As Fretful Porpentine alluded to, for a long time the attitude of the restaurant industry and Americans in general was that fine dining was synonymous with French haute cuisine. Everybody “knew” that French food was the “fanciest”, and that the best chefs trained in France. IIRC it was around the 1980s or so some chefs started to branch out and embrace the idea that other styles of cooking could be fancy, too, which would align with the Clintons being the first to serve other styles of food in the early 1990s.
Sometimes private donors pay for White House items. For example Reagan ordered new China but it was paid for by donors.
And it’s not just the White House, a lot of state Executive Mansions may have been posh, though not quite palatial, c. 1900, but are nothing to write home about in 2020 terms.
Then again, there have always been far richer people around than the Presidents. Pretty sure that in the mid 1800s a few Plantation manors would have humbled the Polk WH and later that century there were Guilded Age barons far better appointed than Pres. Cleveland. Used to be that the point was to portray (small-r) “republican values” by being elegant and socially presentable but not ostentatious.
(Consider, the POTUS is a public official at a $400K/year income level, not that high up by corporate CEO standards, and not all of them are at or above that income point when they get there.)
Oh, BTW **Velocity **the VP’s official residence is not at Blair House, it’s at the Naval Observatory. Blair House is the WH’s guest house.
But still, I would genuinely like to know if there was a particular rationale in using the Obamas (a family who moved to the White House from what I understand was quite a nice family home but hardly a luxury estate) and specifically referring to a property they didn’t even own until some time after they left the White House, in a thread about how “its accommodations are actually rather lousy by standards of the rich”. It just seems odd to me that, given the question you posed in the OP, you didn’t mention the self-described billionaire currently living there who has spent his entire life in luxury accommodations and who specifically referred to the White House as a “dump” when he moved in.
Was there any reason for this, or were the Obamas just chosen as a random example?
We’ve been looking at houses and my wife and I love the old ones best. The history in those walls and the craftsmanship reflected in the materials is something you can’t build into a new house at any price. So a 220 year old neoclassical mansion, which is also one of the most well known residences in the western world, the site of nearly ever important executive decision in American history, and designed by a famous architect, is pretty damn luxurious before you even get into the modern amenities it might offer. And you can’t beat the commute.
I knew it was gutted in the forties, but does anyone know the details of how it was rebuilt? Did they keep any of the original trim work? Original windows? Did they plaster it or just hang drywall? I know the forties is before anyone really gave a shit about historical preservation but I’d like to think the White House still holds some tradition that dates to before Harry Truman.
We’ve been looking at houses and my wife and I love the old ones best. The history in those walls and the craftsmanship reflected in the materials is something you can’t build into a new house at any price. So a 220 year old neoclassical mansion, which is also one of the most well known residences in the western world, the site of nearly every important executive decision in American history, and designed by a famous architect, is pretty damn luxurious before you even get into the modern amenities it might offer. And you can’t beat the commute.
I knew it was gutted in the forties, but does anyone know the details of how it was rebuilt? Did they keep any of the original trim work? Original windows? Did they plaster it or just hang drywall? I know the forties is before anyone really gave a shit about historical preservation but I’d like to think the White House still holds some tradition that dates to before Harry Truman.
I can’t speak for the poster, but the Obama’s were the immediate past occupants. The people who lived there most recently before the current president. I wouldn’t call that a ‘random’ selection.
But in the context of the OP’s question it’s not an obvious choice; hence my asking.
I’ve worked in The White House a few times.
Entered into the Center Hall, walked to the East Room for a ceremony. Walked back out the Center Hall through the Portico, across the lawn past the Press stand-up.
Other time I entered the Portico, through the Center Hall and right straight out the back into the Rose Garden, down the walk, turned along the West Wing to that corner of the West Wing past the Oval Office.
My impressions were that the halls were narrow and tight. Impressive? Heck yeah, it’s America’s House. History, etc. First visit was mid-1990’s, second one was roughly 2003.
I was allowed to look through the French Doors into the Oval Office. It’s smaller than I’d imagined !
My wife worked on a job in the kitchen in the basement. President Obama shared the White House Beer with a visitor. ( Not my wife ) She says it was like any modern institutional kitchen.
Well, I think it’s pretty well known that Mar a Lago would beat the White House in luxury, even if in a rather obnoxiously glitzy way. The Obamas and Bushes are more normal presidents.
And as a fan of actual French food, it’s actually not possible to find a good French restaurant anymore, because everyone is afraid that it’s too old-fashioned and stuffy. Obviously I can’t speak for the whole country, but here in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area, there are enough awesome ethnic groups that the lack of French is a bit disappointing.
From what I have seen, the VPs residence at the Naval Observatory is very, very nice. It’s not gilded (which is fine), but it does drip formal taste and money.
In terms of the White House, in addition to the renovations already mentioned, the Kennedys did work, and Nancy Reagan rather infamously did a lot of work. She was criticized for it, but apparently funded most of it with donations rather than public money.
I would say that the difference between the two buildings is that the VP’s house is a home. It’s formal but its primary purpose is a residence. The White House is the people’s home. Its primary purpose is to be a public building. The president’s residence is secondary to that. It’s luxurious, but the living quarters are secondary.
President’s desk is made of wood from a ship , that’s why it’s called the resolute desk after the ship name. Gift from queen Victoria in 1880
The last two New Jersey governor’s mansions have suffered from a lack of living space. Both are in Princeton not Trenton. I’m not sure if we are the only state where the governor has to commute.
Morven is a beautiful Georgian house in Princeton. It’s now a museum. I remember Tom Kean complaining there wasn’t enough room for his kids. Drumthwacket is the current house. I worked a National Guard function there when Corzine was governor. It’s gorgeous but suffers from the same problem, space. The first floor is basically a museum. It’s open for public tours and used for state functions. Only the second floor is the residence. The only recent governor to actually live there full time was Jim McGreevey. Corzine commuted from his luxury condo in Hoboken. Phil Murphy has The House That Goldman Sachs Built in Middletown. I saw some stories about how they wanted to renovate the upstairs and actually live there but that was before the apocalypse.
They gutted it absolutely [see pix] About the only thing left was the outside shell, everything else is new.
Every president can add a personal touch and most of them do (Johnson’s five-way shower, Nixon’s bowling alley, etc.), giving it a freakish Winchester Mystery House quality. I, who live in a tiny dorm room, would take it in a snap, but that’s not the standard we’re going by.
I hear 10 Downing Street is even worse.
Downing street is so bad that quite often the PM lives at number 11 which is officially the chancellor’s residence as its bigger. However they are interlinked. Downing street started as a large London house is now a rabbit warren. The palace of Westminster is totally falling apart and will cost Billions to fix. My wife works for an MP and has to visit, once you get away from the lobby and chambers its a mess, leaks bad wiring. Her boss has a bath in his office though…
California’s Governor’s Mansion went unoccupied for decades, starting with Ronald Regan in the late 1960s. Instead, Regan rented a large house in Sacramento’s “Fabulous Forties”* neighborhood. The state built a new governor’s residence out in the suburbs which was complete around the end of Regan’s term, but Jerry Brown didn’t want to occupy such a large house and instead choose to live in a modest apartment. The state sold the new governor’s residence in the 1980s, and subsequent governors all found their own accommodations, until Jerry Brown (again) moved into the old Governor’s Mansion in 2015.
*If you’ve seen the movie Lady Bird, you’ve seen this neighborhood.
hajario wrote, “The [White House] floor plan is completely different than it was” before the Truman renovation. Not so. The building was gutted and rebuilt, but with largely the same floor plan on the state floors as before.
But I don’t think anyone really minds 10 Downing Street being ‘a dump’ (it’s all relative). The PM isn’t Head of State and as such, 10 Downing Street isn’t there for show.