THIS OLD HOUSE

	November 1, 2000
	Betty Ann Bowser reports on the 200th anniversary of the White House.

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, the 200th Anniversary of the White House. Betty Ann Bowser reports. BETTY ANN BOWSER: There was great fanfare today as the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the White House kicked off, but 200 years ago when John Adams became the first President to take up residence, things weren't so polished. Adams was portrayed in a reenactment where historian David McCullough described what it was like at the White House back then. DAVID McCULLOUGH: The first President to move into what was then known as the President's House, John Adams of Quincy, Massachusetts, arrived here at this entrance at mid-day, Saturday, November 1, 1800, at just about this time. Very little looked as we now see it. The new federal city of Washington was no city at all. The Capitol was only half finished. Except for a few nondescript stores and hotels in the vicinity of the Capitol, the rest was mostly tree stumps and swamp. The House itself was still quite unfinished. Fires had to be kept burning in all the fireplaces to help dry out the wet plaster. Only a few rooms were ready. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Conditions in the House were so primitive that the First Lady, Abigail Adams, had to use the East Room to hang and dry laundry. DAVID McCULLOUGH: There were men and women in that day and their time who would have refused to live in the White House in the condition it was in. But they made do without complaint. BETTY ANN BOWSER: But future Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison made the White House more comfortable. An indoor cooking stove was added, rooms were finished, furniture was laid out. Then, during the war of 1812, British troops invaded and burned most of downtown Washington, as President Madison and his family fled to the countryside of Virginia, leaving dinner behind on a table. White House historian William Seale: WILLIAM SEALE: And the officers sat down in the dining room and ate the dinner that had been prepared that no one ate. And they were allowed to take trifling souvenirs. Of course, the commander said he took a pillow so he could-- from her chair, so he could remember Mrs. Madison's seat. The newspapers thought that was the worst thing anyone had ever said. The House was burned. It wasn't an act of vandalism. They didn't kick it around and throw matches on the floor. They broke out the windows and they piled the furniture up in the room and mattresses and poured lamp oil on all of it and stood around the House with flaming javelins and a pistol was fired and they threw the javelins in through the open windows and the House blew up all at once. BETTY ANN BOWSER: By the next morning, all that was left of the White House was a shell. But First Lady Dolly Madison had saved one important item, this Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. Today it hangs in the East Room at the White House as the oldest artifact. It took three years to rebuild the White House after the fire. In 1824, President James Monroe had the south portico constructed. Six years later, President Andrew Jackson built the north portico. In 1902, President Teddy Roosevelt ordered extensive renovations. The executive office building, later known as the West Wing, was added. A few years later it was doubled in size and the Oval Office was constructed. But by the 1940's, the interior structure of the White House had become dangerously obsolete, so President Harry Truman ordered a complete reconstruction, including a second-floor porch on the south side of the building that some purists didn't like. WILLIAM SEALE: It was an old House at that time, over a hundred years old, with a lot of problems of an old House, with a lot of wood in it, and the danger from security and fire and all that. President Truman boiled the problems of the White House down to two things, and he came up with this: One, that the President should stay there, because its an old and symbolic place; and number two, it has to have the credibility of being a real relic. So he preserved the stone walls that George Washington had ordered built and he simply emptied the vessel. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Throughout the years, the White House has remained the only official residence of a head of state open to the public free of charge. Each year a million and a half people come through, along with every important foreign dignitary who arrives in the United States. In 1979, one of the most famous handshakes in history took place at the House. Presidential children have become husbands and wives in the White House, and a first lady made the White House come alive in American living rooms. One President resigned inside its walls. PRESIDENT NIXON: Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in at President at that hour in this office. BETTY ANN BOWSER: And on more than one occasion, the nation has mourned a fallen leader inside the White House. But historian Seale says most important is what the White House symbolizes for Americans today. WILLIAM SEALE: Well, the symbol, the symbolic continuity of the system, to me, is the most important thing of all; the fact that that House has been there and has experienced or reflected everything practically in American history, and the greatest people through history, and it's still there, and it will have a tomorrow, and it will new people in there. And it will change and yet stay the same, reflecting that continuity. To me, that is the most important single thing about the White House. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The White House birthday celebration will run through the month of November.