When it came time for Michael S. Smith to redecorate the White House for the Obama family, he turned to the building's rich past. “To understand the context, I read every letter and note from Abigail Adams, Jacqueline Kennedy, Sister Parish, Stéphane Boudin, Kaki Hockersmith—anyone who had ever contributed to the history of this building,” Smith says. That immersion process extended to phone calls with Nancy Reagan and a lunch with Lee Radziwill, Mrs. Kennedy’s sister. Here, we take a look at some of the residence's more private spaces throughout the years—rooms you won't see on the official tour.
Circa 1890: The Treaty Room, then known as the Cabinet Room.
1940: President Herbert Hoover and his wife turned what had been the Cabinet Room into the Monroe Room, furnished in a manner meant to evoke the days of President James Monroe. The photograph shows the room as it was during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration.
1960: The Monroe Room, the year before John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, moved into the White House.
1962: The newly christened Treaty Room, as decorated in High Victorian style by Stéphane Boudin for the Kennedys. The room’s centerpiece, now as then, is an 1869 Pottier & Stymus table that Ulysses Grant used as his cabinet table; several treaties have been signed at the table, including the peace treaty that ended the Spanish-American War and the 1963 test ban treaty.
2003: The Treaty Room, redecorated as George W. Bush’s private office by Fort Worth, Texas, interior designer Kenneth Blasingame.
1928: The White House’s rooftop solarium, located over the South Portico, has roots in a sleeping porch created by William Howard Taft. It was remodeled in the 1920s for Calvin Coolidge, whose wife furnished the space with modest wicker seating and called it the Sky Parlor.
1948: The Solarium during Harry Truman’s first term, by which time the wood floor was covered with checkerboard-pattern linoleum.
1974: Richard M. Nixon in the flower-pattern Solarium with his daughter Tricia and dog Vicky.
1981: Nancy and Ronald Reagan in the Solarium, which had been decorated by Ted Graber with a geranium-pattern fabric and Audubon bird prints.
1962: President and Mrs. Kennedy had separate bedrooms, and Sister Parish was brought in to decorate both spaces. Jackie Kennedy’s room featured a silk-screened daisy-pattern fabric by Tillett that was used for the curtains and the headboard.
1974: The Fords shared the master bedroom and brought in furniture from their previous house; the padded headboard, though, was Mamie Eisenhower’s.
1980s: When Nancy and Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, they hired California interior designer Ted Graber to make over the private quarters. A custom-made Gracie wallpaper patterned with flying birds was installed in the bedroom.
Typically, the Yellow Oval Room has been used as a private sitting room or, since the 1960s, as a formal living room where the president and first lady can entertain distinguished guests in more intimate surroundings. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower, though, used it as a study, and other presidents used it as a library. Dolley Madison was the first White House hostess to decorate the room in yellow, lining the walls in golden damask.
Circa 1900: The Yellow Oval Room, crowded and Victorian, as it was before Edith and Theodore Roosevelt had the White House classicized in 1902 by the architecture firm McKim, Mead & White. The Roosevelts used the Yellow Oval Room as a sitting room.
1966: Jacqueline Kennedy transformed the Yellow Oval Room into an airy French-style salon with a design that combined ideas from both Sister Parish and Stéphane Boudin as well as Louis XVI furniture of the sort that Thomas Jefferson favored. This photograph shows the room during the Johnson administration, with much of the Kennedy decor left intact.
Circa 2008: The Yellow Oval Room during the George W. Bush administration.
Once used as President and Mrs. McKinley’s bedroom, the space was turned into a private dining room by Jacqueline Kennedy.
Circa 1900: The room used as the McKinleys’ bedroom.
1963: The Family Dining Room, with its Sister Parish decor, during the Kennedy administration. The walls are hung with a 1960 reproduction of an 1830s Zuber wallpaper depicting scenes from the American Revolution. The chairs are Federal style.
1971: Pat Nixon and White House curator Clement Conger left the room’s Kennedy decor largely alone, though they replaced the chandelier and also installed a 19th-century-style floor covering that the museum-minded curator felt was more appropriately historic in feeling. Betty Ford would have the battle-scene paper removed because she thought the theme was too violent to look at during meals.
Circa 1999: The Family Dining Room, as decorated for Bill and Hillary Clinton by Arkansas designer Kaki Hockersmith. She covered the walls with pale green silk and brought in lively floral upholstery.
2007: The Family Dining Room as redesigned by Kenneth Blasingame, Laura and George W. Bush’s longtime decorator. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 hangs over the pier table.