Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 60, originally released in print form in 2021. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. Š 2021 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
We are going to do a book. — Jacqueline Kennedy, 1962
THE WHITE HOUSE: An Historic Guide Reaches Sixty Years in Print First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s Promise Becomes the First Project of the White House Historical Association marci a m allet ander so n
Mr. President, Mrs. Kennedy: A few months ago Mrs. Kennedy asked the White House Historical Association to undertake the publication of material about The White House. The directors of the Association . . . are here today to report that our first project, the publication of The White House: An Historic Guide, has been completed and to present to you the first official copies of the book. We hope you will like the book and there will be no surprises, at least for Mrs. Kennedy. She has been the inspiration for its publication and her knowledge of history, her good judgment and her impeccable taste are evident on every page. . . . And, if I may be permitted a slight commercial, I would like to say that this handsome book, with its many illustrations, will be sold to the public at a dollar a copy and is, in my opinion, one of the greatest bargains I know.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
We hope that all who visit The White House or who read about it in this book, will have a better understanding of the beauty and contents of this great house and of the part which it has played in the history of our country.—David E. Finley, June 28, 1962
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On June 28, 1962, when David Finley, the first chairman of the Board of Directors of the White House Historical Association, presented leather-bound copies of the first edition of The White House: An Historic Guide to President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy, the first lady’s childhood expectation had finally been met—albeit after a twenty-year wait. “My mother brought me to Washington one Easter [in 1941] when I was 11. . . . That was the first time I saw the White House,” Mrs. Kennedy later recalled. “From the outside I remember the feeling of the place. But inside, all I remember is shuffling through. There wasn’t even a booklet you could buy. Mount Vernon and the National Gallery of Art and the FBI made a far greater impression.”1 In a sense it was perfectly reasonable for the future first lady to assume that she would find a guidebook to refer to as she toured the White House rooms. Inexpensive illustrated guides were commonplace at museums large and small in the United States and abroad at the time. Nevertheless, when Mrs. Kennedy toured the rooms with her mother in 1941, the White House was a primarily a home and an office, not yet thought of as a museum; there was no curatorial staff to write authoritative descriptions of the artwork and furnishings, and the White House Collection itself was not yet considered permanent. Twenty years later, when Mrs. Kennedy returned as first lady, tourists continued to “shuffle through” by the thousands during posted opening hours. In the time since her childhood visit, the White House had been gutted and rebuilt during Harry S. Truman’s presidency; it was modernized and structurally sound. But there was still no guide for a visitor to reference, and, as Lorraine W. Pearce, the first White House curator, later explained, “no historic or antique objects . . . almost nothing. Basically the rooms were furnished with sort of middle-class antique reproductions that had been supplied by B. Altman in the time of the Truman restoration back in 1952.”2 Determined to change the situation, the first lady announced her ideas in a September 1961 article in Life magazine. Work on the article began, as journalist Hugh Sidey later recalled, when he was awoken from a “blissful” Sunday afternoon nap to take a phone call from President Kennedy who began, ‘Hugh, Jackie has this idea of turning the
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White House into a living museum, of redoing the White House and getting the original furniture and paintings that are still available so the White House reflects the ideas of Jefferson and Monroe and the others.” . . . Jackie came on the phone in that breathless way of hers. “Hugh, I want to do something special with the White House. It is such a beautiful old building. It is so bound up in our history. We need to bring it back to the way the founders envisioned.” 3 Sidey, who accepted the president’s request to help make the Life article a reality, soon concluded that at this moment “the White House moved inexorably into the nation’s past.”4 By the time the article was released, the wheels for Mrs. Kennedy’s plan were in motion. The first White House curator was at work, the White House Fine Arts Committee had been established to advise on the restoration, a public law had been passed ensuring that the house would have a permanent museum collection, and the White House Historical Association, which would be chartered on November 3, 1961, had undertaken the guidebook as its first project, the proceeds of which would fund the new acquisitions for the White House. The National Geographic Society lent its staff and photographers to manage the production of the guide for the Association (which would not have its own publications department for another thirty-seven years), and Mrs. Kennedy herself was the editor. She was well qualified for the role, bringing to it not only her vision for the White House and love of history and the arts, but also the perspective of a well-traveled museum-goer with first hand knowledge of the guidebooks available at the world’s finest museums. Her college years alone had taken her to New York, Paris, and Washington, D.C., where inexpensive, authoritative guides had long been available. The White House: An Historic Guide presented to the Kennedys on June 28, 1962, was filled with color illustrations and room-by-room descriptions of White House decor and furnishings. It would serve, as Mrs. Kennedy had hoped, to “tell the dramatic history of the White House and its occupants and help Washington tourists to understand it better.”5 The influence of guides to other landmarks can be seen in the format of the White House guide, but the emotional connection between the Association’s first book and the American public that
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D E G A S : W I K I A R T / A L L O T H E R I M A G E S : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
A CHILDHOOD EXPECTATION FULFILLED
RIGHT Guidebooks were commonly available to museum visitors long before the first White House guide was published. In c. 1880, Edgar Degas famously portrayed artist Mary Cassatt at the Louvre with her sister, who refers to a guidebook as they view the paintings in the gallery. BELOW A selection of early twentieth-century illustrated guidebooks that preceded the Historic Guide, clockwise from top left: The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s A Guide to the Collections, Part I: Ancient and Oriental Art (90 pages, 1934); Brief Guide to the Smithsonian Institution (25¢, 80 pages, c. 1941); The Vatican’s illustrated English language guide to Pontifical Museums and Galleries (300 pages, 1932); an Illustrated guide to the Louvre (2 francs 240 pages, 1925); Guide Book of Washington (65¢, c. 1961); Illustrated Guide of the National Museum of Versailles (1 franc, 96 pages, c. 1910); The J. Paul Getty Museum Guidebook (54 pages, 1956); National Gallery of Art Guide to the Galleries (no charge, 16 pages, 1949); The Thomas Jefferson Memorial (30 pages); Louisiana State Museum Guide Book (140 illustrated pages, 1946).
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OPPOSITE Dated July 4, 1962, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s introduction explains her decision not to write down to children.
embraced it went far beyond anything that other museum guides represented. The Historic Guide would mark the beginning of White House history as a unique field of study. It was the first and, for its time, only comprehensive published work on a place that symbolized the history of America and all that the nation stood for to the American people. It was written for the American People to whom, Mrs. Kennedy acknowledged, the house “belong.”6 Former curator James Ketchum later explained that in discussions of the book’s purpose and scholarly tone, Mrs. Kennedy felt that it was: far better that ‘we get people interested in wanting them to reach up instead of talking down and being at a level that does not challenge.’ She really wanted this to be popular, yes, but also straightforward and a publication that could undergird and support a type of scholarship that ultimately all individuals who studied the institution and its collections would feel very, very happy about.7 Reflecting on the first lady’s high standards, Ketchum remembered: Mrs. Kennedy just knew so much about the various points on the compass that were appropriate to an effort like this, whether we’re talking about the photography that was involved or the style of writing or the level of scholarship. All these things were brought to bear. I have to stop and recount the fact that we were dealing with someone who had barely celebrated her thirtieth birthday. . . . And yet somehow the world as she had known it up until then had prepared her quite splendidly for the creation of this organization and the project or the product that it would be known for for so many years, namely The White House: An Historic Guide.8 Nash Castro remembered Mrs. Kennedy’s eye for detail: I think it was . . . either late 1961 or early 1962 that we met with Mrs. Kennedy in the Yellow Oval Room late one afternoon about five o’clock, four o’clock probably. She and Mel Grosvenor, Franc Shor, Bob Breeden, J. B. West and I sat in the Yellow Oval Room and she went over every single page of the dummy. . . . making suggestions along the way. We were there for the better part of two-and-a-half to three hours, as I remember. I also remember
that she was very warm, very friendly, funny in many ways in commenting on certain things about the book, very hospitable. And we left, as I recall, about seven o’clock; it had been a long session.9 For more than half a century following the book’s release, Robert Breeden, who managed the production of the first guide, and Nash Castro, who served as the Association’s first administrator, spoke fondly of the months they worked long hours under enormous pressure to meet the high expectations of Mrs. Kennedy and a nation hungry for the book’s release. The memories they regularly recounted to their successors in editorial and production roles at the Association reflected a shared reverence for Mrs. Kennedy’s accomplishments and a humility for the responsibility they shouldered to produce a tangible representation of the White House accurately and respectfully.10 In 1819 after President James Monroe refurnished the newly restored President’s House following the fire of 1814, the artist Samuel F. B. Morse observed that it was “certainly proper” that the President’s House should be furnished with “Something of splendor . . . for the credit of the nation.”11 Although they may not have had this specific quotation in mind, Breeden and Castro succeeded in representing the White House with “something of splendor”—setting the high standards for the all future editions of the guide as well as the more than fifty additional titles the Association would publish over the next sixty years. James Ketchum explains: I look at the publication efforts of the Association many, many years later . . . it really goes back to the kind of philosophical base that she was establishing early on: that they [publications] would be of quality and . . . that it would be solid information, well documented and presented in the best conceivable manner. And that’s what was being started and that was what was being attempted, and many times I think was being done successfully.12
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I’ll never forget July 4, 1962. It was a holiday, of course. —Nash Castro
AN IMMEDIATE SUCCESS
When The White House: An Historic Guide went on sale July 4, 1962, My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, by Lillian Rogers Parks, had been on the New York Times Best Sellers List for fifteen weeks. Also on the list were To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and James Michener’s Hawaii. As the White House gates opened to the public, hundreds of books were stacked optimistically behind a table set up at the very beginning of the route visitors would follow through the house. Nash Castro, who joined other staffers to work the sales desk himself that first day, later described the scene: I remember people coming in with grocery carts, if you can believe that. People came in with grocery carts and bought fifty or seventyfive or a hundred copies of the book. Now, don’t ask me what they did with them because I didn’t have time to ask.13 The Historic Guide was an immediate success. News of the book quickly reached a nation made curious by the Life magazine article of September 1961 as well as Mrs. Kennedy’s televised tour of the White House, which aired in February 1962. With
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no dedicated publicist involved, Nash Castro had sent out a basic press release that was sufficient to inspire stories in Good Housekeeping, Time, Antiques Magazine, Popular Photography, Washington Evening and Sunday Star, Saturday Evening Post, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Milwaukee Journal, Columbus Enquirer, The Denver Post, Air Force Times, Christian Science Monitor, American Library Association Bulletin, Glendale News-Press, Childhood Education, School Library Bulletin, congressional newsletters, and even Amy Vanderbilt’s syndicated “Etiquette” column.14 The first edition of 250,000 copies sold out in ninety days. A second edition of 100,000 copies and third of 250,000 soon followed. By December 1962 the print runs totaled 600,000 copies.15 But the White House was just one outlet. Sacks of mail filled with dollar bills were soon reaching Nash Castro at his office in the Interior Building. He recalled, We didn’t engage in publicizing it in any way, except to issue a press release or two. But the response across the nation was so intense that the orders for the book came in by the
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ABOVE AND OPPOSITE The first White House tourists to have an opportunity to purchase a guide to the historic mansion kept the sales desk busy on launch day, July 4, 1962. Nash Castro, seen unpacking books at top left, recalled eager customers bringing shopping carts that they filled with dozens of books— but he was too busy to ask why.
A L L I M A G E S T H I S S P R E A D : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
thousands. I had an office and a secretary in the Interior Building, and the mail was delivered to us in mail sacks, those big canvas sacks. Sometimes they’d bring in six or seven or a dozen, and because they had money we didn’t want them just lying around there. So I went over to Riggs National Bank at 15th and Pennsylvania and arranged to rent a vault. It was a good-sized room, actually. We took the bags over and worked out a system so that we took out the older ones and worked on them as we put in the new ones. We found that working out of that office [at Interior] wasn’t adequate. So I arranged with GSA [General Services Administration] to take offices in the old Brookings Institution. They had moved, I think, to near Dupont Circle somewhere. . . . My secretary and I were doing it all. And the volume was so intense—and a lot of those letters needed responses. I developed form letter responses, which we used quite successfully, but some of them you couldn’t respond to by form letter. So those that couldn’t be handled in that way I would take home, and on a Sunday afternoon, or a Saturday afternoon after mowing the lawn, I would sit in the back yard
under a tree with a dictating machine, and dictate responses to all of these letters. I did that for quite a while. And then we progressively developed a system with enough help so that we managed very, very well. 16 Hundreds of carbons preserved in the Association’s early guidebook files reflect the enormity of the volume of correspondence dutifully answered by Nash Castro from 1962 to 1965 and his successor Hillory Tolson from 1966 to 1978. Questions from parents, teachers, children, church groups, tour organizers, historical societies, the press, and copywriters creating encyclopedia entries can be found in these files. Although many questions relate to the process of placing an order or the logistics of taking a tour, many others are from readers wanting additional details on topics covered in the book. These letters were referred to historians in the National Park Service and in time detailed responses, often numbering multiple pages, were supplied. If a query related to a book other than the Historic Guide, Castro took the extra step of answering with directions to local bookstores. Many letter writers asked for reproductions of paintings pictured in the Guide, and a system was soon created to fill such requests.17
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LEFT In an attempt to demonstrate to Mrs. Kennedy their enthusiasm for the success of the Historic Guide, a group of White House staffers stage a photograph on East Executive Avenue. Curator James Ketchum poses as a customer in a parked car as Social Secretary Nancy Tuckerman hands him a guide. Chief Usher J. B. West waves a book to motorists as Curator Jim Elder shows a copy to a passerby, July 1962.
I remember her saying to me, “And if Ethel [Kennedy] calls, you make it absolutely certain that she must pay full price for every single copy.” . . . And of course we thought that was so funny that we all got together—Nancy Tuckerman, who was now social secretary, J. B. West, Bill Elder and I. We went out and we had ourselves photographed selling books to tourists on the street. In those days you could
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drive down East Executive Avenue outside the East Wing . . . And so we had ourselves photographed trying to stop drivers and encourage them to buy from the curbside. . . . The photographs were put front and center on [Mrs. Kennedy’s] desk upstairs so that she could see that we were all very much of one mind, and that is that sales should continue to grow in every way possible.19 The price did not include sufficient margin to sell the book to the trade for resale. The concept was of no interest to the Board, which remained focused on keeping the book affordable, and even turned down requests from resellers. Over the next sixteen years the price slowly rose in 25 cent increments from $1 in 1962 to $2 in 1978. By 1998, twenty years later, the price had only risen to $4.95.20 The price did not substantially increase until the events of September 11, 2001, led to a ten-year closure of the Association’s White House Bookseller’s Area, and thus a need to build enough margin into the suggested retail price to allow the guide to be distributed to the trade at a wholesale price.
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WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION
ONE DOLLAR, NO EXCEPTIONS “It was Mrs. Kennedy’s original idea to sell the guidebook for a dollar. That was a round figure, and almost everybody could pull a dollar bill out of their pocket and buy one of them,” explained Carson Glass, one of the Association’s founders. “And [they] did. . . . It wasn’t long before we had sold 600,000 copies of that book . . . We couldn’t believe a book of that quality could be produced and sold for such a small amount of money.”18 “I don’t think anyone ever realized what its potential was, other than Mrs. Kennedy. . . . Sales were terribly important to her,” recalled James Ketchum, adding that it was “verboten” for her friends to be given complementary copies.
BELOW TOP First Lady Lady Bird Johnson presents a signed copy of the Historic Guide to buyer number 1 million, July 17, 1964. BELOW BOTTOM
BOT TOM: RICHARD M. NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBARY AND MAUSEU T O P : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
To celebrate the release of the tenth edition on June 2, 1971, First Lady Patricia Nixon signs guidebooks for White House visitors at a special sales desk set up in the East Room.
MILESTONES Over the course of nearly sixty years, the Association regularly celebrated milestones in sales numbers and years in print for its first project. On July 17, 1964, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson visited the sales desk to sign and present the 1 millionth copy of the Historic Guide to be sold. The buyer was Mrs. C. J. Vessel of Omaha, Nebraska.21 On September 4, 1968, David Finley, still serving as chairman of the Association’s Board of Directors, announced the release of the eighth edition of the Historic Guide and total sales of more than 2 million copies. Barely three years later, an Association press release announced: The first copies of the Tenth Edition of The White House: An Historic Guide were sold to visitors to the White House on June 2, 1971. First Lady Patricia Nixon and her daughter Tricia welcomed visitors to the White House on that date; gave a copy of the book to the first
visitor; and autographed copies of it for many other visitors.22 The release reports that by this time, 2.5 million copies had sold.23 On July 18, 1982, First Lady Nancy Reagan held a party to celebrate the release of the fifteenth edition of the Historic Guide and its twenty years in print. The new edition featured glimpses of the Reagan’s recently refurbished Second Floor private quarters, and the press announced that total sales to date had exceeded 3.6 million copies.24 In 1992, the two-hundredth anniversary of the laying of the White House cornerstone coincided with guidebook’s thirty years in print. Bernie Meyer, the Association’s executive vice president at the time, later recalled, With the assistance of the American Institute of Architects, a time capsule was designed and manufactured and put in place in the late afternoon of October 13, shortly before the reception. There was a little ceremony at the White House when the time capsule was closed and sealed. It’s located at the southwest corner of the Residence, just to the east of the Rose Garden. President Bush and Mrs. Bush were there and a few other people. . . . An ornament was placed in the capsule, as well as a copy of the Guide.25 A “fiftieth anniversary” or twenty-third edition, of the guide was released in November 2011. By this time sales had surpassed 4.5 million copies. First Lady Michelle Obama welcomed the Association’s board and staff along with and presidential descendants to the White House to celebrate the occasion. Caroline Kennedy addressed the guests reflecting on the legacy of her mother’s work: She transformed the White House into one of the nation’s most important museums of American art, decorative arts, and history. . . . She created, and mostly wrote, the association’s first guidebook—The White House: An Historic Guide. . . . As the project got under way, my father was tremendously proud of my mother, and she in turn was thrilled to have made a positive and symbolic contribution to his presidency. Their time in the White House was the happiest of their lives. . . . She would be so proud of the ongoing work of the White House Historical Association.26
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The fiftieth anniversary edition represented not only impressive statistics for the Historic Guide but the first significant turning point in content and production. During the late 1990s, more than a million people visited the White House annually, numbers equal to those of the Kennedy administration. The challenge for the Association’s publications department at that time was not how to sell the Guide, but to keep it in print. Reprint orders were placed every few months for 30,000 or more copies. Precise instructions were given to the printer to stack and wrap the books unboxed on pallets, eliminating the interim step of unpacking cartons for those who were briskly filling orders and stacking shelves. Just as it had for nearly forty years, the Historic Guide quickly sold itself to the thousands of visitors who flowed through the gates on East Executive Avenue to tour the White House during regularly posted hours. Suddenly, however, public tours were halted. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Association’s White House sales desk was closed as public tours were suspended. Guide sales immediately dropped 90
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percent. The closure stretched on for months, then years. The world had changed. Was the Historic Guide still relevant? Ironically, with limited access to the White House, the public need for an illustrated guide soon increased—not to follow on an in-person tour but to reopen a window suddenly slammed shut. Hundreds of bewildered visitors flowed into the Association’s offices on Jackson Place looking for basic information about the inaccessible White House they had assumed would be open for tours when they left their homes to make the trip to Washington. In 2007, with the Association’s fiftieth anniverary in sight, the decision was made to bring the guide into the twenty-first century. The new edition would allow the American people to get to know the White House even if they could not have an opportunity to visit. It was entirely new in plan, designed for the reader who may, or more likely may not, have the opportunity to go inside the White House. A new section on the architecture and grounds allowed study of the house from the street; new to-scale drawings allowed an overview that a visitor in the house could never have; while traditional room-by-room descriptions allowed everyone a “virtual visit,”
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The first editions of The White House: An Historic Guide went on press only a few miles from the White House at Judd & Detweiler, which operated at 1500 Eckington Place from 1868 to 1987. The Historic Guide was the first major work to be printed web-offset on heavy coated paper in process color, and was considered a major milestone for the firm and the industry. J&D pressmen are seen (above right) operating the new web-offset press, c. 1962.
A L L I M A G E S T H I S PA G E : J U D D & D E T W E I L E R
A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EVOLUTION
T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
of public rooms changed over the years, new photographs were usually dropped into existing windows without changing the layout of the page itself, and artists would carefully add layer upon layer in oils to reflect those changes in the large cutaway painting featured in many editions. Before 2011 text changes were still tediously stripped into existing art: no electronic files of any kind existed. The rewriting and re-design of the Historic Guide in 2011 provided the opportunity to create the first completely electronic layouts of the book. Today the files created in 2011 are regularly updated for new print and digital editions using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop software on Macintosh computers. The 2011 edition brought a transformation to the photographic process as well, as longtime principal photographer Bruce White explains: Retired in 2011, the cutaway of the White House that ran in many editions of the Historic Guide is a highly detailed work of art. Updated over time with the application of layer upon layer of paint, the board is marked with printer’s notes and crop marks for reference
showcased through modern photography and enriched with historic images. The intent honored Mrs. Kennedy’s wish to make the history of the White House available to all the American people. Betty C. Monkman, decorative arts scholar and former curator of the White House, oversaw the process, bringing to the project her firsthand knowledge of the White House collection gained from more than thirty years of experience in the Office of the Curator. The late historian William Seale wrote the architectural and historical text. And Curator William Allman provided descriptions of content and context for the updated room photographs. Together the three contributors were a dream team with an unequaled depth of knowledge gained through their life’s work. The new Historic Guide was well received and earned seven national awards for content and design. The redesign of the Historic Guide also allowed for a technological transition into the twenty-first century. The first editions of the guide were printed on the new state-of-the-art web-offset press at Judd & Detweiler in Northeast Washington, D.C. The text was manually typeset. and the photography was done with slide film. For nearly fifty years small sections of new type were set as needed to replace the old when editions were updated. As the furnishings and decor
When I began photographing rooms and works of art at the White House for inclusion in the Association’s books and guides in the late 1990s, I used a Sinar 4 x 5 view camera to create large format color transparencies and black and white negatives, the highest quality imaging available for reproduction in books at that time. Accurate color was obtained by working with a photo laboratory that would process the film and negatives in an elaborate and costly process; one was reliant on the photo lab to accurately process the images, which was never a sure thing due to the complexity of the various processes. When we reshot all of the White House rooms in 2009 and 2010 for the fiftieth anniversary edition, I transitioned to the highest quality camera available in the digital age, a medium format Hasselblad. The camera and its software allow me to create accurate color balance of images and high resolution detail in a way that was difficult, if not impossible, to achieve with film. all of the fine-tuning of my images (adjustment of color, brightness, contrast, etc.) now takes place on my computer.27
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W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
In order to capture the North Front of the White House from the perfect vantage point, photographer George Mobley made a 75-foot climb up the ladder of the firetruck positioned on Pennsylvania Avenue (left). The street remained open to traffic during the shoot. As buses and taxis passed and pedestrians gathered below, Mobley captured the iconic image of the White House for the cover of the first edition of the Historic Guide. In 2019, the fire department helped to make another photograph possible (opposite) when the hydraulic lift of Engine Number 3 carried photographer Bruce M. White up to capture a new view of the South Front for the cover of the sixtieth anniversary edition of the Historic Guide.
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C H R I S T I N A E WA L D F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I A T I O N
In 2019, a firetruck returned to help us capture a new view of the South Front for the cover of the sixtieth anniversary edition.
LEGACY
The sixtieth anniversary edition of the Historic Guide is now in production for release in late 2021. The new edition will feature updated content and new photography. To celebrate the legacy of the first Historic Guide and the work of those who produced it, the cover will feature a twenty-first-century re-creation of the iconic photograph taken especially for the first edition, but from a new vantage point. The original photograph was captured from 75 feet above Pennsylvania Avenue with the help of the D.C. Fire Department, which trained photographer George Mobley to climb to the top of a fire ladder to take the photographs. Robert Breeden remembered the event: The truck pulled up—and it was just before rush hour. I’m sure people wondered what in the world happened. But George had to go to school for three days to learn how to get up and down that ladder. The picture was shot just a few days before Easter. It was processed over night. We made a selection I think on Saturday before Easter and sent down a few transparencies for Mrs. Kennedy to see. . . . And she selected [the cover shot].28
featured on the front cover of the Historic Guide for nearly sixty years, but in 2019, the Association decided to move the shoot to the South Front of the House. The D.C. Fire Department sent Ladder Company 3, equipped with a state-of-the art hydraulic lift that raised principal photographer Bruce M. White to the perfect height for the new photograph and eliminated the need for a repeat of the historic ladder climb. Today Mrs. Kennedy’s work lives in each new edition of the Historic Guide. Every first lady who followed her has contributed a letter to open the book, most recently First Lady Jill Biden, who writes, Knowledge and learning are at the foundation of our democracy, and that is reflected at the White House, where history comes to life.29 For more than twenty years following the assassination of President Kennedy, letter writers continued to request the first, and long out of print, edition of the Guide. As one writer from Columbus, Ohio, explained in 1978, “I wish to purchase the edition with Jacqueline Kennedy’s foreword because I loved the Kennedys and all they did for the White House, and I still do.” 28
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Two cover shoots, separated by more than half a century
B O T T O M L E F T : C H R I S T I N A E WA L D F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N A L L O T H E R I M A G E S T H I S S P R E A D : T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
The D.C. Fire Department made it possible for the cover of the Historic Guide to picture the White House from the perfect vantage points: from the north in 1962 and from the south in 2019. Photographer George Mobley (above) consults with firefighters and loads his equipment ahead of his 75-foot climb up a fire ladder, while photographer Bruce M. White (below) readies his camera as the firefighters of Ladder Company 3 prepare to escort him on the ride up.
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notes Epigraph: “Statement of David E. Finley, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the White House Historical Association, at the Presentation of The White House: An Historic Guide, to President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy at the White House, Thursday, June 28, 1962, 4:15 p.m.,” transcript in “White House Guide” file, White House Historical Association Archives, Washington, D.C. 1.
Quoted in Hugh Sidey, “The First Lady Brings History and Beauty to the White House,” Life, September 1, 1961, reprinted in White House History, no. 13 (Summer 2003): 10.
2. Lorraine Pearce, interview by Emily Soapes, November 21, 1995, White House Historical Association Archives, Washington, D.C. 3. Hugh Sidey, “Editing the First Lady: Life Magazine Goes to the White House,” White House History, no. 13 (Summer 2003): 5. 4. Sidey, “The First Lady Brings History and Beauty to the White House,” reprint, 17. 5. Sidey, “Editing the First Lady,” 5. 6. Quoted in Sidey, “The First Lady Brings History and Beauty to the White House,” reprint, 10. 7.
James Ketchum, interview by Emily Soapes, December 12, 1995, White House Historical Association Archives.
8. Ibid. 9. Nash Castro, interview by Emily Soapes, June 21, 1995, White House Historical Association Archives. 10. Conversations with Marcia Anderson, 1998–2017. 11. Samuel F. B. Morse, journal entry for December 17, 1819, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, ed. Edward Lind Morse (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1973), 1:227. 12. Ketchum, interview. 13. Castro, interview. 14. “Promotion of Sales ‘White House Guide,’” file, White House Historical Association Archives. 15. Ibid.
The photographers working from atop the fire ladders attracted the attention of pedestrians and tourists in 1962 (above) and 2019 (below). By 2019 the small crowds that gathered were well equipped to capture their own photographs of the event.
16. Castro, interview. 17. “White House Guide Correspondence, 1962–78,” files, White House Historical Association Archives. 18. Carson Glass, interview by Emily Soaps, April 27, 1995, White House Historical Association Archives. 19. Ketchum, interview. 20. “White House Guide Correspondence, 1962–78.” 21. Idid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. “Printers Complete Latest Edition of Guidebook to White House,” Tampa Florida Tribune, July 18, 1982. 25. Bernie Meyer, interview by Emily Soapes, June 2, 1995, White House Historical Association Archives. 26. Caroline Kennedy, “Remembering My Mother in the White House on the Occasion of the White House Historical Association’s Fiftieth Anniversary,” White House History 31 (Summer 2012): 58, 59. 27. Bruce White, Conversation with Marcia Anderson, January 16, 2021. 28. Robert Breeden, interview by Emily Soaps, March 25, 1995, White House Historical Association Archives. 29. Jill Biden, Letter of Introduction to The White House: An Historic Guide, 25th ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association 2021), vii. 30. “White House Guide Correspondence, 1962–78.”
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