Jackie After O (11 page)

Ever resourceful, Jackie didn't waste her time with underlings. She went straight to the source to get what she wanted, including a painting of Benjamin Franklin for the White House, but only two existed. She wrote a gushing letter to Walter Annenberg, who owned one of them, saying, “Mr. Annenberg you are the leading citizen of Philadelphia and that's why I'm turning to you—because we need in the White House a portrait of the man who in his day was the leading citizen of Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin. Don't you think that a great Philadelphia citizen should give the White House a portrait of a great Philadelphia citizen?” Annenberg, after thinking it over, donated the portrait, which had cost him $250,000.
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The response to her letter helped Jackie understand the power of her pen.

On another occasion, she called Bernard Boutin, a former Kennedy campaign worker and mayor of Laconia, New Hampshire, who was rewarded with the title of administrator of the General Services Administration, a man whose alliance would be needed for an even greater purpose, of which neither was yet aware. Were there any busts in the archives of Presidents Jackson, Roosevelt, and Jefferson to place in the little niches above the doorways in the cabinet room? When none could be found, she had replicas made.
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She was a demanding boss, sending endless memos to staff, such as this one to Sister Parish:

The job also required reams of fabric, which meant there was a constant hunt for the finest materials and kept one man in particular, White House upholsterer Lawrence J. Arata, busy for a long time. Although the job was supposed to last only for six weeks, it became full-time—and he was so busy that he was married on a Wednesday and returned to work the next day, with the First Lady saying she “felt very sorry that we couldn't have more time off.”
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By summer, Jackie was honing in on serious donors, employing more disarming handwritten letters on distinctive White House stationery. Using a mix of charm, flattery, and down-to-earth style, the length of Jackie's letters grew with the enormity of what she was asking for. To one couple, Mr. and Mrs. Loeb, she wrote a long note that went on for eleven paragraphs and included a detailed wish list that ended with: “P.S. Forgive this endless letter—I think I must get larger writing paper!”
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As with the letter to Annenberg, this letter moved the Loebs to provide her with a pair of $3,500 chenets, a pair of $6,500 appliqués, a suite of Louis XVI furniture (canapé, six open arm chairs, four side chairs, and the restoration for all, totaling nearly $25,000; a $5,200 bench; and a mantel with repair, packing, and shipping that came to $1,273.20). In addition to the $38,780 tab, the Loebs were considering another $72,000 in contributions, including a $20,000 chandelier.
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Her curatorial approach, not surprisingly, extended to the White House library, which was filled with Agatha Christie mysteries and contemporary books that publishers sent to the White House. “Books that are presented to JFK and me I want for our own library—so send to
me
,” she wrote in an undated memo. “The library will be stocked by a committee—It will include all Presidential writings + books that have influenced American thought—so we don't want to clutter it up with what are our souvenirs. 2) on All state visits—abroad + here—have JFK give a set of his books—1)
Eng
2)
Profiles
3)
Strategy
4)
Tide
^*
—inscribed + signed—That is what Nehru did for us—+ it is a great present and makes up for what we can't spend.”
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Jackie put Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the historian and special assistant to the president, in charge of the selection of books for the library.
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And it was the job of Yale's librarian, James T. Babb, to execute the project, forming a committee to solicit donations, hunt for, and vet important first editions.
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July 1961. Jackie examines a set of blueprints as White House curator Lorraine Pearce talks on the phone, Washington, DC.
(Ed Clark/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

By September, nine months into the job, Jackie had convinced Congress to pass legislation that would allow furniture of “historic or artistic interest” to become the property of the White House, with the Smithsonian Institution to hold
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on loan any object not on display or in use. The Ground Floor Corridor and the principle public rooms of the first floor would be recognized as worthy of primary attention and their museum character.

She was also ready to reveal glimpses of the work to the American people, and had learned from the experts—the Kennedys themselves—how to use the media to build support for an idea. She handpicked reporter Hugh Sidey, whose campaign coverage in
Time
had always been favorable, to interview her about her White House efforts.

“I had a backache every day for three months,” Jackie told Sidey, who was scribbling in his notebook.
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“Like any President's wife I'm here for only a brief time,” she said, eerily foreshadowing Camelot's one thousand days. “And before everything slips away, before every link with the past is gone, I want to do this.”

But renovating the White House was more than a patriotic calling. It was an outlet for a very smart woman. She once told a reporter during the 1960 presidential campaign while giving a tour of their Georgetown home, “I love my house! It is my expression of myself.”
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In addition to the White House interview with Sidey, she agreed to tape a special tour for television. On Valentine's Day 1962, all of America—or at least those with TVs—would be treated to a one-hour broadcast of Jackie explaining her White House work. The Kennedys were no different than everyone else eagerly awaiting the start of the show at 10:00
PM
. They had invited some people over to join them for the viewing, with drinks and dinner at the White House before it aired, including Benjamin C. Bradlee, then of
Newsweek
, and his wife, Tony. Despite the fact it was Valentine's Day and he was in the company of friends, the president was in a foul mood.

“My wife went so far as to say later that she felt the president was actually jealous of Jackie's performance and the attention she got as a result,” Bradlee wrote in his diary later that night.
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The group gathered around a TV near the Lincoln Room to watch the show on NBC, which had been taped a month earlier during a session that took nearly eight hours, at a production cost of more than $250,000.
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They were rapt and in virtual silence as they watched Jackie, in a dark two-piece wool bouclé day dress by Rodier, whose red color was lost on the black-and-white program.
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The televised tour began in the curator's office on the ground floor and moved to the Diplomatic Reception Room. The camera took in the original kitchen, which FDR had used as a broadcast room, and showed how the space had become an upholstery shop as well as an office space where Jackie and Pearce were producing a 132-page guidebook—something Jackie had wanted since her very first visit to the White House—and that they had been working on for a year. (She had to lobby the president to get him to agree to it because his staff was complaining it would be “an outrage” and a desecration to do something so commercial.)
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Then they went on to the East Room, where balls take place, the State Dining Room, which was set with a gold-and-white tablecloth and china, as well as the Red, Blue, and Green rooms—all difficult to grasp without Technicolor. The show skipped over the Library because it was not yet ready.
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Jackie explained in a soft voice from the TV what the history, the relevance, and the reasoning was behind the placement of various pieces in the White House, while thanking those who gifted them as part of the permanent collection.

Near the end of the show, the president briefly joined his wife on-camera in the Monroe Room, which was then still in the process of being renovated as the president's cabinet room. The president extolled Jackie's work, explained why it was so important that the White House reflect the living history of the republic, and then said two memorable things on-camera. First, he said, “Past is prologue.” Second, the president said that maybe some of the White House visitors would be inspired to return as residents. “Even the girls.”

The camera panned to Jackie, who would win an Emmy for her work. She blinked and showed no expression.
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While 50 million viewers went to bed that night marveling at the White House renovation (millions more would see it in the UK on BBC), far fewer were aware of the other major preservation story playing out that same day at Washington's Lafayette Square, in which Jackie was also embroiled.

Lafayette Square was a quadrangle of intimate nineteenth-century Federalist-style townhomes around a green where diplomats, publishers, cabinet members, and other American notables such as Dolley Madison and Daniel Webster had lived. The square was quite literally the traditional front yard of the White House until Pennsylvania Avenue cut between them. Pierre L'Enfant, who had designed the Capitol after being appointed by George Washington, referred to the square in his plans as the “President's Park.”
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By 1957, with the federal government expanding and the square falling into disrepair, President Eisenhower had targeted many of the buildings around Lafayette Square for demolition. Initially, Eisenhower wanted to replace the homes with a modernist executive office building that would occupy an entire block. Those who lived and worked in the targeted buildings complained.
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Then-senator John F. Kennedy initially fought on their behalf. But the government's plan, backed by Congress, plodded along.

In his first week as president, Kennedy enlisted an old friend, Bill Walton, to help him find a solution for Lafayette Square. Walton was an artist and former war correspondent for
Time-Life
and was a longtime pal of JFK's, a frequent Hyannis Port houseguest, and after the inauguration his friendship and loyalty had been rewarded with insider status.

Walton did not like the Eisenhower plans and showed them to Jackie. “They're wildly unattractive plans for modern government,” he said. She agreed it was not the kind of architecture she wanted facing the White House.

“Until the bulldozers move, we're ahead and you can't give up,” she told Walton, who knew she meant it.
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The papers began calling Walton the czar of Lafayette Square. But he struggled to find an alternative that made everyone happy. Like most things in Washington, politics was interfering. Congress was applying pressure and requiring that the new space have a certain amount of square footage, which could not be built, according to the assessment of two Boston architectural firms, if the homes facing the square were saved.

Walton was buckling. He told the president that the Dolley Madison house, built in 1820 and a place where Mrs. Madison held social teas in her post–White House years, had been completely changed when it was remodeled as the Cosmos Club in 1895 and had lost its historical significance; it was then serving as government offices. He said the Tayloe House and the Belasco Theatre had also been stripped of their importance, leaving only one building—the Decatur House, built in 1818—worth saving.

To the alarm of preservationists—including his own wife—the president took Walton's advice and approved some of the plans. Jackie was furious with Walton and her husband, who clearly had larger issues to deal with, including Khrushchev, de Gaulle, and nuclear weapons testing.

But newspapers were reporting that the president was caving on Lafayette Square.

“President Kennedy had briefly raised the traditionalists' hopes that a last-minute rescue would save the [Lafayette] Square's town-green atmosphere from the wrecker's ball and functional Federal architecture. Despite shots still being fired by lovers of the status quo, the president is not expected to halt the razing of most of the old houses and buildings on the east and west sides of the square,” the
New York Times
reported on the day Jackie's White House tour aired.
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(The story was another likely reason for JFK's discontent that night.)