The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1897-03-30
THE WHITE HOUSE.
ARRANGEMENT OF THE OFFICIAL
QUARTERS OF THE EXECUTIVE.

aSENR 6thS VI tht6 EfN6SO Nv
Views From the Windows of the East
Room-The Hall of the Disappointed"
Telephone Is Almost the Only Modern
Improvement In the Building.
Mr.. G. G. Buel writes paper for The
Century on "Our Fellow Citizen Of the
White House, devoted to the official
cares and duties of the president, in the
course of which he says:
At 10 O'Clock hardly discernible sign
against the glass of the barrier an
nounces to the citizen who has arrived
under the grand portal that the execu-
tive mansion is 'open' to visitors. At
2 o'clock the sign is changed to "clos-
ed. F" The doorkeepers swing the doors
open to everybody Within the large
vestibule nothing is seen which indi-
Gates the arrangement and purposes of
the different parts of the mansion. 1t
was not always so, for originally the
now concealed corridor, or middle hall,
with the staircase ON the right, was a
part of the entrance hall Now the
spaces between the middle columns are
closed with colored glass partitions, and
the vestibule is simply large, square
room pleasant to get out Of
No way appears to open to the state
apartments in the center or to the west
wing, which is devoted to the private
apartments. Yet glass doors are there,
though as imperceptible to the stranger
as swinging panel. To the left there
is door which is always Open 1t adj
mits to small hall, across which sim
liar door is the side entrance to the
great east room. About this splendid
room, comprising the whole east end of
the mansion, the visitor may wander at
will before the portraits or enjoy from
the windows the beauty of the treasury
building to the east or the impressive
landscape to the south, including the
towering shaft of the Washington mon
ument and beyond the ever charming
Potomac, spreading with charging
curves toward Mount Vernon, and in
the private garden under the windows
he may chance to see merry band Of
little ones.
From the small hall between the YES
tibule and the east room stairway as
cends toward the medal line of the
building to wide middle hall, ON each
side of which are the offices of the pres
ident The arrangement is simple, and
in the floor plan covers the space occu-
pied below by the east room and the
green room. the latter being the coun-
terpart of the small hall with the public
stairway just mentioned At the head
OF these stairs, over the green room, is
the cabinet room, which is the first
apartment in the south side of the hall,
jog of two steps, at the private door
into the presidents room, marking the
raised ceiling of the east room below.
The president reaches his office through
the cabinet room, entering the latter
from the library, which corresponds on
the second floor with the blue room of
the state apartments. President Arthur
indeed used the library as his office and
the cabinet chamber for an anteroom,
while his private secretary was domi-
ciled in the traditional office of the pres
ident. During his first term Mr.. Cleve-
land preserved the same arrangement.
But General Harrison went back to the
office hallowed by Lincoln's occupancy,
and Mr.. Cleveland, ON his return, found
the arrangement so satisfactory that he
continued it.
Beyond the presidents large, square
office is the corner room where Private
Secretary Thurber is always either
wrestling with the details of executive
business or standing with his shoulder
braced against the crowd struggling to
see the president. 1t is narrow apart
ment and might be called appropriately
the "hall of the disappointed, . the sug-
gestion being emphasized by portraits
Of the greatest of presidential aspirants,
Clay and Webster, to which Mr.. Thurber
added, as his private property, an en-
craving of the closest contestant for the
Office, Governor Tilden
On the north side of the hall there
are two rooms which correspond to those
on the south side just described, the
small one being occupied by Mr. o. L.
Pruden, the assistant secretary since Gen
eral Grants time and the custodian of
the office books as well as of the tradi-
tons which govern the public social
routine of the executive mansion. In
his room sits the telegraph clerk at his
instrument, and by the window is tel
ephone, which saves a great amount of
messenger service between the president
and the departments Occasionally
congressman, with less ceremony than
discretion, attempts to get an appoint
ment with the ear of the president over
the telephone, and there is record of
stage earthquake produced in the private
secretary's room by furious congress-
man who found the telephone ineffect-
i've and his Olympian style even less
so. Notwithstanding that it is almost
the sole modern improvement in the
White House, President Cleveland was
seen at the telephone but once, and then,
needless to say, not ON call.