Dream House: The White House as an American Home
Dream House: The White House as an American Home is 304 pages of cold comfort for those who think 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is immune to charges of ghastly taste. Ulysses Grant Dietz, the Newark Museum s curator of decorative arts and the president s great-great-grandson, and Sam Watters, an architecture critic, began with the premise that the White House once mirrored national trends and aspirations in domestic design: Jefferson inhabited an Anglo-aristo country estate; Jackson, a genteel villa enshrining democratic values; Franklin Roosevelt, a suburban crib with the design integrity of a midprice hotel chain. The evolution ended with the Kennedys, Mr. Watters said, saving his most withering criticism for Jackie: The idea is that she restored it as it was under the early presidents, he said, when in fact, she restored it to how she thought they should have lived. --The New York Times, October 1, 2009Perhaps the most intriguing chapter is the last, where the authors take on the legend that is Jackie O. As midcentury modernism took off, Jacqueline Kennedy revered the past, embraced antiques and famously redecorated the White House with the zeal of a museum curator. Though her refined taste made her an icon, the authors argue that Kennedy turned the White House into a shrine -- not a living, breathing, evolving home that reflected a changing nation, but rather a locked-in-time fantasy of how the American upper class lives.<...> --The Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2009Great book...The White House is the symbol of the American presidency, its a museum and its a family home, and Dream House covers all of them. --Today Show, December 15, 2009