The White House

After accidently memorizing the address by over-exposure to Bloom County since childhood, I actually found myself at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.


I lucked out and had an awesome friend who thought to schedule a White House tour for me ahead of time. I guess they have to do background checks, which makes sense.

The lady ahead of me asked the secret service agent, "Is Barack in today?"

"Yes, ma'am, he is," came the polite reply. "Oh, well, tell him I was here!" I think she was trying to be amusing. He chuckled and assented politely and noncommittally. I had also been standing behind this lady at the visitor security check. She had many various metal accessories and bangles that she kept forgetting to remove as she attempted the metal-detector, but each time she tried with bubbly cheerfulness. She, her husband, and I were the last people through, so the security guard rolled his eyes at me behind her back, apparently wanting to know that someone was appreciating the kinds of things he had to put up with. I replied in-kind.


The tour was a guide-yourself tour complete with a brochure-thing and secret service agents in every room to answer questions. A long line of visitors snaked through the Ground Floor and then up to the State Floor. I lost the aforementioned lady and her husband in the crowd, but it was interesting to reflect on the fact that the President, and perhaps the rest of the Obama family, were at home on the second floor. The place seemed big enough from just the first two floors - it was hard to imagine that this tourist-filled building contained yet another floor that was a home.

On the Ground Floor, visitors were not permitted to enter the rooms, but you could look inside. The White House (and many things in DC) serves a secondary function as 'time capsule'.



The line of visitors wandered up the stairs and into the East Room.




This photo is in the public domain, as featured in the Wikipedia East Room article. The piano was not in the East Room while I was visiting. It was in the Entrance Hall.


I asked the agent posted in the East Room if there was anything in particular he thought I ought to know about it. He pointed to a large red object behind me, indicating that it was the red carpet that gets rolled out across the Cross Hall before press conferences. The East Room is a common room for press conferences and for dinners. It usually also contains the Steinway that was sitting in the Entrance Hall. Steinway # 300000 was a gift to President Franklin Roosevelt.



Photo from The White House Museum

Things I learned about the White House:

Every room has a bouquet of fresh flowers, ever since one of the presidential families lost a son before moving to the White House and the President ordered fresh flowers to be placed in each room to help lift the First Lady's depression. This was one of the many barnacles of history I observed on the various ships of state in DC. In DC, history doesn't go away. It gets institutionalized or made into a statue.

There is an interior decorating committee that the First Lady is often a part of, but certainly does not run. Any change to the interior, such as removal or replacement of paintings must be approved by this committee.

The secret service has two major divisions, the Uniformed Division and the Special Agent Division. The agent who explained this to me said that she thought of the difference as being that the uniformed agents ensured the security of a location while the special agents would travel with a dignitary to ensure that he or she was transported safely between locations.

There are many portraits of past presidents hanging on the walls. Apparently, it was the always the president himself who chose his pose for how he wanted to be depicted in his portrait. I asked this question after being fascinated in particular by JFK's choice of portrayal. I am assuming - though I didn't ask - that the president was also free to choose which artist would paint him.