Those who have traveled to Washington, D.C., and taken the tour may think they know a lot about the White House. But a new documentary opens doors usually reserved for those who call 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. home.
The White House: Inside America’s Most Famous Home kicks off White House Week on C-SPAN beginning Dec. 14. The 90-minute special gives viewers unprecedented access to the house’s private rooms — including the Solarium, where Ronald Reagan recovered from a 1981 assassination attempt, and the newly refurbished Lincoln Bedroom. First lady Laura Bush participated extensively in the production, and will share with viewers her experiences from eight years of living in the White House, as well as some of the changes she made to the interior.
“We’re showing you the White House today,” says executive producer Mark Farkas, “but we’re also taking you back in time and saying, ‘How did it get to this point?’ either physically or emotionally.” For instance, “Lincoln really doesn’t lay a hammer on the house, but his impact on the building is inescapable, and it’s everywhere through the artwork, through the Lincoln Bedroom, through the stories that are told there.”
The years of work that went into the project produced far more content than could be contained in one documentary. Six additional nights of programming take you behind the scenes with rare historical footage, and interviews with White House staff and historians.
One of the minds Farkas picked during the production was renowned presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, who explains why the White House triggers such an emotional connection with Americans.
“It’s a home,” he says. “I think it’s that sense of domestic history, of families who have lived there, the traumas they have lived through, the occasional tragedies that they’ve experienced, along with the joys and triumphs, it’s that humanity — history with a human face — that we’re really after here.”
Farkas and Smith joined us for an extended chat about the special, and shared some fascinating tidbits of White House history:
Was it tough to get this project off the ground?
Mark Farkas: Yes, and no. No, in that after we had finished our documentary on the Capitol, we sort of looked at other landmarks in Washington and decided this would be the next logical spot. It’s not an incredibly large home, but there are a lot of spaces in it we wanted to get into. We knew that we were going to have to work around really one of the busiest places in the world, work around the first family’s schedule as well as all the events that go with that, so we wanted to get in as soon as possible to start our videotaping.
Especially after 9/11 when it’s harder to get in, can you open up in essence this home, that is the symbolic home of all Americans to us so everyone can get a sense of not only the public spaces but where the first family lives and how the first family lives.
Richard Norton Smith: My sense is, as Mark suggested with the other shows, was that this was a marvelous way of looking through the window at the way the modern White House functions. The difference here is twofold: One is the scope of what we’re trying to do, which is in fact, almost a whole week of programming, much of it generated as a result of the work Mark has been doing for a long time now. But beyond that, at C-SPAN, we have an advantage. We don’t have ratings, we don’t have commercials, and we do have a pretty long-standing commitment to public history. So this is taking people where they haven’t been in two senses. One, taking people physically into parts of the White House complex in a way that they may not have seen before. Equally important is taking them into parts of White House history that they probably know nothing about. It’s almost like a layer cake. Take the Green Room. It’s one room, and you can trace the history. Thomas Jefferson had small dinners there. Mary Todd Lincoln refused to ever go back into the Green Room after her son Willie was embalmed there. Eleanor Roosevelt transformed forever the role of first lady in early 1933 by convening the first of what became regular press conferences, which by the way were limited to other women. Room after room after room. The story is the visuals of the current White House, and then there’s the back story. Or in most cases, lots of back stories. They all sort of add up to the story of a house and the people who lived there, and in the broadest sense, really, the evolution of a country that the house for many people symbolizes.
Why do Americans feel such a connection to the White House?
RNS: It exists on so many levels. Clearly there is the symbolism. I just came from doing an interview with a former White House social secretary who related how many times very prominent people or celebrities would walk into the house and literally have tears in their eyes. There is this extraordinary emotional bond, if you will. It’s non-partisan. I mean, in times of great trial, or great national trauma, people are drawn. They just stand outside the White House, whether it’s honking for Richard Nixon’s impeachment or on Dec. 7, 1941, just to mill outside the House in a time of incredible national uncertainty. First of all, the house is a magnet that draws people, and has for 200 years. It’s also in a lot of ways a mirror — it’s held up to us. It has changed, it has grown to reflect the change and the growth of government. I mean, FDR, who gave us the New Deal and then fought World War II, it’s no accident that he also gave us the East Wing and revised the West Wing, put the Oval Office where it is today and built a bunker underneath the East Wing as a wartime measure. So you’ve got the sense of the house and the many roles that it plays. Yeah, it’s an office building, it’s a war room — sometimes literally, sometimes politically — it’s a campaign headquarters, it’s a museum, it’s a stage — I mean, you go into the East Room and see the best that America has in the performing arts. Above all, though, and the reason why I think ultimately it has such an emotional connection with us is it’s a home. I think it’s that sense of domestic history, of families who have lived there, the traumas they have lived through, the occasional tragedies that they’ve experienced, along with the joys and triumphs, it’s that humanity, history with a human face that we’re really after here.
Is there one president who had the most effect on the White House?
MF: Lincoln really doesn’t lay a hammer on the house, but his impact on the building is inescapable, and it’s everywhere through the artwork, through the Lincoln Bedroom, through the stories that are told there.
RNS: [There are] sightings of his ghost, even. Mark’s absolutely right, he didn’t change the house, The entire Lincoln home in Springfield would fit in the East Room of the White House. As people know, Mrs. Lincoln overspent her budget, and Mr. Lincoln lost his temper. There’s something very domestic and eternal about the husband-wife relationship there, with a home-improvement project gone awry that makes them somehow accessible to us. But because he preserved the Union, for which the house is in many ways a symbol, he is probably the single most felt presence in the house.
MF: In addition to winning the war, he loses a son there. Again, that just goes to this public history and private life thematic that I think is woven throughout the history of that place.
RNS: And the drama of emancipation. The back and forth, culminating in this incredibly dramatic scene on the first of January 1863 in his office after a public reception when he goes to his office to sign the document. You know, that is an issue that is with us still. The strands of history are remarkably entwined in this house, and I think that’s what really personalizes this. Plus, frankly, there are lots of presidents and first ladies about whom most people know very little. It turns out most of them are much more interesting than maybe we remember from our textbook. The single room in the White House that everyone agrees they love more than anything else is the Solarium up on the roof. It was Mrs. Coolidge who created it in the 1920s when she called it her sky parlor. It became to the public years later as Caroline Kennedy’s school. And then that’s the room where Ronald Reagan really recuperated following the assassination attempt in March of 1981. It’s the room all of the first families agree is their refuge. It’s a place where they can be themselves. Part of this story that we’ve been pursuing is clearly the balance between the public roles these people are required to play, some more skillfully than others, and the eternal human desire to escape from that role.
How is “The White House: Inside America’s Most Famous Home” organized?
MF: We looked at a number of ways of doing it and we decided necessarily that we would not do it chronologically, only because people might start at the beginning and think oh, we’ve got a heck of a long way to go if we’re going to get through all 43.
RNS (laughs): Do I really want to spend an evening with John Tyler?
MF: But as Richard has indicated, it’s a place of connections. So what we’re doing is taking it in different chapters, with the home as the lead and then we do tell the stories of how it got to be that way. Chapter 1 takes a look at the White House that we see today, why is it the size that it is, and we go back to FDR. It had been expanded before that, but because of again the mirroring of what he’s doing with the country and the government, the White House has to expand. So it’s the size it is today because of that final expansion FDR put on.
RNS: Probably most people would think of Jackie Kennedy as being the face of the modern restored White House, but in fact it’s Edith Roosevelt 100 years ago who basically said — they had this large, rambunctious family — she said this is a home, it’s not an office building. And that’s what led to the construction of the West Wing and the original Oval Office. Edith and Theodore Roosevelt took the Victorian White House, they got rid of the potted palms and — of course they replaced them with moose heads, so there’s a question of taste, I suppose — but they actually stripped the house down to its federal origins. George Washington could walk into the house today and feel at home. That is not the case in the late 19th century. But T.R. is really the first modern president in a whole lot of ways, and he and Mrs. Roosevelt really give us what we think of as the first modern White House, albeit a modern White House that resembles its 18th century origins.
RNS: A lot of it is counterintuitive history. I won’t call it revisionist, because that is pejorative, but it’s counterintuitive in the sense that you’re going to hear about a lot of people you really don’t know very much about. It fills in a lot of the gaps.
What was the extent of Laura Bush’s involvement?
MF: We did a tour of the private residence on the second floor with her. She spent about 40 minutes and she showed us and talked to us about life inside that bubble that is the White House up on the second floor and the third floor. On Monday night, we’ve produced the entire piece with her, and we’re doing a tour of the private residence with her, as well as looking back at Ladybird did a tour of the private residence, and we’ll show Harry Truman’s tour and Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House as well that night. [Laura Bush] was very much involved as well as her staff. Every time we went over the White House, we were accompanied by at least one person from the first lady’s staff, as well as a Secret Service detail, and you put in an electrician or two or someone from the usher’s office, so there’s a gaggle of us when we went over there to do anything.