Alex, was it you who wrote about the Jackson Magnolia. It was. So you already know about this. For everybody else, think back when Jonathan Pliska visited our class and we talked about the story behind the Jackson Magnolia. Who remembers the story, not alex. Anybody else . Yeah, william. Andrew jacksons wife died right before he went to office so he planted the tree because it was her favorite tree. Uhhuh. And he brought the seeds from the herm taj in tennessee and do you remember what jonathan told us . False. Well, he said that there really isnt any type of contemporary evidence. Andrew jackson never mentions planting a tree. Theres nothing in newspapers. So it seems like this is a story that has, of course, these romantic origins and its continued to grow from that ever since. So this is actually the first known exterior photograph of the white house. It was taken by a welshborn photographer named john plume jr. And about january, 1846. So, if youre looking at the white house, this is 1846. So in theory jackson planted his tree already, right . But i dont see a magnolia anywhere. So this also kind of bolsters the case that, you know, perhaps the magnolia came a little later than people think. Here is an outdoor shot. This was by lewis walter in 1857 58. There you can see the white house conservatory on top of what is the west colonnade going into the area today that is the west wing. You dont have all the greenhouses but you do have the conservatory above the west colonnade and again in that place where you usually have the Jackson Magnolia, just looks more like a pretty barren tree the middle of winter. Certainly doesnt look like a Jackson Magnolia. However, this is a photograph that was taken by of the cassius clay battalion 1861 and voila. That looks like the Jackson Magnolia to me. So if we look at that tree and its probably at that point maybe about 15 to 20 feet tall, depends when it was planted or transported, but the photographic evidence seems to suggest that that famous tree attributed to Andrew Jackson more than likely was planted later probably some time in the 1850s. However, that story and that legend has continued to grow and grow over time. Here is another shot. This is actually matthew bra dy. This is during the civil war. The flag pole on the south lawn. Theres part of jacksons haha wall and the Union Soldiers essentially keeping an eye on the white house grounds. Again, you look and you can see what looks like a young Jackson Magnolia. So again, early 1860s it looks like there is the famous tree that we all know. In 2007 you probably remember this, december 2017, the Jackson Magnolia made a lot of news because there were reports that the tree was going to be cut down because of safety issues. And its announced that its going to be pruned and one of its major branchs is going to be taken down and preserved. And you remember from our visit to the white house, you can kind of see, yes, the Jackson Magnolia is still there but its being held up by a steel pole, by these cables and its because pretty extensive rot on the inside of the tree. And what i did was i pulled up just some of the news stories from december of 2017. So, whats interesting is i guess ill ask you what Media Outlets do you think published each story . So, read this one and who do you think published this information. Any ideas . Yeah. Fox news. Nope. Alex . New york times. Huhuh. Alex . History. Com. No. Cnn. This first one was cnn. What about this one . Matthew . Msnbc. Huhuh. Christopher . Fox. Daniel . Washington post. The Washington Post, yeah. Now, but do you notice theres a key difference between the first one and the second one, what word did they use . Lore. White house lore. So if we go back, theres not really it just kind of repeats the story verbatim that we know, but at least the Washington Post acknowledges that theres lore to it. It may not be entirely true. Were just not true. What about the final one . Any ideas . Yeah, alex. Its kind of using it as a way to be critical of the president. How so . Because its talking about how theyre trying to take down not because its old but trying to talk about how he wants to take it out as a negative way to portray the president. Do you think so you think theres a negative portrayal of the president . It seems like this article is kind of pinning blame on Melania Trump. Right . Is that what you mean . Thats why people would read it, you know what i mean. What about the language before Jackson Magnolia. Socalled. Socalled. This is actually the New York Post. So, regardless of your politics, you can see how these stories have not only continued to the present but that even when theyre then recirculated and put out there that there are slants to how that story is told. Right. It was very different. But he was considered a democrat, right. So, because of its historical significance and the living history that continues to happen today, public fascination with the white house has created many legends and myths. Some of which are still perpetuated by social media, the internet, journalists and, yes, even historians. The point of todays lecture is not simply discount or dismiss these fables but to unpack them and try to contextualize why they were created in the first place and reenforced time and time again. Now, myth number one, the white house is white because of the british burning. Have you heard that before . Youve never heard that. Yeah, alex . Didnt if im not wrong, it was they used whitewash in order to hold the sand stone together which is why its now called why it was then called the or named the white house. Exactly. So, if you look at the exterior of the white house, that particular sand stone, much of it which came from virginia, particularly a quiet kweek and quiet kwoeres a lot of the sand stone being produced had this gray color. So you have to imagine the white house as a gray building. And what they did because sand stone is so pourus, you have to seal it to protect it from the winter months because if water gets into the stones pores it freezes and then it cracks, right . Because water expands in those pores. What the scottish stone masons did and the workers who built the white house, enslaved free workers who built the white house, they applied a coat of limebased whitewash in 1778. Whitewash is a different than the white paint they use today, but that was really sort of where this story began of starting to call it the white house is because it was a whitewash that was first applied. So they do add the first coat of lead white paint in 1818. This is after the burning. But that colloquium term of white house had already been established. Just because of the burning, no, there was a whitewash that existed before then. Now, they kept applying coats of white paint up until the 1970s during the Carter Administration is when they undertook a major project to strip all of the layers of paint off the white house. Now, in some areas of the house were talking 30 to 40 layers of paint that had to be removed. And the project ended up taking about 25 years. It was completed during the clinton administration. So it started the end of the Carter Administration and here this gives you some visual of what the white house looks like without its current variation of white paint. Again, you ask k see its primarily gray. It has bits of white in it and also tints of red. You probably seen the Smithsonian Castle on the national mall, so some of the sand stone quarterries when you dug too deep, you would hit these deep red veins and the stone would turn blood red. So thats why we call it washington brown stone. A lot made in the early part of the 19th century that is actually sand stone. Its just red sand stone. But from Stafford County it was primarily gray. But you can see the still flex, theres flecks of red within the stone itself. But by stripping all the paint we could actually see the very intricate detail of the carvings because you have to imagine layer after paint, layer of paint, layer of paint, layer of paint all of a sudden all of this is globed. You cant see the carvings. You cant see anything. So it took 25 years but they ended up finishing it during the clinton administration. And, there are still some parts of the white house and they saw it when they started removing paint that there are still scorch marks you can see. Now, on the exterior its pretty much all painted. This is actually downstairs we were on the ground floor corridor but behind it sort of like the basement area Service Spaces this is one of the door ways. You can see they left it unpainted and you can see some of the scorch marks still around the frame. But again, you can see the variations of the stone. Also probably tell you that the stone was coming from different sources. Here is a shot of the north portico. Again, you get a sense of how white the building is and really you cant see the individual stones as opposed to here you can actually see each individual stone. And again, flecks of red, streaks of red throughout the north portico columns. And this is during the reagan administration. Here is a shot of the north side of the white house. Again, you can see the individual gray stones on either side, but then the still painted portico and the north entrance. So, lets just say hypothetically you wanted to paint your apartment or dorm room or something the color of the white house, the closest you can get is durans whisper white thats commercially available. Thatses a close as you can get. All right. White house myth number two, white house tunnels. In fact, we were just talking about this before class the existence of tunnels who used them and why did they use them. So, one of the stories there were tunnels beneath the white house that allowed for a quick escape, that one could actually get all the way to the Potomac River and that Dolly Madison used the tunnel to escape the Octagon House and lincoln had an escape tunnel. Unfortunately these are not true. The architect of the white house did build james hoeng, several sewor systems. Dolly madison probably wouldnt have climbed through the sewor. She wouldnt have wanted to travel that way. And these were installed for Running Water but there really werent any fullsize tunnels anyone could have used. Now, here of course is Octagon House the madisons lived for six months after the burning. And its just down the street from the white house. Now, during the civil war, genuinefield scott did suggest the possibility of adding a tunnel between the white house and the Treasury Building. And here is the Treasury Building down at the bottom and up at the top you have the war department. At that point it would have been probably war. You would have navy and state using that space as well. But the Treasury Department was to the east of the white house. And the idea was that this could sort of be a citadel of sorts. If the Confederate Army invaded washington and, you know, they didnt want president lincoln to be captured that they could move him quickly to the Treasury Building. He could seek safety in one of the vaults and that essentially the people that were guarding him would have to fight to the death. Now, this was an idea that Winfield Scott had never really materialized because it didnt lincoln didnt have to, but here is a picture of the Treasury Building later. Again, you kind of get a sense of this imposing spectacle that this would have been a good place that if you were going to move to a fortresslike structure in the 19th century, this was a good place to do it. Now, during Franklin Roosevelts administration, there actually is an underground tunnel built between the east wing and the Treasury Building. In fact, they go so far as to furnish a room in the Treasury Building for franklin roosevelt. Here is a picture of that room. So this is where we start to see the presidency entering that new age of world wars and then the cold war and that president ial security obviously changes, but they need to have either structures in place to protect the president in the event of a media attack or in case there is a chance that there could be an aerial bombing or later a Nuclear Weapon targeting the white house and the United States that the president has a place to go. Now, during the truman administration, thats when two subbasements are added beneath the ground floor of the white house. So, up to the true mans time in the white house, there really wasnt central airconditioning, there wasnt central heating. This is a big part of the 1948 to 52 renovation was modernizing the white house. They essentially gut it. They rebuild it, change some things here and there, but its pretty much made out of concrete and steel. But what they also do is they dig further underground. And part of the reason they do that is because they need that space for things like utilities, airconditioning, electrical, plumbing, but also to add this walkway which now runs the length between the west wing and the east wing. Here is a finished version. And now this tunnel will actually go all the way to the east wing and it hooks up with Franklin Roosevelts bomb shelter. Roosevelt had that tunnel built for access to the Treasury Department, but remember he also has the east wing built in 1942. And thats the perfect time if youre building a structure to be also building something underneath it. So he actually has a bomb shelter made beneath the east wing. He doesnt have to get to the Treasury Building. And truman now connects it between the west wing and that secure complex. So if the president is working in the west wing in the oval office, they have a quick way to get to the bomb shelter. And you probably actually all seen it before, this is actually part of the president ial Emergency Operations center that was used on 9 11 by Vice President dick cheney and several members of the bush cabinet because remember for some time we werent quite sure where that last plane was heading towards. It certainly seemed like when it turned in pennsylvania it was coming to washington. Was it going to the capitol . Was it going to the white house . We dont know because the passengers on that flight decided to try to take control of the plane and it crashed. But essentially what they did was they rushed white house staff and members of the administration down into the Emergency Operations center. President bush was actually away. He was visiting a school in florida at the time and advised him to stay away from washington, d. C. Until they figured out what was going to happen with the last plane. But for the members of the administration, there wasnt really any type of real protocol for this type of scenario. Everybody that ive talked to or has talked about that experience essentially has told that secret service came in and told people to get out and to get to a secure location and get away from the white house because we dont know where this plane is. So, and this is actually an image of that day. You can see things do look a little bit outdated. And this was also then spurred a new effort to modernize and put in new technology and Communication Systems in the president ial Emergency Operations center. Myth number three, Dolly Madison saves the Gilbert Stewart portrait. So, we had to read a selection of sources for todays class and hopefully you did that. Now, who wants to you probably all heard the story before. You probably heard it in grade school and high school. So, who wants to just tell us what youve heard. Alex . British were coming in and they were burning down washington, d. C. Dolly madison runs back into the white house with a few people, takes down the Gilbert Stewart portrait and runs out to save it. Okay. In that version of events Dolly Madison is its like a lastsecond thing. Shes there. The british are essentially you can see the british on the horizon. Shes about to leave but she runs back in. At least you did acknowledge that there were other people there. But that she was there when they took it off and they sent it away. Right. Now, part of the reason why this story is so popular is because, you know, this was the story that was really put out there after the war of 1812 and Dolly Madison also played a part in keeping this story alive and well, but it was picked up for Childrens School books, it was published in a variety of different store graphical works and it was a story that kept getting perpetuated. Well talk a little more about that as we dig into the sources. Source number one, these were the selected letters of dolly payne madison. And its anna cutz writing to her sister Dolly Madison, circa 23rd, 1813. The burning takes place on the 24th. Ill put it up on the screen. So, my sister tell me for god sake where you ar