Latest / The Infographics Show Podcast / The White House

Transcript

The White House · The Infographics Show Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Set at the standard A stands at.
1:44
Speaker 2: Six prefect constrictions.
2:09
Speaker 3: When you picture the ultimate symbol of American executive power,
2:13
Speaker 3: what actually comes.
2:14
Speaker 2: To mind usually something massive, I'd imagine, right, like, is.
2:17
Speaker 3: It a giant, impenetrable castle, a heavily fortified fortress surrounded
2:26
Speaker 3: by a moat.
2:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, you think of like the grandeur of Versailles in France.
2:29
Speaker 3: Exactly, or the imposing stone walls of Buckingham Palace. But
2:33
Speaker 3: here in America, the ultimate seat of power is well,
2:37
Speaker 3: it's just a house and its name is simply a color.
2:41
Speaker 2: It is incredibly understated when you contrast it with global history.
2:44
Speaker 2: I mean, you have this relatively modest, two story building
2:48
Speaker 2: that is anchoring a global superpower.
2:50
Speaker 3: It really is wild and welcome to be on infographics.
2:53
Speaker 3: By the way, today we are exploring the totally fascinating
2:56
Speaker 3: and heavily mythbusted history of sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Abbity.
3:00
Speaker 2: The physical structure stands in such stark opposition to those
3:03
Speaker 2: grand palaces we historically associate with absolute leadership.
3:07
Speaker 3: Totally, and in my own personal reading recently, I was
3:10
Speaker 3: completely shocked to discover how much of what we are
3:14
Speaker 3: taught about this building is just completely wrong. We're going
3:17
Speaker 3: to get into how it was actually built, the scientific
3:20
Speaker 3: reason it's white, and why it didn't get its official
3:23
Speaker 3: name for over a century.
3:25
Speaker 2: It's a building everyone recognizes instantly, you know. You see
3:28
Speaker 2: that portico and you just immediately know what it is.
3:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the story behind those walls is full of misconceptions.
3:34
Speaker 3: Before we jump into the seventeen nineties, though, just a
3:36
Speaker 3: quick piece of housekeeping. If you are enjoying Beyond infographics,
3:41
Speaker 3: please take a second to rate the show five stars.
3:44
Speaker 2: It really makes a huge difference.
3:45
Speaker 3: It does. It's a small thing on your end, but
3:47
Speaker 3: occasional ratings really help us grow and keep bringing these
3:50
Speaker 3: insights directly to you. So, all right, let's step back
3:53
Speaker 3: into the reality of the seventeen nineties.
3:55
Speaker 2: Yeah. To understand the house, we really have to understand
3:58
Speaker 2: the environment it was built in. If you were standing
4:00
Speaker 2: in the new capital city back then, you were not
4:02
Speaker 2: looking at a grand metropolis, not at all. You were
4:05
Speaker 2: standing in an essentially unpopulated, incredibly unhealthy swamp land.
4:09
Speaker 3: Right because the government had just decided to move the
4:11
Speaker 3: capital from Philadelphia and they needed to construct a permanent
4:15
Speaker 3: residence for the president in this new District of.
4:17
Speaker 2: Columbia, and it wasn't just about building a home, it
4:20
Speaker 2: was about building a symbol for a brand new country exactly.
4:24
Speaker 3: So they decided to throw an architectural competition. Winner gets
4:28
Speaker 3: five hundred bucks.
4:29
Speaker 2: Which was a pretty decent sum money at the time,
4:32
Speaker 2: and the competition drew some very interesting characters, not least
4:36
Speaker 2: of which was Thomas Jefferson himself.
4:38
Speaker 3: Wait, really, Jefferson entered.
4:40
Speaker 2: He did, He actually submitted a design anonymously, but he lost.
4:44
Speaker 3: That is amazing. I just laughed thinking about the author
4:47
Speaker 3: of the Declaration of Independence getting a rejection letter for
4:50
Speaker 3: a contest who probably helped set up.
4:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty ironic. But who did win? James Hobin.
4:56
Speaker 2: His backstory feels almost too perfectly American to be true.
5:00
Speaker 3: Irish born architect right yes.
5:02
Speaker 2: And back in Dublin he had been entirely barred from
5:05
Speaker 2: entering architectural competitions.
5:06
Speaker 1: Wow.
5:07
Speaker 2: Really it was strictly tied to his lower class background.
5:11
Speaker 2: The rigid class barriers of Europe just shut him out completely.
5:15
Speaker 3: Man, that is intense.
5:16
Speaker 2: So it comes to America, finds an environment where those
5:19
Speaker 2: specific barriers are dismantled, and ends up designing the most
5:23
Speaker 2: famous house in the New Nation.
5:24
Speaker 3: You literally cannot write a better American dream narrative than that.
5:28
Speaker 3: But looking at the history, Hobin didn't just get a
5:32
Speaker 3: blank check to build whatever he wanted.
5:34
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely not.
5:35
Speaker 3: George Washington was heavily involved, which is slightly ironic considering
5:39
Speaker 3: Washington as the only president who never actually lived in
5:41
Speaker 3: the building.
5:42
Speaker 2: True, Washington oversaw the entire construction process. Yeah, he basically
5:46
Speaker 2: acted as the ultimate project manager, complete with absolute veto power,
5:51
Speaker 2: and he used.
5:51
Speaker 3: It right because Hoben's original design was huge.
5:54
Speaker 2: It was when Hobin submitted his winning proposal, it was
5:58
Speaker 2: for this massive sprawl, three story palace. He was highly ornate,
6:03
Speaker 2: very European in its sensibility. Washington shut that down completely.
6:07
Speaker 2: He took one look at it and demanded it be
6:09
Speaker 2: drastically scaled down.
6:10
Speaker 3: He slashed it to two stories and totally eliminated the
6:14
Speaker 3: proposed wings. Now, on the surface, you might assume the
6:17
Speaker 3: New Country was just broke and you couldn't afford the stone.
6:21
Speaker 2: Which they weren't exactly wealthy.
6:22
Speaker 3: But this was a deeply psychological decision. Washington was hyper
6:27
Speaker 3: aware of the fragility of the American experiment.
6:30
Speaker 2: We really have to remember the political climate then. The
6:33
Speaker 2: United States had just fought a brutal war to rid
6:36
Speaker 2: itself of a king. If the first president immediately builds
6:40
Speaker 2: a colossal, opulent palace that towers over the citizens, the
6:45
Speaker 2: optics are just disastrous.
6:46
Speaker 3: It sends a message of absolute monarchy. It screams elitism,
6:50
Speaker 3: which is exactly what the public feared exactly.
6:52
Speaker 2: Washington was essentially trying to thread an architectural needle here.
6:56
Speaker 3: He needed a structure grand enough to command respect from
6:59
Speaker 3: visiting diplomat, but not so massive that it alienated everyday Americans.
7:04
Speaker 2: And there was a forward looking pragmatism to it too.
7:07
Speaker 2: By scaling it down, he figured future generations could augment
7:10
Speaker 2: the mansion as the country grew.
7:12
Speaker 3: Leaving room for the country to evolve. I love that,
7:15
Speaker 3: but okay, let's untack this because the actual execution of
7:19
Speaker 3: that vision sounds like an absolute nightmare.
7:22
Speaker 2: Oh, it was grueling.
7:24
Speaker 3: They broke ground in seventeen ninety two and it took
7:26
Speaker 3: eight agonizing years just to make it barely habitable. And
7:30
Speaker 3: the labor force is a pretty stark reflection of the era.
7:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was built by Scottish Stonemasons working alongside enslaved people.
7:37
Speaker 3: And the physical toll was brutal. They were forced to
7:41
Speaker 3: laboriously drag these massive blocks of sandstone from the Aquia
7:45
Speaker 3: Creek quarries all the way in Virginia up to the
7:48
Speaker 3: DC swamp land.
7:49
Speaker 2: The logistics in that era were staggering. I mean, the
7:52
Speaker 2: project was constantly underfunded, they were perpetually short on skilled labor,
7:56
Speaker 2: and the environmental conditions were just miserable, which.
7:59
Speaker 3: Perfectly sets the scene for when the second President, John
8:02
Speaker 3: Adams and his wife Abigail, finally moved in around eighteen hundred.
8:05
Speaker 2: Right, the first people to actually live there.
8:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, the house is massive, like one hundred and thirty
8:09
Speaker 3: two rooms sitting on eighteen acres, but it is essentially
8:12
Speaker 3: an active construction site.
8:14
Speaker 2: It was far from glamorous.
8:15
Speaker 3: The interior is incredibly drafty, most of it's unfinished, and
8:19
Speaker 3: the grounds are literally littered with brick kilns and heaps
8:22
Speaker 3: of garbage from the laborers.
8:24
Speaker 2: The President's family was essentially living in a cavernous, unheated
8:28
Speaker 2: shell of building.
8:29
Speaker 3: It totally reminds me of a chaotic, underfunded modern startup. Ah,
8:34
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the exact vibe. There is this
8:37
Speaker 3: grand world changing vision printed on the letterhead, but functionally,
8:42
Speaker 3: behind the scenes, it's just a complete mess. Everyone is
8:45
Speaker 3: working eighty hour events, freezing in a half finished open
8:49
Speaker 3: concept office, stepping over exposed wires just to get to
8:53
Speaker 3: a functioning coffee machine.
8:55
Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to visualize it. Actually, the
8:57
Speaker 2: house was the physical embodiment of the new Nation, ambitious
9:00
Speaker 2: and vast, but functionally rough around the edges.
9:03
Speaker 3: Very much a chaotic work in progress. And that roughness
9:05
Speaker 3: brings us to the exterior of the building, which leads
9:08
Speaker 3: directly into one of the most widely believed myths in
9:10
Speaker 3: American history.
9:11
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, paint myth.
9:13
Speaker 3: If you stop someone on the street and ask them
9:15
Speaker 3: why the building is painted white, almost everyone will give
9:17
Speaker 3: you the exact same origin story.
9:19
Speaker 2: The famous War of eighteen twelve legend. It's practically baked
9:24
Speaker 2: into the American school curriculum, right.
9:26
Speaker 3: The story we all learn is that in eighteen fourteen,
9:28
Speaker 3: the British marched into Washington and burned the building down.
9:32
Speaker 3: Then when the Americans rebuilt it, they supposedly had to
9:35
Speaker 3: slatter the exterior in white paint to cover up all
9:38
Speaker 3: the ugly black scorch marks left by the fire. It's
9:41
Speaker 3: this great story of resilience.
9:44
Speaker 2: It is a highly compelling story, but it is entirely false,
9:48
Speaker 2: completely made up when you look at the actual historical timeline.
9:52
Speaker 2: The building was painted white years before the British ever
9:55
Speaker 2: set foot in Washington.
9:56
Speaker 3: The color had absolutely zero to do with hiding fire
9:59
Speaker 3: damage Europe.
10:01
Speaker 2: In seventeen ninety eight, a full sixteen years before the
10:04
Speaker 2: British set the fire, a lime based whitewash was applied
10:07
Speaker 2: to the finished exterior walls.
10:08
Speaker 3: And the reasoning was purely practical. It wasn't an aesthetic
10:11
Speaker 3: choice to make it look.
10:12
Speaker 2: Pretty about at all. It was a structural necessity.
10:14
Speaker 3: This goes back to the stone they were using, the
10:16
Speaker 3: Aquia Creek sandstone the enslaved laborers had to drag up
10:20
Speaker 3: from Virginia precisely.
10:22
Speaker 2: Aquia Creek sandstone is a soft, incredibly porous rock. It
10:26
Speaker 2: behaves almost like a giant sponge.
10:29
Speaker 3: Which is terrible for building a house in the mid
10:31
Speaker 3: Atlantic exactly.
10:32
Speaker 2: Think about the climate of Washington, DC. You have brutal
10:36
Speaker 2: freezing winters. Without any protection, Moisture would absorb deep into
10:40
Speaker 2: the porous stone and then it freezes right when the
10:43
Speaker 2: temperature plummeted. That water would freeze, expand and literally crack
10:48
Speaker 2: the structural walls of the President's House.
10:50
Speaker 3: So they didn't paint it white to hide scorch marks.
10:54
Speaker 3: They whitewashed it so the house wouldn't explode from ice damage.
10:58
Speaker 3: The whitewash was essentially a heavy duty. It was architectural
11:01
Speaker 3: anti freeze.
11:02
Speaker 2: Architectural anti freeze, that is the perfect term for it.
11:05
Speaker 2: The lime based whitewash filled the pores of the stone
11:08
Speaker 2: and stop the water from penetrating.
11:09
Speaker 3: And they had to keep doing it right.
11:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had to keep refreshing that whitewash to protect
11:13
Speaker 2: the structural integrity. Later on, around eighteen eighteen, they upgraded
11:17
Speaker 2: to a white lead paint because it was far more durable,
11:20
Speaker 2: but the underlying mechanism was exactly the same, keep the
11:23
Speaker 2: moisture out and.
11:25
Speaker 3: Just to ground this. In modern terms, maintaining that weatherproofing
11:28
Speaker 3: today is a massive undertaking.
11:30
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a huge job.
11:31
Speaker 3: A full coat requires about five hundred and seventy gallons
11:34
Speaker 3: of specialty German made paint. Recently, they've been using this
11:38
Speaker 3: specific shade from Derown called Whisper White, and that is
11:43
Speaker 3: not cheap paint. No, it can cost up to one
11:45
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty dollars a gallon. They are spending tens
11:48
Speaker 3: of thousands of dollars just on the liquid to keep
11:51
Speaker 3: this porous rock sealed.
11:53
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how our collective memory processes history, right.
11:57
Speaker 3: We totally rerode it.
11:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, the human brains vastly prefers a dramatic, emotionally resonant
12:03
Speaker 2: narrative over a mundane, practical truth. For sure.
12:07
Speaker 3: A phoenix rising from the ashes of a hostile foreign
12:09
Speaker 3: attack painted white to hide its heroic battle scars, that
12:12
Speaker 3: inspires patriotism exactly.
12:15
Speaker 2: The reality that they had to slather architectural anti freeze
12:18
Speaker 2: on a soft rock so it wouldn't crack in the
12:20
Speaker 2: winter is completely unromantic.
12:22
Speaker 3: We will always choose the cinematic comeback story over the
12:24
Speaker 3: masonry maintenance manual. But tracing this timeline raises an obvious
12:28
Speaker 3: question for me. What's that If the physical color of
12:30
Speaker 3: the house predates the fire of eighteen fourteen, how did
12:38
Speaker 3: the name white House actually come about?
12:40
Speaker 2: Well. To understand the origin of the name, we do
12:42
Speaker 2: have to look at the events of the War of
12:44
Speaker 2: eighteen twelve, specifically August of eighteen fourteen.
12:48
Speaker 3: In the British attacked.
12:49
Speaker 2: Yes, British Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn sacked Washington and
12:54
Speaker 2: ordered the burning of several public buildings, including the President's residence.
12:57
Speaker 3: This is that legendary moment where for Lady Dolly Madison
13:01
Speaker 3: refuses to flee the incoming British forces until she secures
13:05
Speaker 3: the vital cabinet papers and the.
13:07
Speaker 2: Famous Gilbert Stewart portrait of George Washington.
13:10
Speaker 3: Right, A defining moment of bravery under immense pressure. But
13:14
Speaker 3: the fire itself didn't create the name.
13:16
Speaker 2: No it didn't. The name was already deeply embedded in
13:19
Speaker 2: the cultural lexicon.
13:20
Speaker 3: My personal reading of the historical archives absolutely confirms this.
13:24
Speaker 3: You don't even have to look hard to find people
13:26
Speaker 3: casually calling at the White House well before the British
13:29
Speaker 3: ever showed up.
13:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, the evidence is pretty clear.
13:31
Speaker 3: For example, in eighteen eleven, Francis James Jackson, who was
13:35
Speaker 3: a former British Minister to the US, wrote a letter
13:38
Speaker 3: describing his successor's political troubles.
13:41
Speaker 2: Right, I remember this one.
13:42
Speaker 3: He says, the man is acting like a political lightning conductor,
13:45
Speaker 3: attracting the lightning issuing from the Capitol and the White House,
13:49
Speaker 3: and he capitalizes it as a proper noun.
13:52
Speaker 2: And that isn't an isolated incident among foreign diplomats. American
13:56
Speaker 2: politicians were using the exact same phrasing.
13:59
Speaker 3: Yes, look at the le from Massachusetts Congressman Abijah Bigelow
14:03
Speaker 3: on March eighteenth, eighteen twelve, so that's two and a
14:06
Speaker 3: half years before the fire. He writes a letter to
14:08
Speaker 3: his wife.
14:09
Speaker 2: What does he say?
14:10
Speaker 3: He says, there is much trouble at the White House
14:12
Speaker 3: as we call it, I mean the President's He is
14:15
Speaker 3: explicitly acknowledging that the general public has mutually agreed on
14:18
Speaker 3: this nickname.
14:19
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it reveals
14:22
Speaker 2: something profound about how language and cultural identity evolve organically.
14:27
Speaker 3: Because the government didn't tell him to call it.
14:28
Speaker 2: That, right, the government never issued a decree telling citizens
14:33
Speaker 2: what to call the building. The public, the politicians, the diplomats,
14:37
Speaker 2: they simply looked at their surroundings.
14:40
Speaker 3: It was just a descriptive thing, exactly.
14:42
Speaker 2: Early Washington was largely a muddy red brick landscape. Against
14:47
Speaker 2: that dull backdrop, you have this massive, glaringly white structure.
14:51
Speaker 3: It was a visual anomaly. You literally couldn't.
14:53
Speaker 2: Miss it, so the people named it based on its
14:56
Speaker 2: most striking obvious physical characteristic. The culture created the identity
15:02
Speaker 2: long before the government ever sanctioned it.
15:04
Speaker 3: Which introduces this really fascinating tension between the people and
15:07
Speaker 3: the government. Because if the public and the politicians were
15:10
Speaker 3: casually calling at the White House by eighteen twelve, what
15:14
Speaker 3: was the government actually printing on the official letterhead. Definitely
15:17
Speaker 3: not the nickname, right, They certainly weren't using the public's
15:19
Speaker 3: term officially.
15:20
Speaker 2: For the vast majority of the nineteenth century, the government
15:23
Speaker 2: stubbornly clung to a series of much more formal titles,
15:26
Speaker 2: like what it was known in official documents as the
15:29
Speaker 2: President's House, sometimes the President's Palace, and most commonly as
15:34
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds wore on the Executive Mansion.
15:37
Speaker 3: Okay, President's palace just fundamentally clashes with the American ethos.
15:41
Speaker 3: It sounds so regal and out of touch. It really does, Although,
15:45
Speaker 3: to be fair, the early vibe inside the house was
15:47
Speaker 3: anything but royal. Thomas Jefferson famously used to answer the
15:51
Speaker 3: front door himself wearing his slippers.
15:53
Speaker 2: Uh huh, yes he did.
15:54
Speaker 3: He would just let the public wander through the ground
15:56
Speaker 3: floor halls. You had lobbyists, job seekers, and and curious
16:00
Speaker 3: citizens just hanging out.
16:03
Speaker 2: The early presidents were constantly wrestling with the tone of
16:05
Speaker 2: the office. They were desperate to prove they weren't monarchs,
16:08
Speaker 2: hence the slippers. But they were also living in this
16:11
Speaker 2: massive estate in commanding a growing federal government.
16:14
Speaker 3: The formality was kind of inevitable.
16:16
Speaker 2: It was as the decades passed the presidency became more formal.
16:20
Speaker 2: The title executive mansion really took root because it sounded serious,
16:25
Speaker 2: bureaucratic and elevated above the common citizen.
16:28
Speaker 3: And that serious, elevated bureaucracy hums along until nineteen oh one,
16:34
Speaker 3: when Theodore Roosevelt basically kicks the doors in.
16:37
Speaker 2: He certainly brought a different energy.
16:39
Speaker 3: Tr moves in and brings an absolute tornado of energy
16:43
Speaker 3: to the presidency. He looks at the physical space and
16:46
Speaker 3: realizes it just isn't working, so he completely revamps it.
16:49
Speaker 2: He made some huge structural changes.
16:51
Speaker 3: He installs electric lights, he builds the east terrace, and
16:54
Speaker 3: most importantly, he constructs the west wing to finally separate
16:57
Speaker 3: his private living quarters from the chaotic daily business of
17:01
Speaker 3: the executive staff.
17:03
Speaker 2: He modernized the physical plan to the presidency. Sure, but
17:07
Speaker 2: his most enduring legacy regarding the building wasn't structural at all.
17:11
Speaker 3: It was linguistic because he officially rebranded the office.
17:14
Speaker 2: He did. The shift was incredibly sudden. Actually, yeah, on.
17:17
Speaker 3: October seventeenth, nineteen oh one, which is just a few
17:19
Speaker 3: weeks after he took office. Following McKinley's assassination, tir has
17:23
Speaker 3: his secretary draft a very specific director.
17:26
Speaker 2: To the Secretary of State John Hay Right.
17:27
Speaker 3: Yep, he orders that all official presidential stationery, all documents,
17:32
Speaker 3: all correspondents must immediately drop the heading Executive Mansion and
17:36
Speaker 3: replace it with what from that day forward it was
17:39
Speaker 3: to be officially printed as the White House, Washington.
17:42
Speaker 2: It was just a master stroke of political communication. He
17:45
Speaker 2: took the informal, colloquial nickname that the public had been
17:49
Speaker 2: using for ninety years and he codified it into federal law.
17:53
Speaker 3: But okay, here's what it gets really interesting. Let me
17:56
Speaker 3: push back on this for a second, because we know
17:58
Speaker 3: TR's personality.
18:00
Speaker 2: Intensely aware of his own image.
18:02
Speaker 3: Extremely wasn't this essentially just a highly calculated pr move.
18:07
Speaker 3: I mean, he comes into office under tragic circumstances. He's
18:10
Speaker 3: the youngest president in history, and he wants to immediately
18:13
Speaker 3: put his personal stamp on the executive British. Isn't he
18:17
Speaker 3: just tossing out the old branding to assert dominance.
18:20
Speaker 2: Oh, you are absolutely right that it was a calculated
18:22
Speaker 2: pr move. Roosevelt was a master of shaping public perception. However,
18:27
Speaker 2: the underlying psychology of why that specific rebrand works so
18:31
Speaker 2: well is deeply rooted in American populism.
18:34
Speaker 3: Considered the term he was replacing executive mansion.
18:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, executive mansion implies heavy wealth, It implies an entrenched
18:43
Speaker 2: elite class. It sounds like a place where a ruler lives,
18:47
Speaker 2: totally isolated from the struggles of the common citizen.
18:50
Speaker 3: It sounds inherently superior. You don't just casually drop by
18:53
Speaker 3: an executive mansion.
18:54
Speaker 2: Precisely, Now, contrast the feeling of executive mansion with the
18:58
Speaker 2: White House. It's totally diff white house is beautifully generic,
19:02
Speaker 2: it's plain. It sounds incredibly accessible, like a slightly larger
19:06
Speaker 2: version of a home an average American could realistically aspire
19:10
Speaker 2: to own.
19:10
Speaker 3: That makes a lot of sense, and.
19:11
Speaker 2: Roosevelt possessed a razor sharp understanding of the national political landscape.
19:16
Speaker 2: He knew that almost every single state governor in the
19:19
Speaker 2: country lived in an official residence called an executive mansion.
19:23
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, that is a huge detail. So executive mansion
19:26
Speaker 3: wasn't even a unique federal title.
19:28
Speaker 2: Not at all. If you said the executive mansion in
19:30
Speaker 2: nineteen oh one, you might be talking about the governor's
19:33
Speaker 2: house in New York or Virginia or Pennsylvania.
19:36
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I had no idea.
19:37
Speaker 2: There were dozens of executive mansions scattered across the country,
19:41
Speaker 2: but there was only one white house man.
19:43
Speaker 3: He effectively killed two birds with one stone, he really did.
19:47
Speaker 2: By adopting the public's nickname, he elevated the uniqueness of
19:51
Speaker 2: the federal presidency, ensuring it was instantly recognizable on a global.
19:56
Speaker 3: Scale, but without sounding like a king.
19:58
Speaker 2: Right at the very same time, he aligned the office
20:01
Speaker 2: with the democratic, populous spirit of the average voter. He
20:05
Speaker 2: took the grandiose, elitist edge off the presidency by embracing
20:10
Speaker 2: the plain, descriptive name the citizens had organically created a
20:14
Speaker 2: century prior.
20:15
Speaker 3: So when we step back and trace the full journey
20:18
Speaker 3: of this building, it really mirrors the story of America,
20:21
Speaker 3: figuring out its own identity.
20:23
Speaker 2: It does.
20:24
Speaker 3: You start with a humid, muddy swamp where an ambitious
20:27
Speaker 3: but scaled down designed by an Irish immigrant is agonizingly
20:30
Speaker 3: constructed by Scottish Stonemasons and enslaved laborers.
20:33
Speaker 2: The total mess of the beginning.
20:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, then you apply a purely practical anti freeze whitewash
20:38
Speaker 3: just to prevent the poorest sandstone from shattering in the
20:41
Speaker 3: freezing DC winters.
20:42
Speaker 2: And out of that completely practical necessity, a cultural symbol
20:45
Speaker 2: is born.
20:46
Speaker 3: Exactly that people look at this glaring white anomaly in
20:50
Speaker 3: a red brick city, They completely ignore the government's stuffy
20:53
Speaker 3: official titles, and they just start calling it by its.
20:56
Speaker 2: Color, which is such an American thing to do.
20:58
Speaker 3: Totally, and finally get this brilliant master stroke of branding
21:02
Speaker 3: by Teddy Roosevelt, who recognizes that the people's nickname is
21:06
Speaker 3: actually the perfect enduring symbol for a democratic republic.
21:09
Speaker 2: It's a remarkable evolution. We watch a physical structure transition
21:14
Speaker 2: from requiring desperate practical maintenance into becoming the global avatar
21:19
Speaker 2: of American democracy.
21:20
Speaker 3: It is a totally different way to look at a
21:22
Speaker 3: building we see on the news every single day. Before
21:25
Speaker 3: we wrap up this exploration, I just want to remind you,
21:28
Speaker 3: if you enjoyed peeling back the layers of history with
21:30
Speaker 3: us today on beyond infographics and learning the real mechanics
21:34
Speaker 3: behind the White House, please take a moment to rate
21:37
Speaker 3: our show five stars.
21:38
Speaker 2: We'd really appreciate it.
21:39
Speaker 3: Those occasional ratings are the engine that keeps us thriving
21:42
Speaker 3: and allows us to keep exploring these topics.
21:44
Speaker 2: If you know, this journey raises an important question, one
21:47
Speaker 2: that I think is worth reflecting on as you go
21:49
Speaker 2: about your day.
21:50
Speaker 3: Let's hear it.
21:51
Speaker 2: How much does the name of a building dictate how
21:53
Speaker 2: we feel about the people operating inside it? Consider the
21:57
Speaker 2: alternate reality. If Teddy Roosevelt hadn't possessed the foresight to
22:02
Speaker 2: make that linguistic change in nineteen oh one, and the
22:04
Speaker 2: government still officially called it the President's Palace or the
22:08
Speaker 2: Executive Mansion today, how would that alter our national psychology?
22:13
Speaker 3: That is a staggering thought experiment. Imagine turning on the
22:17
Speaker 3: evening news and hearing the anchor say, live from the
22:20
Speaker 3: President's Palace the administration announced today.
22:23
Speaker 2: It changes the whole vibe.
22:24
Speaker 3: It would completely fracture our relationship with the executive branch.
22:28
Speaker 3: We started today by contrasting American power with massive castles
22:32
Speaker 3: and fortresses, noting that our ultimate symbol of authority is
22:35
Speaker 3: just a house named after a color. Yeah, but perhaps
22:38
Speaker 3: the reality that it is just a house named by
22:40
Speaker 3: the everyday people who walked past it in the mud
22:43
Speaker 3: is exactly what gives the office its true power. Something
22:46
Speaker 3: for you to think about until next time.
23:00
Speaker 1: Punter eight eight eat out, eat eat eat at fot