White House History 38 - President Kennedy's Rose Garden by White House Historical Association

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WHITE HOUSE

A journal published by the W hite House Historical Association Washington

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY NUMBER THIRTY-EIGHT â&#x20AC;¢ SUMMER 2015

FOREWORD

William Seale Editor, White House History

4 FROM THE WHITE HOUSE T O RIVER FARM THE STORY OF THE NORTHEAST GATES

Tom Underwood

TOM UNDERWOOD

is the executive director of the American Horticultural Society.

12 THE ELLIPSE THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY EVOLUTION OF THE WHITE LOT

Peter R. Penczer

R. PENCZER is a leading expert on the history ofthe National Mall in Washington, D.C. His books include The Washington National Mall and Washington, D.C., Past and Present.

PETER

22 THE EAST GARDEN BEATRIX JONES FARRAND AND A PAINTERLY LANDSCAPE DESIGN FOR ELLEN AXSON WILSON

Mac Griswold MAC GRISWOLD

is a journalist, garden historian, and author.

32 THE WEST GARDEN A SUCCESSION OF IDEAS

36 PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S GARDEN RACHEL LAMBERT MELLON'S REDESIGN OF THE WHITE HOUSE ROSE GARDEN

William Seale

78 THE OAK SPRING GARDEN LIBRARY A GARDENER'S LEGACY

94 REFLECTIONS NASH CASTRO: A BOARD MEMBER'S ROLE WITH THE KENNEDY ROSE GARDEN

Stewart D. McLaurin President, White House Historical Association

the President's Mansion and the canal was occupied by six or eight thousand persons, congregated to wit ness a most magnificent display of fireworks." As the show was nearing its conclusion, one of the pyrotech nists was lighting a stand of twelve rockets when it fell over and launched the rockets into the crowd. They sailed over the heads of the persons in front, "though precisely in the right direction to strike among those on and around the south wall sur rounding the grounds of the President's House. Mr. James Knowles, a worthy and industrious citizen of Washington, was transfixed through the heart by one, and was instantly killed. His poor wife hung on his arm at the time." About a dozen more were injured, some seriously. 6 A happier occasion was the 1885 inauguration of Grover Cleveland. On the evening of March 4, fifty thousand persons gathered on the White Lot to watch a fireworks display. The program began with "fifty mammoth shells that exploded together at great height," followed by an incessant barrage of lights and explosions, including "several flights of 500 rockets." The highlight was a set piece of the Capitol flanked by portraits of Cleveland and his vice presi dent, Thomas Hendricks, surmounted by the motto "Peace and Prosperity." It was 160 feet long and 75 feet high-the size of a seven-story building and "the largest set piece ever fired in America."7 A year later, on the Fourth of July, another huge crowd gathered on the White Lot to watch the fire works. Frances Folsom Cleveland, who had married the president only a month earlier, watched from the highly elevated porch on the South Front of the White House with some friends. Her husband, a workaholic who was many late nights at his desk, "paid little attention and only spent a few moments on the balcony." 8 The Downing Plan and Improvements to the White Lot The south wall, mentioned in the foregoing account of the death of Knowles, was built by Presi dent Thomas Jefferson between 1807 and 1808. Origi nally about 8 feet tall and made of stone, it marked the boundary between the White Lot and the private grounds immediately surrounding the mansion. The portion south of the house was built as a ha-ha 14

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

wall-its top flush with the ground and with a shallow ditch on the front, facing the river, so that the wall would be invisible from the house and not impede the views of the river. To the south of the wall a roadway developed that connected New York and Pennsylvania Avenues, a popular shortcut through the park. The wall itself was removed in 1869.9 The White Lot remained in a rustic state through the 1830s and 1840s. In 1848, Charles Douglas, the commissioner of public buildings, reported to Congress that "the unimproved public grounds at the south front of the President's house .. . are deeply gullied, and much of their surface is cov ered with unsightly and filthy rubbish." 10 Over the fol lowing two years, Douglas and his successor, Ignatius Mudd, graded and drained the White Lot, planted trees, and built a substantial wooden fence around the perimeter. Their work extended to the other parks in the city. 11 At the same time, a group of prominent Wash ingtonians approached the landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing about a unified land scaping plan for the city's parks. Besides Mudd, the group included Joseph Henry, the financier and phi lanthropist William Wilson Corcoran, and mayor Walter Lenox. Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, lived on the Mall in the picturesque Castle. Corcoran had already hired Downing to design the grounds of his own mansion on H Street NW, now the site of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 12 Downing was nationally famous. He had written an important treatise on landscape design while still in his 20s and three other books besides, and he pub lished the Horticulturalist, an influential if rarefied monthly journal. Downing had designed the grounds of private estates, and he was a champion of public parks for the masses. He modeled his ideas on country estates in England but adapted their informal and picturesque style to democratic America. At the time, there were no large public parks in the country. To escape the cares of the city and enjoy the bucolic scenery, crowds flocked to rural cemeteries such as Mount Auburn Cemetery outside of Boston and Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where carriage drives wound through artfully scattered trees, fol lowing the contours of the land.

The Albert Boshke 1857 map of Washington, D. C, shows Downing's circular roadway transformed into an ellipse and the proximity of Tiber Creek to the White Lot.

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,, July 28, 1852, Downing died when the steamship Henry Clay caught fire in the Hudson River. Only 36 years old, he drowned trying to save other passen gers. His work in Washington, hardly begun, continued for two more years under Brackenridge's supervision, but, without Downing, it lost the support of Congress. After Brackenridge resigned in March 1854, work on the White Lot continued under the commis sioner of public buildings. Albert Boshke's 1857 map of Washington, D.C., considered to be accurate, shows the White Lot completed, but with Downing's circular roadway shrunken in size and transformed into an ellipse. In 1860, the commissioner complained that although the park was well finished, he could not maintain it properly with the small appropriations from Congress. In any case, priorities changed with the onset of the Civil War in 1861. Troops protecting the president camped in the White Lot and, by the end of the war, not much was left of the park.15 16

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

Murder Bay The character of the White Lot was very dif ferent in the nineteenth century because it was directly adjacent to a vibrant neighborhood, the notorious slum and red-light district known as Murder Bay. The Washington Evening Star is full of accounts of mug gings in the White Lot, criminals escaping into the White Lot, homeless persons dying in the White Lot, and so on. On July 30, 1868, for example, the Star reported under the headline "Give a Dog a Bad Name, &c." that a black rat terrier was attacked by another dog at the comer of Pennsylvania Avenue and Tenth Street. The dog "defended himself with such earnestness that his assailant was severely thrashed, whereupon the cry was raised that the dog was mad." More than one hundred men and boys chased the animal to the White Lot, with a police officer and a Mr. Cavanaugh firing their revolvers at him all the while. There, the dog was rescued by his mistress. That evening, the Star reported that he was not mad after all. 16 Murder Bay was the name given to the western part of the present Federal Triangle. The land was of marginal value because it lay in a floodplain near the place where the Washington Canal opened to the Potomac River at Fifteenth Street. In the summer, Murder Bay and the White Lot must have been per meated with the stench of the canal. The journalist George Alfred Townsend called it "an eyesore and nursery of disease" and quoted a board of army engi neers who described it as "'a cess-pool, which received annually 300,000 cubic feet of solid and liquid human excrement,' and was 'a vast fermenting vat, without a current, useless for navigation, and deadly."' 17 When the Potomac River was in flood, both Murder Bay and the White Lot were inundated. On the occasion of a flood in October 1866, the Star reported that the floodwaters had "reached within a few inches of the top of the fence at the southeast corner of the White Lot" at Fifteenth and B streets (now Constitution Avenue). Four blocks away, "the female inmates of the notorious ranches on the corner of 11th and B streets, were drowned out this morning, and left their tenements on rafts, piloted by newsboys." Several fell into the water, to the amuse ment of all witnesses. "East of this [white] lot, for some distance, the water was full of men and women

she wrote, "They were neither of them young and each had attained some distinction in their work, con sequently they agreed to go ahead with their profes sional lives." 12 She sent out letters and plans to her clients only ten days after the wedding. 13 When she answered a letter from Yale University as to how she should be listed for the job, she answered, "Beatrix Farrand without any qualifying Mr. or Mrs. or Miss, as I regard Beatrix Farrand as a sort of trade name." 14 As a woman born in 1872 into the East Coast's social, literary, and artistic elite, Beatrix Farrand deployed the symbols of power available to women of her caste. 15 These included dress (hers was conven tionally elegant, tweedy); manner (described as for mal, professional, assured); and a commanding physi cal appearance (photographs reveal she was tall, erect, with a large handsome nose). 16 She had earned her horticultural and design education privately. Because no institution offered courses for women, Charles Sprague Sargent, first director of the Arnold Arboretum near Boston, who recognized her abilities, took her on as his protege, prescribing a strenuous

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

course of study. She then privately studied civil engi neering at Columbia University. 11 Beatrix Farrand opened her first office in New York in 1895. She designed her first gardens for fam ily friends, but her great talents were soon widely rec ognized. The campuses of Princeton, Yale, and Har vard all bear her mark in their design or planting or both. Her greatest surviving works are the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller garden in Seal Harbor, Maine, and Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C. 18 She was a trailblazer and role model; her principal women's rights achievement was to open the landscape profes sion to women. She worked with scientists and early environmentalists and ecologists (although those would not have been the terms she recognized) to introduce and foster native plant communities in her landscapes. 19 The East Garden: A Meeting of Minds As a student of the history of place, Beatrix Farrand was also aware of symbolic meanings in garden design. In a 1905 article, "Le Notre and His

This aerial view of the White House grounds in 1927 captures Mrs. Wilson's rose or West Garden designed by George Burnap, and her East Garden designed by Beatrix Farrand. The rose garden would become the Rose Garden in 1962 when Rachel Lambert Mellon's redesign for President John F Kennedy was completed. In 1965, at the request of President Lyndon Johnson, Mrs. Mellon also redesigned the East Garden, which would become known as the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.

been planted, and the ground would lie fallow for two years. On December 18, 1915, Woodrow Wilson mar ried Edith Bolling Galt. Beatrix Farrand's garden for Ellen Wilson was finally installed and planted in 1916. 36 "The Garden as a Picture" would eventually be redesigned in 1965 by Rachel Lambert Mellon as the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. 37 That sequence makes the White House, symbolically a home for all American women, into a garland of everlastings passed hand to hand as women continue to make their mark on it.

"The Art of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson: American Impressionist," October 5, 2012-January 27, 2013, exhibition description from the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Conn., www.tfaoi.com/aa/l0aa/ !0aal 17.htrn (accessed April 23, 2015).

"First Lady Biography: Ellen Axson Wilson."

Quoted in ibid.

Judith B. Tankard, Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes (New York: Monacelli Press, 2009), 65-66; William Seale, The White House: History of an American Idea (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 200 I), 208, 211.

By 1913 the East Garden area had been given shape by a colonnade, built in 1902 as part of Charles Fallen McKim's White House renovation, on the footprint of T homas Jefferson's original similar colonnade, the match to the one on the west. The Jefferson East Colonnade was removed in 1866. The new projecting structure of the East Entrance building completed the archi tectural surround just as the new Executive Office completed the site of the rose garden to the west. Seale, White House, 171-74; Seale, President's House, 1:653-54, 670-71, 684-85. For an overview of formal country house gardens of the period, nationwide, see Mac Griswold and Eleanor Weller,

NOTES I.

Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home; or, Principles of Domeslic Science: Being a Guide lo the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes (New York: J. B. Ford, 1869).

The Golden Age of American Gardens: Proud Owners, Private Estates, 1890-1940 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991).

Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 64.

I0. Jane Brown, Beatrix: The Gardening Life of Beatrix Jones Farrand, 1872-1959 (New York: Viking, 1995), 100.

For a brief biography of Ellen Axson Wilson, see William Seale, The Presi dent's House: A History, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Histori cal Association, 2008), 2:33-34; for her first income, see National First Ladies' Library, "First Lady Biography: Ellen Axson Wilson," www.first ladies.org/biographies (accessed April 23, 2015).

11. Ibid., 102; Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 14-15.

Quoted in National Children's Book and Literary Alliance, "Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out," www.ourwhitehouse.org (accessed April 23, 2015).

13. Brown, Bealrix, 102.

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

12. Beatrix Farrand, "Autobiographical Statement" (1956), first published in Reef Point Gardens Bulletins, no. 17 (1959), reprinted in Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 228-29.

14. Beatrix Farrand to T homas Farnam, October 18, 1922, quoted in Diana Balmori, Diane K. McGuire, and Eleanor M. McPeck, Beatrix Farrand's American Landscapes: Her Gardens and Campuses (New York: Sagapress, 1985), 146, and quoted in Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 15. The name Beatrix Farrand is used in this article even though she was Beatrix Jones until 1913.

15. See Brown, Beatrix, chaps. 1, 3, for the details of Farrand's family and their literary, artistic, social, and scien!ific contacts.

16. Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 15.

17. Cynthia Zaitzevsky, Long Island Landscapes and the Women Who Designed Them (New York: Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, in association with W. W. Norton, 2009), 34.

18. For a succinct synopsis of Farrand's career, see Eleanor M. McPeck, "Beatrix Jones Farrand," in American Landscape Architecture: Designers and Places (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1989), 95-99. For a recent online biography, see Judith B. Tankard, "Biography of Beatrix Farrand," Cultural Landscape Foundation, www.tclf.org (accessed April 23, 2015).

19. Jared Green, "Beatrix Farrand Gets a Fresh Look," Dumbarton Oaks conference proceedings, March 11, 2013, in The Dirt: Uniting the Built & Natural Environments, online publication of the American Society of Landscape Architects, www.dirt.asla.org (accessed April 23, 2015).

20. Beatrix Jones (Farrand), "Le Notre and His Gardens," Scribner's Magazine 38, no. I (July 1905): 43-55, mentioned in Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 57. 21. Farrand's watercolor renderings of 1913 and 1914 depict the colonnade unglazed, like an Italian loggia. Seale, White House, 208.

22. "First Lady Biography: Ellen Axson Wilson."

23. Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 19-25; Brown, Beatrix, 46--58.

24. For the Old Lyme, Conn., art colony, see William Gerdts, American Impres sionism (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984); for Cornish, New Hampshire, see Judith Tankard and Alma Gilbert, A Place of Beauty: The Artists and Gardens of the Cornish Colony (Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 2000); Judith Tankard, The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman (Sagaponack, N.Y: Sagapress/Abrams/Library of American Landscape History, 1996).

25. Beatrix Jones (Farrand), "The Garden as a Picture," Scribner's Magazine 42, no. 1 (July 1907): 2 1-1, mentioned in Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 57, 59. 26. Beatrix Farrand, "Plan for S.E. Garden, The W hite House" and "Notes," College of Environmental Design Documents Collection, University of California, Berkeley, Calif., reproduced in Seale, White House, 208.

27. William Seale, The Imperial Season: America's Capital in the Time of the First Ambassadors, 1893-1918 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 2013), 6-9; James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1980); "First Lady Biography: Ellen Axson Wilson."

28.

"First Lady Biography: Ellen Axson W ilson."

29. Seale, Imperial Season, 189; Jo Freeman, "The Rise of Political Woman in the Election of 1912," in We Will Be Heard: Women's Struggles for Political Power in the United States (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), excerpted online at www.jofreeman.com (accessed April 23, 2015).

30. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, "Woman Suffrage before 1920," www.gilderlehrman.org; National Constitution Center, " Centuries of Citizenship: A Constitutional Timeline," www.constitutioncenter.org (accessed April 23, 2015).

31. Senator S. C. Pomeroy introduced woman suffrage to Congress in 1868; the first congressional vote was defeated in 1887; full suffrage was finally granted on August 26, 1920, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. National Women's History Museum, "Woman Suffrage Timeline (1840-1920)," www.nwhrn.org (accessed April 23, 2015).

32. Freeman, "Rise of Political Woman."Jane Addams, the earliest and most powerful of American female social activists and a leading figure in the Progressive movement, held that in order to reform communities, women needed to have the vote as well as knowledge of the issues. See Jane Addams Hull-House Museum website, www.uic.edu (accessed May 31, 2015); "Jane Addams," www.history.com/topics/womens-history/jane addams (accessed April 23, 2015). 33. Seale, Imperial Season, 190-91; "Inez Milholland," Vassar College Encyclopedia, www.vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu (accessed April 23, 2015).

34. A photograph of Milholland leading the suffrage parade is reproduced in Seale, Imperial Season, 191. 35.

Ibid., 192.

36. Tankard, Beatrix Farrand, 65-66.

37. In 1952 Farrand's central pool was removed during the extensive Truman administration's architectural work on the White House. The garden was dedicated as the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson in 1965. See the W hite House Museum website, www.whitehouse museum.org/grounds.htm (accessed April 23, 2015).

The East Garden 31

Edith Kermit Roosevelt's "colonial" garden, c. 1903 (left). The paisley shaped flower beds framed by low boxwood abounded in old fashioned flowers, Johnny-jump ups, daisies, and wildflowers that j1,1rs. Roosevelt and her friends gathered on walks in the country. Inspired by the popu larity of "old times" in houses and gardens, the colonial gar den's charms were as a private place to sit and read, walk, and look down upon from the dining room windows and West Terrace. Mrs. Roosevelt's intimate atten tion to this garden qualifies her as the first gardener among the first ladies.

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

Rachel Lambert Mellon Rachel Lambert was nicknamed "Bunny" by her nurse on the day she was born, August 9, 1910, and she bore it all the 103 years she lived. Her love for flowers and plants came early as well, for as a little girl she roamed the meadows at her parents' homes in New Jersey, New York, and rural Virginia, making bouquets of wildflowers. As she grew up and her floÂ ral interests broadened, she held sentimentally to the idea of childhood. Her book collecting began with children's books. Gardening books followed soon, eventually taking the lead, although the books and toys of childhood were always close to her heart. The Lambert family was prominent in various successful businesses, the best known being, on her father's side, the production of Listerine, which was invented in 1879 by Bunny Mellon's grandfather, Jordan Wheat Lambert, and his colleague, Dr. Joseph Lawrence. Presented with about every advantage a young woman could have, Bunny Mellon learned early to select carefully those things she wished to do and carried them out tenaciously. This gift of focus was to characterize her all her life. Under the tutelage of her beloved teacher Charlotte Haxall Noland, at Foxcroft School, she became a notable horsewoman, expert in use of the sidesaddle. She never abandoned the sidesaddle, which Miss Charlotte had taught her was the only appropriate way for a woman to ride, and she gave up riding only with regret late in life. Gardens were a pleasure she never abandoned. Her 38

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

Among the objects in the collection of Oak Spring Library that tell the story of Rachel Lambert Mellon's childhood are early Listerine bottles marked with the Lambert name (above left) and a small guide to wildflowers east of the Rockies, which was a gift from her grandfather in 1921. J1rs. Mellon was a skilled horsewoman who always rode sidesaddle in the fields and roads of Oak Spring. A portrait made by Francis L. Smith in 1935 (opposite), shows her sidesaddle on Buberry, a favorite mount.

interest and knowledge increased. She gardened wherever she lived, and there were many places through the years, although home was always her and Paul Mellon's farm Oak Spring, near Upperville, Virginia. Her devotion to collecting books about gardening expanded. She kept a sharp eye for rare books. It was a limited field, to be sure, but Mrs. Mellon would give it definition. The house at Oak Spring was filled with books, on shelves, in closets, and under beds; still she remained the true collector, buying and bringing home more. The White House Gardens and the President's Purposes Mrs. Mellon's pledge to President Kennedy in August 1961 came due early in 1962. In the mean-

., Mrs. Mellon's "Proposed Plan for President Kennedy" dated January 24, 1962, includes a sketch of the Rose Garden inspired in part by the mature saucer magnolias planted at the Frick Museum of Art in New York City (above). Her drawing of a similar specimen is labeled "available near Tidal Basin." As she had hoped, the magnolias she spotted near the Tidal Basin were transplanted to the Rose Garden (overleaf).

House. Those gardeners she admired in the field were asked for their opinions but not invited in; nothing could delay the work. The most helpful of the outside critics was her friend Perry Wheeler, for many years the leading garden designer in Georgetown. But it was with Irwin Williams that she interacted the most. They refined the designs. President Kennedy studied them and was delighted. One change he requested was removal and redesign of the steps leading from the West Wing colonnade. Why not build new ones that were a platform of sorts? He wanted such a structure for speaking that allowed him to see above the crowd but not make him appear to be standing higher than those being honored at ceremonies. This problem of the steps led to many projects on paper. The size of the steps were varied in many trials. Finally the perfect platform was created that looked very simple-broad stone steps from the 42

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

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porch-but accomplished what the president wanted in his little stage. Nor was the platform the only problem to work out. Mrs. Mellon asked Williams to locate a small number of mature Magnolia soulangeana trees to move to the garden. She was especially emphatic about these. Standing before the Frick she had envisioned one of these trees, of sub stantial size, on each corner of the Rose Garden. In fact she had found the perfect ones while driving around the Tidal Basin. Alas, she was told, those were off-limits, belonging to the National Park Service. Williams did not hesitate. After all, in the bitter January of 1951 he had dug a V-shape trench beneath the historic century old Jackson Magnolia at the White House, slid the tree some 25 feet out from the building, and saw it bloom that June in its usual profusion. Besides that move, which he had accom plished for President Harry Truman, the desired

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The sketch above, made on translucent paper with colored pencil, is labeled "Bulb layout 1962." It is one of several drawings Mrs. 11Jellon made that could be placed on top of the study plan to show the color scheme designed for each bed. The bulbs in bloom in the White House Rose Garden on April 27, 1963 (left), show how her vision was realized one year after the garden was completed. Today, more than fifty years later, spring bulbs are still planted in the beds much as Mrs. Mellon envisioned. President Barack Obama is seen here in 2011 (right) on a walk through the Rose Garden with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. As these images show, the Rose Garden assumes a great presence at the White House-seen in passing, through windows and in many more unexpected ways, like colorful jewelry amid the green surrounds and white walls. CJ) iii a:

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

The Problem of the Steps President Dwight D. Eisenhower stands with the Foreign Policy Commission on the narrow steps leading from the Rose Garden to the porch outside the Oval Office, 1953 (below). President Kennedy wished to replace the narrow steep steps with a broad platform-a structure that would allow him to see above the crowd but not make him appear to be standing higher than those being honored at ceremonies. Two proposed plans are seen right and opposite.

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President Kennedy's Garden: Rachel Lambert Mellon's Redesign of thďż˝ White House Rose Garden

The Green Theater is Realized Mrs. Mellon was successful in transformÂ ing the Rose Garden in to the green theatre President Kennedy envisioned The redesigned steps pictured below in April 1963 one year after the garden was finished became the presidential stage. A recent peek into the garden (right, c. 2014) reveals the timeless perfection of the concept.

An article clipped from the Washington Star on May 8, 1962, announced that the "garden has bloomed back in to official business." The first State Arrival Ceremony for a head of state to be held on the White House lawn was the welcome for Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria on October 15, 1962. Mrs. Mellon's project was beautiful with its low boxwood "baskets"of fall flowers. Plans called for seasonal plantings, and Kennedy would enjoy four seasons there. The garden would be in its second autumn when he died. He was delighted with it, for its beauty also served his practical needs with the 50 by 100 foot lawn for ceremonies and its platform steps. Kennedy used it nearly every week, often more. The carpet of lawn, the long rectangle, was kept flawlessly green; a National Park Service lawn farm in Maryland providÂ ed fresh turf when spots turned brown. The lawn was framed by beds of colorful flowers of many seasonal varieties, indeed brilliant masses of color, from the blooming trees to the flower beds, all interlaced with boxwood's green, blending with the green of the lawn, all open to the sky.

66 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

The first State Arrival Ceremony to be held on the White House lawn welcomed Algerian Premier Ahmed Ben Bella upon his arrival for talks and lunch with President Kennedy on October 15, 1962. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and her son, John Jr., (above) watch the cereÂ monies during which full military honors were bestowed on the premier(above, top, and opposite, top).

State Arrival Ceremonies continue to be held on the South Grounds following the tradition begun by President Kennedy in 1962. At left, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom watch the US. Army Fife and Drum Corps pass , during a State Arrival Ceremony in March 2012.

President Kennedy's Garden: Rachel Lambert Mellon's Redesign of the White House Rose Garden 67

President Kennedy's Rose Garden Stage The new stage, in the green theater that the Rose Garden became, immediately began to serve President Kennedy's purposes. On April 9, 1963, he addressed his guests at a ceremony to bestow honorary US. citizenship on Winston Churchill (below), in May 1963, he addressed the Council of the League of Women Voters (opposite); and on October 10, 1963, he presented the Collier Trophy to the seven Mercury astronauts (right).

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

A Half Century of Theater

Every president for more than fifty years has now made use of the green theater envisioned by President Kennedy and made a reality through Rachel Mellon's design. In September 1967, with his dog Yuki at his feet, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Food Stamp Extension Act in a ceremony set on the Rose Garden steps (above). In June 1971, President Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia was married to Ed Cox in a Rose Garden ceremony attended by 400 guests (right). On October 9, 1974, President Gerald R. Ford held one of many presidential press conferences to be set in the space (opposite).

70 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

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As President Kennedy had imagined, the Rose Garden provides an ideal space within steps of the Oval Office for the president to welcome guests from heads of state to beauty queens to star athletes. Clockwise from top right: Jimmy Carter met with the Cherry Blossom princesses in April 1979; Ronald Reagan took a soccer lesson from Pele in 1982; Bill Clinton received golf tips from members of the US. Ryder Cup golf team in 1993; and George H. W Bush welcomed sled racer Susan Butcher and her dog Granite in 1990.

72 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

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'IWhite House garden work of Mrs. Mellon ended slowly. Not long into the Johnson administration, Lady Bird Johnson asked for her advice. Irwin Williams remained there, and Mrs. Mellon never lost touch with him. They discussed the garden at times over many years and made many decisions. Outside the White House, Mrs. Mellon's busy life continued, always pruned to a scale that would allow what she considered perfection. And of course projects that interested her came first. Most of what she did centered in satisfying social obligations, keeping her own gardens at the several residences, and administering an amazing schedule, while still leaving time for herself and her family. She was always carefully focused. Her favorite pursuits were with her family, her garden, and her books. The latter filled every drawer, corner, and shelf in the elegantly simple, rambling stone house at Oak Spring. Mrs. Mellon's appreciation for garden books, most at that time published prior to 1900, had

extended to botanical art. She was also a collector of history books and biography and studied illustrious Americans, in particular Henry Clay. The White House brings fame to people in different ways; notice in the press for one or another activity at the White House attaches the White House to that person's name forever. So the gardens at the White House became linked to this most private of women. She was often asked about the White House and also her books and prints, for her collecting was also leg endary. In the early 1970s, when asked about her

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.The Oak Spring Garden Library as completed following two episodes of building under Mrs. Mellon's personal direction.

Mrs. Mellon prunes a horizontal espalier (below) and walks through her garden at Oak Spring (opposite).

"library," she replied that she did not have one and so Mr. Mellon paid for the building. In 1976 she began building her library at Oak Spring. In walking distance of the residence, it is carefully designed to flow with the pastoral landscape of the Virginia countryside that surrounds it, the external walls of whitewashed fieldstone, the profile low, in harmony with barns of the area, yet flavored with an aura of European vernacular architecture. Perfectionist that she was, the building could almost be classified as furniture in and of itself, the delicacy of its fittings are so carefully designed and executed. One can guess that she had her trying moments with the architects, for she studied long hours and knew what she thought her gardening library should be. Special spaces of all kinds accommodate books and artwork of all shapes and forms. Many were con cealed by doors and panels of superb cabinetry; she 82 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 38)

loved books but did not like them arranged as an overpowering presence. She liked air and light, fire places and comfortable chairs. Her affection for his toric French furniture design is seen everywhere. Mrs. Mellon loved her library. In appearance it seems more residential than a library. The big living room has most of the books in cabinets. Tabletops display new books she found interesting. Louis XV fauteuils with deep cushions invite the reader to a domestic sort of comfort among the books. Personal pictures occupy tables and shelves, too few to be biographical. The architectural shell is "modern" but strongly attached to the past. It was in truth her private library, devoted only to her interests, until scholars came to call and share its wonders. They were welcomed. A large addition to the library was built to the same design in 2000. Today the collection holds some

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man1 with, gilt }eather"bindings. Mrs. Melian 's interests included a life long appreciation for children 's literature as seen in titles by Beatrix Potter and Kate Greenaway (right) and the Brothers Grimm (opposite),.

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Mrs. Mellon wanted horticultural students and scholars tO' be able to enjoy the views of her garden and the surrounding zountryside while

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REFLECTIONS Nash Castro: A Board Member's Role with the Kennedy Rose Garden STEWART D .

MCLAURIN

PRESIDENT, WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

cards in the White House. Mrs. I recently had the opportunity Kennedy agreed and conceived the to visit with Nash Castro, the last idea of the guidebook instead. Her surviving founder of the White own letters confirm this. House Historical Association, who Thus, the White House Histori also played a role in the story of the cal Association was born as a Rose Garden while serving as liai private, non-profit support organi son to the White House for the zation for the White House. Mr. National Park Service during the Kennedy Administration. His influ Castro remains on the board of directors. To publish the guide, ence would be even stronger in the Mr. Castro turned to Mr. Conrad L. Johnson Administration, when he provided assistance to Mrs. Johnson Wirth, Director of the National on projects related to her love of the Park Service and a member of the board of the National Geographic natural world. That longer story is Society, to help with the venture. for a later issue. Under the direction of Melville Mr. Castro, with his wife the poet Bette Woolsey Castro, moved Grosvenor, Chairman of the Geographic, its staff produced the to Washington in June 1961, as assistant superintendent of adminis guidebook in record time, the text having been written by Lorraine tration of the National Capital Pearce, the first White House Parks under then-superintendent curator. T. Sutton Jett. Mr. Castro was Copies of the guidebook were designated as the Park Service's presented to President and Mrs. liaison to the White House, a unit Kennedy on June 28, 1962, in the of the National Park System. Roosevelt Room in the West Wing Mrs. Kennedy undertook the challenging restoration of the White of the White House. The first copies House with high hopes but without were sold to the public on July 4, 1962, and sales quickly totalled money being available for the pur pose. She asked J.B. West, the Chief more than one million. Now in its 23rd edition, the White House Usher, and Mr. Castro to visit the publisher of The Saturday Evening Historical Association has kept the guide in print for more than fifty Post in Philadelphia and determine years. whether the Post could produce postcards of the White House for Of the many projects that came to Mr. Castro with the Kennedy sale to its visitors. The publisher administration, the Rose Garden assured his visitors that he could was notable second only in popular produce the cards. On the return acclaim to the state interiors trip Mr. Castro asked Mr. West to tell Mrs. Kennedy that he thought it featured in the White House: An Historic Guide. Here there was no would be undignified to sell post-

committee, at least in the usual sense. It was to be Rachel Lambert Mellon's and President Kennedy's garden. Mr. Castro remembers, "Mrs. Mellon designed the Rose Garden. I'll never forget, I was invit ed to her house in Georgetown. I was invited because she wanted to talk to me about her vision for the Rose Garden. That morning I sat in her living room, where she had this vast, great, great collection of world-class paintings by everybody. Monet and all of them. I sat there absolutely dazzled looking around. She sat on the sofa and took a pad like this [holds up pad] and she sketched in pencil what her vision was for the Rose Garden." Appar ently there was no back and forth discussion. This was as she intended to have it. Mr. Castro was always there seeing that efforts worked, as the Rose Garden took form. Many a tangle he untied quietly, as was his style. When all was done, Nash Castro remembers one event after the President's death that closed the Kennedy administration for him. The rooms decorated, the Rose Garden revised, and visionary proj ects in their infancy on Lafayette Square, he remembers warmly that day when a White House courier appeared at the National Park Service headquarters with a White House formal envelope containing a note of profound thanks, signed, "Jacqueline Kennedy."

Installing the New Rose Garden Nash Castro, the National Park Se-rvice liaison to the White House during the Kennedy administration and a founder of the White House Historical Association confers in the distance with White House Chief Usher J B. West as the installation of the Rose Garden nears completion in April 1962.

'WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS Frederick J. Ryan Jr., Chairman John F. W. Rogers, Vice Chairman James I. McDaniel, Secretary John T. Behrendt, Treasurer Stewart D. McLaurin, President Michael R. Beschloss, Jean Case, John H. Dalton, Henry A. Dudley Jr., Alice C. Foultz, Cathy Gorn, Janet A. Howard, Lauren Bush Lauren, Knight Kiplinger, Martha Joynt Kumar, Anita McBride, Mike McCurry, Robert M. McGee, Roger B. Porter, Harry G. Robinson III, Ann Stock, Gary J. Walters, Gail Berry West Ex Officio: James H. Billington, David J. Skorton, David S. Ferriero, Earl A. Powell III pirectors Emeriti: Nash Castro, Jeannine S. Clark, George M. Elsey, Nancy M. Folger, David I. Granger, Elise K. Kirk, Leonard L. Silverstein Liaison Member Jonathan Jarvis Honorary Members: Bernard R. Meyer

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY STAFF William Seale, Editor Marcia M. Anderson, Vice President of Publishing and Executive Editor Fiona Griffin, Editorial Director Ann Hofstra Grogg, Consulting Editor Lauren Zook, Productir,m Manager Rhonda L. Murchison, Editorial Spec_ialist THE EDITOR WISHES TO THANK The Office of the Curator, the White House; Tony Willis, Kimberley Fisher, and Nancy Collins, Oak Spring Garden Library; and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION STAFF Geraldine Alarcon, Marcia Anderson, John Botello, Breanne Burke, William B. Bushong, Rosemary Cohen, Cora Cruz, Matthew D'Agostino, T. Duane Diggs, Christina Elliott, John Emerson, Fiona Griffin, Nathaniel Guzeh, Arioth Harrison, Alison Jessie, Hawanatu Kamara, Lara Kline, Alexandra Lane, Rhonda Murchison, Lynn Maxey, Michael Melton, Michelle Mooney, Katie Munn, Kimberly Osborne, Sharon Pierce, April R ice, Haley R ivero, Melody Reynolds, Suzette Rowan, Gina Sherman, Gourtney Speckmann, Katy Steele, Quadon Thrower, Joel Treese, Stephanie Tuszynski, Paul Weiler, Teresa Williams, Butch Winter, Stephanie Yeldell, Alfred Young, Lauren Zook