Hibernia

The Irishman That Designed the White House

If Irish visitors strolling along Washington, D.C.’s Pennsylvania Avenue sometimes imagine that there is a familiar look about the White House, small wonder. It was modeled on Leinster House in Dublin by the Irish-born architect, James Hoban.

When it was decided that a special official residence for the President of the United States was necessary, a contest for a design was held, with a prize of $500 offered. Hoban, the eventual winner, was born at Desart, near Callan, in County Kilkenny, close to the birthplace of Edmund Ignatius Rice, founder of the Irish Christian Brothers, and in the same year.

Leinster House, on which Hoban based his plans, now the home of Dáil Éireann (Parliament), had been designed by the German architect Richard Cassels in 1745 as a town house for the Duke of Leinster.

When the building was completed it was known as the President’s Palace, or the President’s House, and was not called the White House until its walls were painted white after its burning by the British in 1814.

The name was perpetuated when President Roosevelt had it engraved on his stationery during his term in office.

The White House, nowadays, attracts well over a million visitors each year. It occupies an area of about 18 acres and stands in gardens that are planted with 80 different species of trees.

Its principal sections are the Main Building, the East Terrace and the West Terrace.

The site was selected by George Washington himself, and although it is sometimes claimed that he laid the cornerstone of the building, on October 13, 1792, this is not true. Washington was making a speech in another part of the country on that day.

The White House was never occupied by Washington. Its first tenant was John Adams, the second President, who moved into the gleaming new mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue during the bleak November of 1800.

It is a surviving legend of the White House that the President’s wife, Mrs. Adams, fell into the habit, convenient if scarcely elegant, of hanging out the family washing on a line indecorously draped around the then only partially constructed East Room.

The main walls of the mansion were built in grey sandstone, taken from a quarry at Aquia Creek, Virginia. By degrees, the building grew in size. The East and West Terraces were constructed by the third President, Thomas Jefferson, who also added a number of one-story offices, woodsheds, and wine cellars.

It was during the administration of the fourth President, James Madison, that the building was burned by British soldiers, on August 14, 1814.

Famous paintings such as the Stuart portrait of Washington had to be cut out of their frames with kitchen knives to get them out of the way of the advancing British, and were entrusted to the care of the President’s wife, the colorful Dolly Madison, who was the White House’s first prominent social leader.

James Hoban was called in again after the fire to restore the damaged portions of the mansion, a task he had completed by the end of 1817, when President James Monroe moved in. It was then that the walls of the Executive Mansion were first painted white, to hide the marks of the fire.

Seven years later, the next extension was undertaken, when the South Portico was built. Five years after that, the North Colonnade and Porch were added, following plans by Latrobe from sketches by Hoban which had been approved by Jefferson.

The main apartments of the White House consist of the East Room, the Green Room, the Red Room and the State Dining Room.

The East Room, where the Adams’ washing once hung to dry, is used for all formal functions, and has been the setting for many historic receptions in honor of visiting royalty and foreign dignitaries. Here, too, White House marriage ceremonies have been performed, and Presidents who died in office have lain in state. It is an impressive white and gold apartment, dominated by large portraits of George and Martha Washington.

Informal receptions are held in the Green Room, with its walls of green silk damask. The Red Room, which most First Ladies use for receiving guests, is a gracious apartment with walls of red silk damask reproduced from the Rubens Room at Windsor Castle. Situated between the Green Room and the Red Room is the elliptical Blue Room, where foreign diplomats and guests at state dinners are received.

The State Dining Room is used for formal dinners and luncheons. Its walls are of paneled oak, painted light green, and it has a carved mantelpiece with green marble facing, over which hangs Healy’s portrait of Lincoln.

The windows are draped with gold silk damask. The table is a four-pedestal antique Hepplewhite, and there are carved chairs of Hepplewhite mahogany. An overmantel of a painting of flowers framed in gilt over a mirror was presented by Britain’s King George VI.

In 1947, the 33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, had a second-floor porch built into the South Portico, and, the following year, submitting to Congress that the White House was unsafe, he received authority for the complete reconstruction of the historic mansion. While this extensive work was being carried out, Truman moved to nearby Blair House, usually used to accommodate distinguished visitors. He did not return to the White House until May 1952. 

The rebuilding of the President’s residence cost the United States almost six million dollars. The interior was completely removed. New under-pinning, 24 feet deep, was placed beneath the exterior walls, and a steel frame was installed to support the interior.

A basement was constructed which extends under the lawn and contains a modern kitchen, heating and air-conditioning equipment and an elaborate bomb shelter.

Whereas there were formerly 48 rooms and 14 bathrooms in that part of the Executive Mansion used as living quarters, the refurbished White House contained 54 rooms and 16 bathrooms. In all, today it contains 132 apartments.

The original White House had only one elevator, but after the Truman remodeling there were five. A solarium was installed and equipped for radio and television.

The historic mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue broods on its swarming memories, of many Presidents and their ladies, of crises, burnings and assassinations, of the ebullient Teddy Roosevelt, of Mrs. Adams’ washing hanging in the East Room, of the Camelot of the Kennedy years. It is a far cry today from the house designed by a young man from County Kilkenny and the distant Dublin mansion that inspired him.

Morrison Visas: Round Two

Hard to believe that it’s already a year since the days of Morrison Madness, when tens of thousands of Irish (as well as people of other nationalities) mailed over 14 million applications for the chance of winning 40,000 green cards in a Green Card lottery. The lottery, aimed largely at redressing the shortcomings of previous U.S. immigration regulations, was a major victory for the hundreds of thousands of young Irish immigrants in the U.S.

Currently we are in the middle of phase two of that visa lottery, which, over a three-year period, is designed to give out 120,000 green cards, 48,000 of which are reserved specifically for the Irish. Millions of applications were sent in during the month-long filing period which began on July 29, the results of which will be known in the coming months.

The visa program, which in 1991 was made law due to the push of former Congressman Bruce Morrison (D-Conn.), and Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), is aimed at adjusting what some saw as an imbalance in existing immigration law, dating back to the 1965 Immigration Reform Act.

Inadvertently, that act greatly cut the number of green cards given out to western European people, to the point where the number of Irish being legalized in the years before 1980 fell to less than a thousand.

Largely due to the failing Irish economy, the mid-1980’s saw the largest surge of emigration from Ireland since the 1950’s.

Naturally most of these ended up in the U.S., where they ended up working illegally, many with fake names and Social Security numbers and all with a fear of being caught by immigration authorities.

However, with the help of already-established Irish-American groups, the Irish galvanized to form a lobbying powerhouse, the Irish Immigration Reform Movement. The young Irish reached their ultimate achievement with last year’s law, which will benefit immigrants from 35 other countries as well as Ireland.

There have been changes still even since last year’s lottery. Perhaps the most monumental was the decision by Congress to include applicants from Northern Ireland in the number of those eligible for Ireland’s share of the visas, a move which in effect acknowledges the Republic of Ireland’s connection to the North. Also, instead of last year’s multiple-application scheme, this year’s lottery is single application only.

   – By Brian Rohan

Republic’s Claim to North Reportedly Up for Grabs

The talks that started last year regarding the future of, Northern Ireland have resumed, and many Irish fear that the Dublin government, eager to please a hostile northern Unionist delegation, might offer up the Republic’s claim to the North.

Articles Two and Three of the Irish Constitution have come under increasing fire from Unionist leaders such as Ian Paisley, who decried the articles as an “illegal, criminal and immoral claim” to the Six Counties of Northern Ireland.

The Articles were written into the Irish Constitution with an eye towards the reunification of the 32 counties of Ireland as a single, self-ruled nation.

However, despite increasing popular support to retain the Articles as a concrete platform for national aspirations, leaks from the closed door talks between the Dublin government and Northern Ireland leaders hint that Two and Three are up for sale as a bargaining chip.

Particularly for northern nationalists, there is much at stake. For instance, a northern nationalist could not hold an Irish passport or have Irish citizenship were it not for Articles Two and Three. 

Many of these nationalists fear that the government of the Republic, which signed the 1922 partition treaty in the first place, are now giving up on them altogether.

However, to the North’s Unionists, the claim has become outdated after 70 years of partition, and they see the six counties of Northern Ireland as having no ties to the 26-county Republic.

Support for retaining the articles in their present form has grown with the people of the Republic. 

Only 40 percent agree that they should be amended in some way, down from 48 percent just a year ago. Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds has already ruled out calling a public referendum to decide the issue: it has become clear that whatever deals are to be made regarding the future governing of Northern Ireland they will be made behind closed doors.

     – By Brian Rohan