Browsing: Diary of Charles Francis Adams, Volume 1

William J. Stone (1798–1865) engraved this plate of the White House in 1822 for Peter Force’s National Calendar. Stone was brought to America in 1805 and, after going to school in Pennsylvania, settled in Washington in 1815 as an engraver and lithographer. Although he engraved many fine maps of the Federal City, he is perhaps most famous for his facsimile of the Declaration of Independence done in 1823 during John Quincy Adams’ secretaryship. See George C. Groce and David H. Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of American Artists,1564–1860, New Haven and London, 1957.

The President’s House (or White House, as it began to be called as early as 1810) was designed by James Hoban as a white sandstone Georgian edifice of two stories above a ground floor, topped by a steep roof. George Washington picked the exact site of the building, and work began on it in 1792. The first residents of the mansion were John and Abigail Adams, who moved into the unfinished structure in 1800. During Thomas Jefferson’s tenure the foundation work and the steps of the north portico were completed, a slate roof replaced the older one, and a stone wall enclosed the private grounds. Interior work also progressed. After British troops set the White House afire in 1814, nothing remained but a burned shell, and it was not reoccupied until 1817, when, rebuilt, freshly painted white, and refurbished in glittering style, it became a showpiece for the nation during James Monroe’s administration. When John Quincy Adams’ family moved into the mansion, it was still an elegant house, but with the removal of much of the Monroe furniture great rooms were almost empty. Congress and President Adams worked to refurnish the house, but partisanship limited the effort. During Adams’ tenure, nevertheless, the grounds were graded and filled, and trees, shrubs, and gardens were planted. Still the exterior had a “rustic, haphazard look,” for the wings needed a coat of hard stucco and sheds leaned against the enclosing walls, where government clerks used to tie their horses.

Probably the most remembered heritage from the Adamses’ occupation of the White House is John Adams’ invocation which Franklin D. Roosevelt had carved into a mantlepiece: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” See John Adams to Abigail Adams, 2 November 1800, Adams Papers; Amy La Follette Jensen, The White House, New York, 1962, chapters 1–3.