Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 69, originally released in print form in 2023. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org
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Before there was a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or even a City of Washington, some of the earliest chapters of White House history were written in New York City. George Washington took the first presidential Oath of Office at Federal Hall on Wall Street in 1789 and lived in the first presidential mansions on Cherry Street and on Broadway before the young federal government was moved to Philadelphia in 1790. For more than two centuries, New York City has welcomed, accommodated, celebrated, and mourned Washington’s successors. Though all of these later presidents would reside in the White House in Washington, D.C., the lives of many included consequential years in New York. In a city so rich in history, many landmarks have inevitably been lost to time, while others—still standing or at least identified by markers on newer buildings—offer moments in White House history to millions of passersby. With this issue, White House History Quarterly explores the historical connections between New York City and the White House from the first Oath of Office to the present day.
Our visit to New York opens with a journey expertly led by Matt Green, who since 2011 has walked more than 9,000 miles of the city, block by block, embracing countless chance encounters with presidential history along the way. “There’s a big difference between reading about a place in a book and being there in person,” he explains. “What it feels to stand in front of it, to touch it, to discover something about it—all of a sudden it comes alive to me.” Through Green’s expedition we, too, discover such easily overlooked places as the site where Chester A. Arthur took the Oath of Office and bodegas named for Barack Obama, as well as the four-hundred-year-old tulip tree that has witnessed it all.
With his article “Before the White House: New York’s Capital Legacy,” presidential historian Thomas J. Balcerski takes us back to the New York that President Washington knew and traces the legacy of the sites where he was inaugurated,served, and lived.
“After traveling far and wide in life, James Monroe continued his odyssey in death,” explains historian Scott Harris with his article, which traces a series of temporary entombments that ultimately took the fifth president’s remains from New York to Virginia.
Former White House Curator William G. Allman presents the many New York manufacturers whose works are among the most treasured objects in the White House Collection of decorative arts today. Included are furniture by Charles-Honoré Lannuier and Duncan Phyfe, pianos by Steinway & Sons, silver by Tiffany, and lighting by Edward F. Caldwell. One of the most legendary of these New York businesses is the focus of Kayli Reneé Rideout’s article “A Tiffany White House Interlude.” Rideout explores President Arthur’s commission of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Associated Artists to decorate the White House in 1881. Their once-celebrated decor of the State Floors would last for barely twenty years before succumbing to inevitable changes in taste. Yet interest in Tiffany’s longlost jewel-toned glass screen, which once transformed the White House Entrance Hall, has never faded.
Reminding us that America’s first ladies have long been connected to New York, author Joy Ferro recounts the story of future first lady Nancy Reagan who, in the late 1940s, pursued her early dreams on the stage while living at the Barbizon, a safe and respectable residential hotel for women on the Upper East Side.
Author Margaret Strolle takes us to a display on the seventh floor of Bergdorf Goodman to study a letter written by Jacqueline Kennedy, one of many first ladies who turned to New York for fashion. Determined that every detail of her look be perfect, she requested a personal shopper to select hats and gloves to complete her wardrobe.
For our presidential sites feature in this issue, historian Dean Kotlowski takes us to the Waldorf-Astoria, which has welcomed the presidents and first ladies at political and social events for nearly a century. His article “Herbert Hoover, Apt. 31A, and U.S. Presidents at the WaldorfAstoria” recounts the retirement of President Hoover, who was comfortable there for more than twenty years.
The two centuries of the entwined history we have begun to explore with this issue is made up of at least as many stories, both large and small, as the number of blocks and miles Matt Green has walked. So we devote a few of the final pages of this issue to a photographic sampling of those smaller, fleeting, and “only in New York.” moments—an inspiration to continue exploring.
Only in New York
in New York
