Cspan audience that is here as well, and everyone watching live online, all 10 of you im sure. [laughter] doug this is a way to bring authors to be mount vernon community, free every month. We try and bring relevant books and important history topics as well. We have a great one for you this evening. Had a longn has relationship with the ford family and ford motor company, going back to henry fords original donation of the fire engine which helps keep the mansion safe. Mount vernon is continually interested in making sure that the mansion is safe from destructive fire, and that is important to us going forward. I would, of course, mention the relationship to forward is crucial. The association that operated the estate has never taken on a government money. We only accept money from private, patriotic people and foundations. That allows us to maintain the house for the public. But it is a continual challenge going forward. An extremelyave exciting speaker, paul brandus, who is going to talk about his wonderful book tonight about the histories of the white house and different stories. He is an awardwinning, independent member of the White House Press corps, he founded west wing reports in 2009. He distributes content for clients around the United States and abroad. He is also a washington correspondent for marketwatch. He moderates panels for the magazine and around the u. S. On the economic crisis. He is a frequent speaker, and he is known recently as an innovator in social media. His twitter account has the biggest following amongst all accredited members of the White House Press corps. He won the shorty award for best journalist on twitter, sponsored by the knight foundation. Followers on his twitter account. When he started west wing reports, it was all the rage, when followed by everyone of note. Its ranked as one of the most influential twitter accounts. I was talking to paul earlier, i set im right on your heels, i have 400 followers on my twitter account. [laughter] doug so watch out. Account became all the rage, no one knew who this was. It was like who is kaiser so say, who is running this massive thing . Its paul brandus, and we are delighted to have him here with a career that spans across network television, wall street, and several years as a Foreign Correspondent in moscow. He covered the collapse of the soviet union for nbc radio and the awardwinning business and Economic Program market place. The travel over 53 countries on five continents, thats more than George Washington did. Boards. Many one factoid to give you is part of the Investment Capital group that purchased the russian bowl, to air the super becoming the first person to show the championship game in russia. Paul i did that by myself. Doug all by himself. I did this at the rubenstein. About his to talk book, he is jumping the gun because i have one more thing to say. [laughter] here in mount vernon, we know the importance of telling stories about houses and the things that go on in them. The white house is, arguably, more wellknown than mount vernon. And many great things have happened there. Nobody brings them to life better than paul brandus. Everyone give him a big mount vernon welcome. Paul thank you. Ok. All right. Ok, thats the well, thank you. One. What an honor to speak at mount vernon. I am thankful. Thank you, doug bradburn, for that introduction. Also, want to thank you to mark st. Angelo. Did he bail . I was in the back room. Mark is the chief librarian here, and also with stephen macleod, a directory of library programs. My thanks and appreciation to all of you. There are lots of books about president s and the events they went through over 240 years. I wanted to add a third layer to that, and that is the white house itself, and how it is changed over the years. My theme is that changes to that building reflects the history of america itself. I will break this down into two areas. Ill give an overview of how the white house expanded. How new technology came in. A coupleare with you of stories which i hope will be new to you. Out by pointing out that we americans like to think , of our country as a Young Country and, in the overall scheme of things, 240 years or so is not that old. When you think about it, the white house is one of the oldest continuous residences for heads of state in the world. I do not know what happened with the numbers. President s have lived in the white house longer than kings and queens in buckingham or longer than emperors have lived in tokyos imperial palace. That of my oldn stomping grounds, moscow. The kremlin, which became the russian capital for the second leninnly in 1918 when moved them back from st. Petersburg. The white house, for Young Country, has quite an old history. Of course, there is one gentleman who never lived there, George Washington. But he picked the winning design tragically,ion, and mr. Washington would die about a year before john adams first moved in. Construction of the white house took eight years. This is what it looked like. This is a wonderful painting by Peter Waddell for the White House Historical association and you can see the basic contours of the building taking shape. This was the south lawn and Roosevelt Island is off in the distance. What a wonderful painting that is. Anyways, the construction took eight years and cost 72 million 232,000, about 72 million today. By the way, the real estate ow today says that it would be 393 million, prime location, 18 acres. I hear the amenities are pretty good too. Theres going to be a new tenant in about a year or so, im not sure who that going to be. There will be a fouryear lease. If we like them, it will be extended for another four years or so. Was adams moved in, it november 1, 1800. This is what it looked like. This is the south lawn. At the time, you notice no north dakota go north portico. It would not be added for another quartercentury. These steps, at the time, it was 1800, these were the principal entrance to the white house. Going back on the south lawn. This is the North Entrance here. That is basically what john adams saw when he moved in and he was quite pleased. On his first full day of the white house, november 2, 1800 he wrote abigail her a letter amounting to a benediction for the building. Its where i got the title for the book. What adam said, was i pray to , heaven the best of blessings on the house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof. Which became the title of the book. 30 president s later, frank and roosevelt was so moved by those words they disappeared for a while. Fdr found the phrase when he came in the white house and the ordered it carved in the mantle above the fireplace. When you go in the state dining room, this is what it looks like, carved by roosevelt. Adams did not last long, losing the election to Thomas Jefferson. When jefferson moved in, being the architect he was, he made some changes, adding pavilions, the east and west wings. Jefferson also was fastidious at the time and the president of the United States could run out to the outhouse. Jefferson was very fast it is a very fast hideous man fastidious man adding the , reservoir the collected the rainwater and it was a big improvement with jefferson also changing the entrance to the side and this became the principal entrance to the white house and a window above the door carved by scottish stonemasons who would waste no opportunity for that. Jefferson also made the extra change with a modern plan and he actually made this into his office. Jeffersons office, this goes back to the northside and this was the office that the state wanted as a dining room. This is the historical association. I will come over here and show you what jefferson did, surrounded by all the books. You may not know that Thomas Jefferson actually had a pet mockingbird up here in the upper right of the painting that he allowed to fly about and he would sometimes feed his bird out of his lips. He had it trained and it would sit on his hand. Just a wonderful painting. The painting also shows jefferson meeting with one of his closest assistants and Meriwether Lewis of lewis and clarke. Lewis was recruited from the area of virginia and he was an officer in the army, offered a chance to come and work. Going back to the floor plan, he let lewis live in the east room and he had partitioned off small rooms and a small working space. So, jefferson and lewis would go all day long and they plotted the crowning jewel of the jefferson administration. Him him him hi that was the louisiana purchase. Lets jump ahead about a decade to dolly madison, who we were talking about earlier. She is a fascinating first lady. A wonderful first lady. Everybody loves dolly madison. She is outgoing and everybody wanted the invitation when the madisons were in town. Not so much because of james. Everybody wanted to meet dolly. She knew how to throw a party with the food and the booze that was top shelf. She served a popular new dish that was always call all the rage called ice cream. A lot of her entertaining took place in the blue room and she had a different color preference. It was red in her day. This is another painting. It went up in flames when the british came to town. Common knowledge that dolly saved what was then and is still now the most famous piece of artwork in the white house, the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. It hangs today in the east room. It is not the average painting, eight feet by five feet, half the size of the screen. It is gigantic. Even though she knew the british coming, she refused to leave until the painting was safe. She said she is not leaving. The president was out in front. A couple of assistance tried to assistants tried to take the painting down. The frame was bolted to the wall. And took a hatchet hacked away at the wall and took the painting down. And it was only then when she left. Truly courageous. I think they named some snack cakes after her a little later on. I hope they get the royalties. There is a story of a president who was nearly killed in the white house on his own inauguration day, andrew jackson. One of the very few photos we have of jackson was taken in 1845, after he left the white house. There was a wild inauguration party, he was sworn in. Jackson was crushed up against a had to pushing through a window and evacuate him to safety. One of the wildest parties at the white house that we know of. These are the early stages of the white house with jefferson adding the bathroom and a change in times with Running Water coming in during jackson and gas lighting during james k. Polk. I will start with him. We do not think about him very often. He was consequential as a president. Probably the most consequential one term president we ever had. More territory was added during his years than any other time. More than the louisiana purchase. And, he was a big believer in technology during the mexicanamerican war. He would keep in touch with his commanders in mexico, using hightech electronics in a wartime setting. President s are criticized for taking too much time off with bush and clinton and obama playing too much golf. I think they deserve a little bit of time off. This guy did not take any time off. He literally took a handful of days off in his entire four years, worked his fingers to the bone, micromanaging everything to a granular degree and he dropped dead a couple of weeks after leaving office. I think all president s, whether riding a horse, playing golf, watching movies, they deserve downtime. We will talk about the movies in a few minutes. James k. Polk was president when the first known picture of the white house was taken. You see there is no balcony on the south. The balcony is known as the truman balcony after harry truman had a long and nasty fight. For most of the history, that is what the south look like. Lets jump ahead with this gentleman. Im sorry that the screen is a little blurry. He needs no introduction. This is a famous photo of lincoln taken. I think this was taken on february 18. This photo has been colorized. Look at this. Abraham lincoln in the flesh, which is just remarkable. If you look at lincoln and you want to pause, he was such a powerful photo and he suffered from depression, the war was stressful. And you can see all of this in his face with a sadness in the eyes. This is two months before his assassination. Lincoln was impressed by the telegraph and he got a coasttocoast telegram and he ordered the federal government to discontinue the usage of the pony express. At the time, it would take eight days to get something to the coast and with the telegraph, it just took a couple of minutes. Lincoln did away with the pony express. It was this technology that helps him manage the civil war. If you have seen the Steven Spielberg movie, lincoln, it is authentic and daniel daylewis spends a lot of time in that room that was adjacent to the white house. The use of the technology was mirrored by president s. Another president we do not think about, rutherford b. Hayes, was a very hightech president and was friends with edison and Alexander Graham bell, inviting them. To come to the white house and display their wares, knowing that the attention this would garner would hope those products kind of speed of their entry into the marketplace. , andew what he was doing the white house got its first telephone. The number of the First White House telephone was 1. That was the number. Not a lot of people could call. There are 23 other phones and who was going to call . There was a phone at the Treasury Department and some private citizen had a phone. There might have been three phones in all of washington, at that time. The president answered the phone himself sometimes. Pretty sure that does not happen. So, let me come back to the second floor and lincoln for a second. I want to tell you about a great misunderstanding about him concerning the socalled lincoln bedroom. You see the arrow there, that is what today this is the current floor plan of the second floor and this is what is today called the lincoln bedroom. Not so. That was his office and he called it the shop. This is what his office look like. It was the nerve center of the lincoln presidency with his cabinet here, his speeches here, he issued the emancipation proclamation everything happening in this room. He had maps on the wall to track the civil war and you can see that window on the left that looks out onto the mall. There is the unfinished washington monument. The government ran out of money. They stopped the construction and we can look the aunt that and at how the war was going to see the Confederate Flag and the campfires of troops. The enemy was often close. Remarkable wartime conditions. The enemy was really just a couple of minutes away. So, that is lincolns office today and it turned into a bedroom by truman and this is what it looks like today with the rosewood had that was purchased by mary lincoln. Lincoln never slept in that bed, by the way. The furniture is authentic. The question is if lincoln did not sleep in the bed or the bedroom, where did he sleep . This is the authentic for plan and he actually slept down here in the southwestern corner where the president s now sleep. Mary lincoln had a separate bedroom and the crush of visitors during the civil war was great. The whole life was confined to just these couple of rooms and he insured his privacy and security with a secret passageway builds that led to a yellow room that they called a library and this was the second floor during his day. It is not just the lincoln bedroom. Lots of room have changed identity and purpose over the years. Here is one more story about how those rooms changed. This is, again, the current second floor and i added the north side of the white house and the second window from the right. That is a private dining room of first familys and, if i come in early, i see the light on and that is a private dining room with a sometimes shadowy wind ow. And mrs. Obama fixes herself a cup of coffee or something. Here is president ford sipping his morning oj. I think this is 1975. Look at the cool tv. Remember those tvs . Here is nancy reagan on the visit to the white house in 2009. The obamas invited her for lunch. This is the private dining room. But, people do not know about this room. It is, today, a private dining room and it actually has a morbid history. William henry harrison, the first president to die in office died in the room. Willie lincoln died in that room in 1862 and lincoln had an assassination, autopsy, and involving emba a lot of creepy things occurred in that room and you wonder, when the president that eating breakfast or having coffee, im sure they are aware that that room is kind of a morbid history and did not become of dining room until the kennedys moved in with jackie kennedy. Not jacquelineis project clean but she jacqueleene. She wanted more privacy for her kids and she converted the room into a private kitchen in 1963 in the last year of the kennedy , presidency. As long as were talking about the kennedys here, prior to this, this was the dining room and i on the second floor and mrs. Kennedy did not like the fact that she was going downstairs to the state floor. It was cumbersome and intrusive. That is where the dining room on the second floor came in. Now, as long as were talking about the kennedys, Everybody Knows about the restoration effort the kennedys made in 1961 and 1962. The mexicans try just as much but never got credit, just to point that out. Nixons tried just as much but never got credit, just to point that out. It is the changes to the west wing that we need to talk about here. We know that, three months into teddys term, he had the worst humiliation with the bay of pigs and, in the aftermath, the president decided he was not getting the information he wanted quickly enough and it was not the right information. He wanted his own set up and he got something called the situation room two weeks later. They moved that to the Old Executive Office building and this is what the first situation looked like in the early 1960s, suburban retro or something, but this is what john f. Ke