the grounds does the presidential helicopter land?

The South Lawn. Marine One lands on the South Lawn, which also hosts state-arrival ceremonies; a 2018 test landing by the new VH-92A helicopter scorched its grass.

What material is the White House primarily built from?

Sandstone. The Aquia Creek sandstone was quarried in Stafford County, Virginia, largely by enslaved African-Americans, and is porous enough to need its protective coat of paint.

Formal White House banquets for visiting heads of government are traditionally held in which room, which seats 140?

The State Dining Room; a 1902 makeover briefly turned it into a 'baronial' hall with stuffed animal heads on dark oak panelling.

Which event led the Secret Service to close the avenue outside the White House in May 1995?

The Oklahoma City bombing. A month after the April 19, 1995 attack, the Secret Service closed Pennsylvania Avenue between 15th and 17th Streets to vehicles on May 20, 1995.

Who designed the original White House?

Irish-born architect James Hoban won the design competition with a neoclassical plan in the Palladian style, and he supervised the rebuilding after the British burned the house.

In what year did construction of the White House begin?

Construction of the White House began on October 13, 1792. The cornerstone was laid that day, and the building took approximately eight years to complete enough for occupancy.

During which war was the White House burned by British forces?

The War of 1812, in 1814; a Canadian returned a looted jewellery box in 1939, and a Royal Navy officer's descendants sent back Madison's medicine chest the same year.

First Lady Dolley Madison is famed for saving which object as the British approached in 1814?

Her enslaved footman Paul Jennings later wrote that the doorkeeper and gardener actually took the Gilbert Stuart canvas down; Jennings's 1865 memoir was the first from the White House.

While the White House was reconstructed from 1949 to 1952, where did the Truman family live?

Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue. A 1948 engineering report warned the second floor was near collapse, so the Trumans moved out in November 1948 and returned on March 27, 1952.

Which room in the White House is the largest?

The East Room is the largest room in the White House at approximately 80 feet long and 37 feet wide. It has been used for dances, receptions, press conferences, and even the lying in state of presidents.

What significant renovation took place at the White House from 1948 to 1952?

A complete gutting of the interior. Only the outer stone walls were kept while a steel frame went in; the old timbers were sawn into panelling for the Library.

Which president added the Oval Office to the White House?

William Howard Taft, in 1909; he placed the office at the centre of the addition, echoing the residence's three oval rooms.

How many floors does the White House have?

Six. The White House has two basement levels, the ground floor, the State Floor, the second floor where the family lives, and a third floor added in 1927.

Which first lady led a major historical restoration of the White House in the early 1960s?

Jacqueline Kennedy undertook a major historical restoration of the White House in 1961-1963, acquiring period furniture and artwork. She gave a famous televised tour of the restored rooms in February 1962.

The Situation Room was created in 1961 after which failed operation exposed poor intel?

The Bay of Pigs invasion. After the April 1961 failure, President Kennedy had the Situation Room built in the West Wing basement to bring intelligence feeds together in one place.

Which president installed the first electric lights in the White House?

Benjamin Harrison. Edison General Electric wired the house in 1891, but Harrison and his wife Caroline would not touch the switches for fear of shocks and often left the lights on all night.

Which of these, on the State Floor, is oval-shaped and used for receptions?

The Blue Room. It is the middle of three stacked oval rooms in Hoban's design and hosts the official White House Christmas tree each year.

Who is the only president to have married in the White House?

Grover Cleveland wed 21-year-old Frances Folsom in the Blue Room on June 2, 1886; John Tyler and Woodrow Wilson also married while in office, but not at the White House.

What was the name of the 42-seat cinema converted from an East Wing cloakroom in 1942?

The White House Family Theater. The East Wing cloakroom was converted in 1942 so wartime newsreels could be screened; its 42 seats have since hosted presidential movie nights.

An indoor pool was built at the White House in 1933 for which president's polio therapy?

Franklin D. Roosevelt. A New York Daily News public subscription paid for the 1933 pool he used for polio therapy; Gerald Ford added an outdoor pool in 1975 after swimming twice daily at home in Alexandria.

Which president's ghost is the most commonly reported apparition at the White House?

Abraham Lincoln; Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands reportedly fainted in 1942 after answering a knock at her bedroom door and finding him in frock coat and top hat.

The second-floor room where the Emancipation Proclamation was signed later became what?

It served as the presidential office for decades before the executive staff moved out of the residence in 1902; it has been a guest bedroom since the Truman era.

How many bathrooms does the White House have?

35 bathrooms. They serve the residence's 132 rooms, spread across roughly 55,000 square feet of floor space on six levels counting two basements.

Which first lady planted the famous White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn, along with beehives?

Michelle Obama planted it in 2009, the first substantial food garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's World War II Victory Garden.

Which president, an avid bowler, restored the White House basement bowling lane in 1969?

Richard Nixon, a keen bowler, had a one-lane alley built beneath the North Portico in 1969; the Trumans' 1947 lanes had been moved to the Executive Office Building under Eisenhower.

In the Cabinet Room, the president's chair back is how much taller than the secretaries' chairs?

Two inches. The president's chair stands two inches taller than the others at the elliptical mahogany table Richard Nixon gave in 1970; each chair carries a brass plate naming its cabinet post.

Which president's 1927 roof rebuild gave the White House its third floor?

Calvin Coolidge. During the 1927 roof reconstruction the attic became a full third floor with guest rooms and a sun room; the Coolidges lived at 15 Dupont Circle meanwhile.

Which Irish building is believed to have inspired the design of the presidential mansion?

Leinster House in Dublin. James Hoban, who trained in Dublin, modelled his Palladian facade on the Duke of Leinster's 1740s townhouse, now home to the Irish parliament.

The bunker beneath the East Wing, used by key staff on September 11, was originally built during which conflict?

World War II. The Presidential Emergency Operations Center was dug beneath the East Wing when that wing went up in 1942; Vice President Cheney was taken there on September 11, 2001.

What famous pet did Calvin Coolidge keep at the White House?

A raccoon named Rebecca. She was sent from Mississippi to be served at the 1926 Thanksgiving dinner; the Coolidges kept her as a pet instead and walked her on a leash.

The White House and its grounds cover just over how many acres?

18 acres. The fenced grounds form part of President's Park and hold the North and South Lawns, the Rose Garden, the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and a tennis court.

What did President Truman add to the South Portico in 1948?

A balcony. The Truman Balcony, completed in 1948 despite objections from the Commission of Fine Arts, sits on the second floor behind the South Portico columns and overlooks the South Lawn.

The Resolute desk used by recent presidents was an 1880 gift from which monarch?

Queen Victoria. The desk was built from the oak of HMS Resolute, abandoned in the Arctic in 1854 during the Franklin search, salvaged by an American whaler and returned to Britain in 1856.

Which architecture firm's 1902 expansion moved the executive offices out of the residence?

Charles McKim ran the job himself, stripping out the Tiffany screen and other Victorian additions and giving the president's large family more living space.

The ground-floor Vermeil Room houses a collection of what?

Gilded silver. Vermeil is silver plated with gold; the collection was a 1956 bequest from Margaret Thompson Biddle, and portraits of first ladies hang on the room's walls.

The household staff of the Executive Residence, overseen by the chief usher, numbers about how many?

About 90. Roughly 90 full-time employees, from chefs and florists to electricians, run the residence under the chief usher, a post Gary Walters held from 1986 to 2007.

Under Nixon the 1933 indoor pool was covered over to create what?

Press briefing room. Nixon had the pool floored over so reporters could be moved out of the West Wing lobby; the basin survives beneath the floor and houses wiring and equipment.