White House Firsts
John Adams was the first President to reside in the White House, and unsurprisingly the first to complain about living in the White House. When Adams arrived in Washington the house was unfinished, unfurnished, and its landscaping was the remnants of construction surrounded by weeds. Adams relied on his wife Abigail to purchase the necessary furnishings to make the house presentable, and Congress provided the princely sum of $800.00 to help defray expenses. Shopping wasn’t easy. There were few craftsmen or carpenters available in Washington or nearby Georgetown, and furnishings had to be ordered and shipped from New York or Philadelphia.
Since Adams’ day, nearly every President has had something done to the mansion to make it, in their view, more habitable. Some of these changes have been minor, some temporary, and some permanent, or at least they remain in the house today. When FDR entered office he had a swimming pool installed in the White House between the residence and the West Wing, funded with money raised by a campaign led by the New York Daily News. Roosevelt valued swimming as his main source of exercise, and often used the pool. Harry Truman used it almost daily until the White House interior was rebuilt during his administration. After Truman’s Presidency, it was largely unused until the Kennedy administration.
Richard Nixon closed the pool and had a new press room built above it, the pool itself serving as a basement and cluttered with communications equipment and wiring. When Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, entered the White House he briefly considered closing the press room and reopening the pool. After he realized the inadvisability of irritating the White House press corps he instead had an outdoor pool installed, the first for the White House, which remains in place, supplemented by a cabana and a spa installed by the Clintons.
The first President to bowl in the White House was Harry Truman in 1947, and a bowling alley was installed that year as a birthday gift. Truman didn’t care for bowling all that much, but the lanes, located in what is now the White House Situation Room, were used by his staff. In 1955 they were moved to the Blair House. When Richard Nixon, who did care for bowling, moved into the White House he had a single lane installed for his use. This bowling lane was built under the White House driveway in an underground storage room.
Although cold water had been piped into the White House since the days of Andrew Jackson the first President to enjoy hot and cold running water in the Executive Mansion was Franklin Pierce in 1853. Considered a luxury at the time, the installation allowed the President and his family the pleasure of bathing privately, without the intrusion of servants to add hot water to their bath, which had to be carried upstairs in kettles. With the hot and cold water, the first permanent bathtub was installed, Presidents until then had relied on portable tubs.
