Added several more historical photos forwarded by Pete. Thanks, Pete!
Also, I saw The Simpsons Movie and posted my review of its depiction of the White House, which didn't change from seeing it in the trailer.
PS— I still don't have a review of Commander in Chief. Didn't anyone watch that show?
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In the picture of President Polk, future president James Buchanan is at the far left, with his niece Harriet Lane (his White House hostess) next to him. Standing between President Polk and the woman with the horizontally striped dress is Dolly Madison who lived across from the White House on the NE corner of Lafayette Square. Her house is still there today.
ReplyDeleteYeah apparently Dolley couldn't keep her head steady for the picture.
ReplyDeleteThat picture of President Polk and his party is utterly, utterly facinating and always gives me goosebumps. Wow! An actual photograph, not only of most of a generation of presidential leadership, but a *photograph* of a woman who lived in the 18th century and actually KNEW George Washington and Jefferson and Adams and all the others. I know of one other photograph of Dolley, but it is a head shot and very scratched and worn. The lady in that picture KNEW what the White House looked like when it was first finished - and what it looked like as a burned-out shell - and she SAW the South and North Porticos rise into place. And she lived to know people who would be involved in the Civil War!
ReplyDeleteThis image depicts the actual historical "moment" that seperates a hazy historical world we can only imagine from paintings and engravings and drawings, from a historical world we can imagine as being inhabited by real, living people, because of the "reality" of photography!
Woah! Goosebumps!