Located across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, it is a complex of four formerly separate houses: the Blair House, Lee House, Peter Parker House, and 704 Jackson Place. Major interior renovations of these 19th-century residences between the 1950s and 1980s led to their consolidation. Blair House is one of several residences owned by the United States government for use by the President and Vice President of the United States; other such residences include the White House, Camp David, One Observatory Circle, the Presidential Townhouse, and Trowbridge House.

President Harry S. Truman and his family lived in the original Blair House from 1948 to 1952 during the renovation of the White House. Truman survived an assassination attempt there in 1950.

Strictly speaking, Blair House refers to one of the four existing structures that have been consolidated into a single building. The U.S. Department of State typically uses the name Blair House to refer to the entire facility, saying, “Blair House is the building officially known as the President’s guest house.” The General Services Administration refers to the entire facility as the “Presidential Guest House” and uses the name Blair House to refer to the historic portion of the Blair House building.

History

The Blair House was built in 1824; it is the oldest of the four structures that make up the Presidential Guest House. The original brick house was built as a private home for Joseph Lovell, the eighth Surgeon General of the U.S. Army. It was purchased in 1836 by Francis Preston Blair, a newspaper publisher and influential advisor to President Andrew Jackson, and remained in his family for the next century.

Francis Blair’s son Montgomery Blair, who had served as postmaster general in Abraham Lincoln’s administration, succeeded his father as a resident of the Blair House. At a meeting at Blair House on April 18, 1861, Francis Preston Blair Sr. delivered Abraham Lincoln’s offer the previous day to Robert E. Lee to command all Union forces in the approaching American Civil War. Later that year, the local conference decided that Admiral David Farragut would command the assault on New Orleans.

In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior erected a landmark at Blair House, becoming the first building to receive federally recognized landmark status; earlier landmarks were monuments and historic sites other than buildings. In 1973, it would be officially recognized as a National Historic Landmark.

Beginning in 1942, the Blair family began leasing the property to the U.S. government for use by dignitaries; the government immediately purchased the property the following December. The move was prompted in part by a request from Eleanor Roosevelt, who found the careless familiarity that Winston Churchill displayed during his visits to the White House repulsive. Churchill once tried to break into Franklin Roosevelt’s private suite at 3 a.m. to wake the president for a conversation.

For most of Harry Truman’s presidency, from 1948 to 1952, Blair House served as the residence of President Harry S. Truman and his family while the interior of the White House was being renovated. On November 1, 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempted to assassinate President Truman at Blair House. The assassination was thwarted, notably by White House policeman Leslie Coffelt, who killed Torresola but was mortally wounded by him.

In 1859, Francis Preston Blair built a house next to the Blair House for his daughter Elizabeth Blair Lee and son-in-law Samuel Phillips Lee. The property became known as the Lee House.

The Peter Parker House, located at 700 Jackson Place, and the neighboring house at 704 Jackson Place were built in 1860. The Peter Parker House is so named because it was originally the home of physician Peter Parker. The U.S. government acquired both properties between 1969 and 1970, leasing them for offices. The Peter Parker House formerly served as the headquarters of the Civil War Centennial Commission and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and, like the Blair House, is a National Historic Landmark.

The post Blair House appeared first on Home-InHard.

The house is an example of the early use of industrial materials in home design, such as glass and steel. Johnson lived there for 58 years with his longtime companion David Whitney, an art historian and curator who helped design the landscaping and mostly held art exhibitions there.

The house has a rectangular shape. It is constructed of glass and metal. The transparent glass walls are attached to a metal frame painted black. The floor of the building is slightly elevated above the surrounding ground. Inside, the house is not divided into rooms and presents a single space, separated only by pieces of furniture. A cylindrical room made of brick is built into the house, in which the bathroom is located.

The building is 17 meters long, 9.8 meters wide and 3.2 meters high.

In addition to the Glass House, there are 10 structures on the site designed by Philip Johnson at various periods in his career.

The house was not used for permanent residence. For many years, Johnson used the house for weekend vacations. Although the house has transparent walls, the occupants are not in full view of passersby due to the large size of the land around the house.

In 2005, Johnson passed away at the age of 98. The house was bequeathed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Since 2007, the house has hosted tours for visitors.

The post Glass house appeared first on Home-InHard.

History

The white-colored T-shaped house was built by the couple J. M. Coffman in 1919. Dr. Isaac M. Howard and his wife Esther Irvin Howard purchased the house almost immediately after it was built. Their son Robert Howard was a teenager when he moved in. The back porch and bathroom were built by Isaac Howard. Robert Howard committed suicide in a car on the highway near the house. His father sold the house to Nancy Elizabeth Grisham in 1944.

The building was purchased by Project Pride, a local non-profit organization. The organization restored the house to match the period of the home’s first owners. After the 1994 tornado, Project Pride repaired damaged areas of the house. In addition, Project Pride built a pavilion addition to facilitate visitor activities. That same year, Project Pride added the house museum as an official Cross Plains historic property.

The Robert E. Howard Press Association, an amateur organization, and the nonprofit Robert H. Howard Foundation sponsor an annual event held in June to celebrate Robert Howard’s birthday and preserve his legacy. During the June exhibit, the local library extends its hours of operation so that visitors can become more familiar with Howard’s work and materials about him.

Museum hours are by appointment only, except for the annual June event.

The post The Robert Irwin Howard Museum appeared first on Home-InHard.

Residents of Georgia, especially Savannah, began vacationing in Bullochville in the late eighteenth century to escape yellow fever; they were also attracted by the number of warm springs in the vicinity. In the late nineteenth century, traveling to the warm springs was a coveted way to escape Atlanta. Traveling by rail to Durand, people would go to Bullochville. One place that benefited from this was the Meriwether Hotel. Once the automobile became popular in the early twentieth century, tourists began traveling to other places, which led to the decline of the inn.

In 1921, the 39-year-old Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio. The president’s pain was relieved by immersion in warm water, bathing, and exercise. He first traveled to Warm Springs in October 1924. He arrived at a resort in town that had a permanent 31 °C natural spring, but the main house was described as “dilapidated”. Roosevelt bought the resort and an adjacent 1,700-acre (6.9 km²) farm in 1927 (the resort became known as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Rehabilitation Institute). Five years later, in 1932, after his first presidential election victory, he ordered a six-room pine house built on the property. This house was his refuge throughout his presidency and became known as the Little White House. He made a total of 16 trips during his presidency, usually spending two to three weeks each, as the train trip from Washington, D.C. to Warm Springs took a day.

The Little White House was a six-room Colonial Revival-style structure made of pine. Three of the rooms were bedrooms: one for Roosevelt, one for his wife Eleanor, and one for his private secretary. The other rooms were the hallway, living room, and kitchen. Access to the Little White House was via a dirt road, which is now only partially preserved. A servants’ quarters was built in 1932, followed by a one-story frame cottage that served as a guest house in 1933, and finally Georgia Wilkins’ cottage in 1934. The Wilkins family were the original owners of the property. Roosevelt used the Little White House as a base to replace Georgia politicians who refused to follow his policies. This was especially evident in 1938 when Roosevelt tried to replace U.S. Senator Walter George with a Roosevelt supporter, but failed, even though they were both Democrats.

World War II affected Roosevelt’s time in the Little White House. The only year he did not go to the Little White House was 1942, as he was preoccupied with the beginning of U.S. involvement in the war. It is believed that he vacationed as much as he did from 1943-1945 in the Little White House because his real hobby, sailing the Atlantic, was too dangerous during the war, even if it was only on inland waterways such as the Chesapeake Bay or Potomac Rivers. One important change was that soldiers from Fort Benning were stationed at Little White House to patrol the forests surrounding the farm. Roosevelt’s last trip to the Little White House was on March 30, 1945. He felt he was not getting enough rest at his Hyde Park home. According to some Warm Springs observers, Roosevelt looked “awful.” Unlike his previous visits, he avoided going to the swimming pool, which he had used to soothe himself on previous trips. On April 12, 1945, he was posing for a portrait in the Little White House when he suffered a stroke. Roosevelt died two hours later from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Most of Roosevelt’s property was bequeathed to the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, which gained control of all of the properties in 1948, except for Georgia Wilkins Cottage, where Wilkins lived until her death in 1959. Both John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 used the property for their presidential campaigns.

The post The Little White House appeared first on Home-InHard.

In the premises of the old house was first a private school, and then a profit house. However, a group of local enthusiasts, who realized the cultural value of the building, decided to preserve the house for future generations.

In 1929, the Mark Twain Memorial Society and the Connecticut Library Commission purchased the old house and subsequently undertook extensive restoration work. With the help of local residents, the new owners of the building restored the interior of the famous writer’s home as accurately as possible.

For quite a long time, a large number of personal belongings of Mark Twain, archival materials, as well as furniture that was once in the house of the famous writer were collected. This made it possible to officially open the Mark Twain House-Museum in 1981.

It should be noted that the museum exposition, which has more than ten thousand exhibits, is replenished with new copies and nowadays. Visitors can see within the walls of this cultural institution a lot of interesting things, among them a three-ton machine with the name “Paige typesetter”, which once bankrupted Twain’s company.

In the house-museum you can see a billiard table, where the great writer liked to play in his free time, as well as a large collection of dishes produced by the company “Tiffany”. The beautiful wooden bed, which was located in the writer’s bedroom, also attracts visitors’ interest.

But, of course, the most fascinating part of the museum is Mark Twain’s library, where you can see his manuscripts, personal photos, as well as rare books that belonged to the writer. There is a tradition that businessmen and representatives of various non-profit organizations often meet for business meetings within the walls of this amazing institution.

The post Mark Twain House Museum in Hartford appeared first on Home-InHard.

Perhaps this feeling is due to the main current “tenants” of the mansion – cats, which only by rough estimates live here about 50. Cats were the favorite animals of the great writer, when he was alive, he kept in his mansion about 80 cats. Reportedly, the initiator of the purchase of the mansion was the writer’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn. Subsequently, Hemingway liked the house so much that for the last 20 years of his life he never wanted to change his home again.

Some of the most valuable exhibits of the museum are hunting trophies, which the writer brought from Africa, and in the library among 9,000 books you can find many unique editions and manuscripts. The museum was opened in 1962, and the atmosphere in it corresponds as much as possible to that which reigned here during the life of the owners. Recently, the mansion, which once belonged to the great writer, is available for wedding ceremonies. The Marina Hemingway Hotel was opened near the mansion especially for numerous tourists.

The post Ernest Hemingway House Museum appeared first on Home-InHard.

The house was modern, built in 1832, quite usual for rich people of that time. 5 stories, including a basement and attic. Treadwell had a family, a wife and 8 children, in addition, the couple kept 4 maids at all times.

The back entrance was used by the servants to pass through to the kitchen, to carry water, firewood, and ice. From here they went out to the courtyard, which was used mainly for household needs, such as bleaching linen. There was no garden as there is now; the family’s aesthetic needs for flowers were met in the summer by going to another house in New Jersey.

This is the only house museum in Manhattan that was left as it was under the owners, changing almost nothing.

Mostly reflecting the atmosphere of how the house looked before 1850, when renovations were made and furniture was rearranged. The founder of the museum tried so hard that furniture bought after 1850 was taken and sold. However, in the aftermath, the furniture returned, similar to the furniture that was sold. In particular, the Rococo sofa and chairs, pictured below, returned to the living room.

The drawing room was divided into two halves, with the front receiving guests and the back hosting family gatherings. There were 2 Greek style columns in the center of the room, and there was also a sliding door that opened for large parties. If there was a dance, the furniture was moved around. Sometimes it was moved out into the hallway, such as during a ball.

On the second floor are the matrimonial bedrooms. Traditionally, the bedrooms were separate. They also served as rooms for changing clothes, including for guests when necessary. Dinners could be eaten here and close relatives could be received here. In addition, bedrooms were used for bathing, childbirth, and caring for newborns. It was bad form to go outside for the first month after childbirth. It was customary to keep cribs in the women’s bedrooms for sick children. In Eliza’s bedroom stands one such baby bed.

If a person died, they said goodbye in the bedroom. On a bed in his bedroom in 1865, Seabury Treadwell passed away. He lived 85 years and died of kidney failure.

There was no water faucet or toilet until 1850. The toilet was disguised as a chest.

The basement floor had an advantage during the winter. The low ceiling on the floor helped keep the heat in and there was a kitchen there, which provided warmth. On the floor was the “family” room where meals were eaten. After dinner, the table was cleaned up and the children played. It was also a tradition in the Treadwell family to gather in this room and read aloud, read by the father.

Although Treadwell could have bought a cast iron stove when they bought the house, the family preferred to use the old “fireplace” stove. It was believed that bread was much tastier in it than in a cast iron oven.

Also, the house has a collection of personal belongings and clothing, there are children’s bedrooms on the 4th floor, and a servant lived in the attic. Interestingly, the family favored maids from Ireland, the maids changed constantly, but were always Irish.

In 1933, the last resident of the house died. Her cousin decided to turn the house into a museum. The museum opened its doors in 1936.

The post Merchant’s House Museum New York appeared first on Home-InHard.

History

In 1963, University President Douglas Knight commissioned Alden B. Dow to design the official residence. The modernist-style building was completed in 1966. The landscape design was by Dick Bell, who also designed Pullen Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. The house was named after Douglas Knight, who was president during the construction of the house and was the first president of the university to live in it. University presidents Terry Sanford and Nunnery O. Keohane also lived in Knight House. Knight House is 10,655 square feet and cost $379,971 to build. The house is a low house with ribbed copper roofs. The interior cladding of the house is made of bald cypress.

Located along Academy Road and Pinecrest Road, near the Duke Golf Course, the house covers an area of 436 acres in Duke Forest, near the West Campus of Duke University. It served as the official residence for university presidents from 1966 until 2004, when the original official residence, J. Deryl Hart House, was renovated for Richard H. Brodhead. The house is now used by the university as a guest house, conference room, and event space.

On April 6, 1968, a week-long silent demonstration began at Duke University, following the assassination of Martin Luther King. 450 students marched two miles from campus to Knight House to hand Douglas a list of demands. Knight is in favor of restructuring Duke University to make the institution less threatening to African-American students and staff. Demands included that Knight publish an ad in the Durham Morning Herald calling for a day of mourning for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that he raise the minimum wage to $1.60 for university employees, and that he resign from the then-segregated Hope Valley Country Club. The students also demanded that Knight appoint a committee of students, faculty, and staff to make recommendations on collective bargaining and union recognition at Duke. Knight hosted the students during the protest and invited them to his home, spending the night discussing the terms of their demands.

On September 15, 2012, the house was featured in Modernism in Duke Forest, a tour of six modernist houses in the Duke Forest neighborhood organized by Triangle Modernist Houses and the Durham Preservation Society.

The post Douglas M. and Grace Knight House appeared first on Home-InHard.

On November 9, 1879, a fire destroyed the previous Henry County Courthouse. Within three months, the county secured approval from the Ohio General Assembly to issue bonds to pay for the construction of a new courthouse, sheriff’s house, and jail. The jail side of the resulting brick building, designed to be fireproof, was built to separate male inmates from female inmates and young inmates from older inmates. Its twelve iron cells are connected by sixty-foot-long concrete-floored corridors. A report prepared by the state board of humanities in 1913 noted that the building was equipped with electricity, hot and cold running water; it was the responsibility of the sheriff to maintain the jail and provide its inmates with food. Some prisoners in Henry County were housed separately: many smaller jails, with a capacity of one to four cells, were maintained by villages in the county.

In the 1980s, the sheriff’s house and jail retained a high degree of integrity; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 24, 1981, in recognition of its architectural significance. In the late 1980s, the building changed its purpose: by then, rising crime rates had led to overcrowding in many jails in northwest Ohio. In early 1989, officials from five northwestern Ohio counties and the city of Toledo agreed to create a single regional jail complex. As Henry County was part of this consortium, the 1882 building was no longer used for incarceration purposes; instead, it was converted into offices for the sheriff’s department, a call center for the county’s 9-1-1 system, and office space for other county agencies. Today, the jail remains the location of the sheriff’s office.

The post Henry County Sheriff’s Residence and Jail appeared first on Home-InHard.

The Beehive House was built in 1854, two years before the neighboring Lion House (also Young’s residence) was built. Both houses are located one block east of the Salt Lake Temple and Temple Square on South Temple Street in Salt Lake City, Utah. The home was designed by Young’s son-in-law and Salt Lake Temple architect Truman O. Angell, who also designed the Lion’s Home. It was built of adobe and sandstone.

Young was a polygamist and the Beehive House was designed to accommodate his large family. The Beehive House also became his official residence as governor of the Utah Territory and president of the Latter-day Saint Church. After its completion, Young briefly shared the Beehive House with his eldest (and only legally recognized) wife, Mary Ann Angell (1803-1882), although she chose to make her home in the White House, a smaller residence on the property. Young’s first polygamous wife, Lucy Ann Decker Young (1822-1890), perhaps because of her seniority, became mistress of the Hive House and lived there with her nine children.

Beehive House served as the executive mansion of the Utah Territory from 1852 to 1855, and here Young entertained guests. The house is connected by a set of rooms to the Lion House. This suite included Young’s offices and his private bedroom, where he died in 1877.

Private use after Young’s death

After Young’s death, there was much controversy and litigation between Young’s heirs over what was Young’s property and what was the property of the church. Beehive House was among the objects in dispute; although eventually ownership was transferred to Young’s heirs. Beehive House was replaced as the executive mansion by the much more stately Gardeau House, which was briefly occupied by Young’s religious successors, John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff.

Beginning in the late 1880s, Young’s son, John W. Young, added a large Victorian-style addition to the rear of the building and significantly remodeled the old part of the house. The Young family lost the house when it was sold at auction in 1893 to pay off John W. Young’s debts.

John Beck, a successful miner and businessman, lived in the house for a short time before it was also sold to satisfy his creditors. It was later purchased by the Church and used as the official home of Church presidents Lorenzo Snow and his successor Joseph F. Smith, both of whom died in the mansion. Smith, who died in 1918, was the last president of the church to practice polygamy at the time of his death and shared the residence with his four wives.

The post Beehive house appeared first on Home-InHard.