created by Peter Sharkey
Ground Floor of the ResidenceThe ground floor of the White House Residence connects to the first floor of the West Wing and the first floor of the East Wing because the Residence sits on on a small hill. This floor has 10 rooms, 1 main corridor, 6 lavatories. For its first century, this floor was thought of as the "basement." In the nineteenth century, many servants, particularly those who had come with the family, were housed here. When, amid the growing sectional tensions over abolition, Zachary Taylor brought slaves to serve his family in the White House, they were hidden from public view, living instead in the cramped attic space. In his memoirs, Chief Usher Ike Hoover described what the area looked like when he first came to the White House in 1891 to install electrical lighting:
Click a hotspot on the floor plan to visit the room
|