The White House: The History of an American Idea, America’s 250th Edition

Released in celebration of the two-hundred fiftieth birthday of the United States, this enhanced fourth edition of William Seale’s seminal architectural history, The White House: The History of An American Idea has been updated with color images and updated photography throughout.

Although built in the experimental years of the new nation and altered over its 200-year history, the White House remains the natural symbol of the American presidency and perhaps the best-known residence in the world. The history of the house, as told through this volume, is a story of survival and growth that parallels that of the nation it has come to symbolize. Enriched by the little known details about official and domestic life, The History of An American Idea reveals the numerous changes the building has undergone and the paradox of its survival. The house required preservation less than 25 years after its construction. Burned to a smoke-blackened shell by the British in 1814, it was rebuilt, later to be threatened with replacement but retained, condemned to destruction, but made new. Many presidents hired architects and made changes, small and large. Included in this book are rare glimpses of long-vanished interiors brought to life with historical plans, prints, and photographs, brought together in one volume.

As William Seale writes in the book’s Introduction, “The idea of the White House began to take shape in the last decade of the eighteenth century…Ideas put it up, and ideas shaped it year by year…The White House has been pulled apart, rearranged, gutted by fire and renovation, and reassembled; yet it is always the same. Its idea has become its essence.”

About William Seale
As the United States celebrates its Semiquincentennial this year, the White House Historical Association’s mission—to preserve, protect, and provide access to the rich history of America’s Executive Mansion—is more vital than ever. Central to this enduring legacy is the influence of author of this book, the late Dr. William Seale, a towering figure in White House historiography whose brilliance and knowledge illuminated the White House’s architectural and cultural evolution. In the preface for the book, Stewart D. McLaurin, President of the White House Historical Association writes, “When The White House: The History of an American Idea was published by the American Institute of Architects in 1992, there was no other book like it. Dr. Seale examines how the mansion could be both always the same, as George Washington envisioned it, and constantly changing, as presidents have remade it to suit their times.”

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