Qualla: Blue Room (White House)

Blue Room (White House): Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On June 2, 1886, Grover Cleveland stood with Frances Folsom under the gilded French chandelier and married her in this room. He was forty-nine. She was twenty-one. It is the only wedding of a sitting president that has ever taken place in the White House. The room they used is shaped like an egg laid on its side, thirty feet across at its widest, six doors leading out, three windows looking south across the lawn toward the Washington Monument. It has been blue since 1837, when Martin Van Buren chose the color and made it tradition. Every First Lady since has had her chance to redecorate. Most of them took it.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Blue Room (White House): An Oval by Hoban

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. GearedBull assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The Irish architect James Hoban designed the White House in 1792 with three stacked oval rooms running down its south side: the Diplomatic Reception Room on the ground floor, the Blue Room in the middle, and the Yellow Oval Room above. Of the three, the Blue Room sits at the cent...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. GearedBull assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Blue Room (White House): Van Buren's Choice

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abbie Rowe, Public domain. It was Martin Van Buren, in 1837, who first carpeted and wallpapered the room in blue, and the choice stuck. Every redecoration since has either embraced or pushed against that tradition. James Buchanan, a lifelong bachelor whose niece Harriet Lane ran the social side of his pres...

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Image: Abbie Rowe | Public domain

Blue Room (White House): Mrs. Kennedy's Pier Table

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GearedBull Jim Hood, CC BY-SA 3.0. Jacqueline Kennedy reshaped the White House interior more than any First Lady before her, and the Blue Room was where her French interior designer Stephane Boudin had nearly free hand. Researching in early 1961, Mrs. Kennedy came across a 1946 French magazine article that mention...

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Image: GearedBull Jim Hood | CC BY-SA 3.0

Blue Room (White House): The Christmas Print That Was Never Sent

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abbie Rowe, Public domain. The Kennedys had commissioned the artist Edward Lehman to paint the Blue Room as the 1964 Christmas gift print for the White House staff. They had done the Red Room in 1962 and the Green Room in 1963. Lehman brought the painting to the White House in August 1963 for review. The p...

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Image: Abbie Rowe | Public domain

Blue Room (White House): Continued Revisions

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abbie Rowe, Public domain. Pat Nixon redecorated the room in 1971, putting wallpaper on the walls for the first time in over a century. Critics savaged Boudin's work after he was gone, and White House Curator Clement Conger called the Kennedy-era Blue Room a failure. Hillary Clinton oversaw the current ren...

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Image: Abbie Rowe | Public domain