Mrs. Laura Bush addresses her remarks Monday evening, Oct. 27, 2008 in the East Room of the White House, during a celebration in honor of the 150th birthday and contributions of President Theodore Roosevelt. White House photo by Chris Greenberg
MRS. BUSH: Thank you all. Welcome, everyone, to the White House. Thanks to all our very distinguished guests for joining us tonight to celebrate Teddy Roosevelt's 150th birthday.
President Roosevelt once said, "I don't think that any family has ever enjoyed the White House more than we have." Certainly, the antics of the Roosevelt children are White House legend. The President's youngest five slid down the stairs on stolen trays, peppered Andrew Jackson's portrait with spitballs, and turned the room where we now sit into a makeshift skating rink. They kept a zoo of pets -- and they took their calico pony, Algonquin, upstairs in the White House elevator to visit their brother when he was sick. (Laughter.) As White House Chief Usher Ike Hoover put it, "A nervous person had no business around the White House in those days." (Laughter.)
President Roosevelt encouraged his children, and often joined them for games in the White House attic. But the boyishly exuberant leader had limits to his patience -- as when he caught his son, Quentin, trampling the flower bed with stilts. Upon being ordered out of the landscaping, Quentin complained to his father, "I don't see what good it does me for you to be President." (Laughter.)
Here in the East Room, Quentin would burst out of vases to scare tourists like a jack-in-the-box. And the President's oldest child, Alice, would tell visitors that the President beat his children every day -- (laughter) -- news she imparted while draped with her pet snake, Emily Spinach. President Roosevelt must have been relieved when "Princess Alice," as she became known, was finally married in the East Room. As the President once famously commented, he could control Alice, or he could be President of the United States -- but he couldn't do both. (Laughter.)
For more than 100 years, the second floor of the White House was divided into office space for the President and living quarters for the First Family. Roosevelt spent a year working in this arrangement -- but quickly realized that official guests should not be forced to run a gauntlet of children to see the President of the United States. So, in 1902, President Roosevelt began construction on a new executive office building, which became what we know as the West Wing.
When President Roosevelt built the new office space he expanded the family's living quarters into the vacated presidential offices. He created a new area on the east for receiving guests -- maybe you came in that way -- and he removed the grand staircase at the West End of the Cross Hall to enlarge the State Dining Room.
This work was overseen by the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, which decorated the White House in an elegant neoclassical style. Here in this room, their work is reflected not only in the plaster walls and polished wood floors, but also in the chandeliers above our heads, the gilded benches that are around, flanking the room, the cornices above the draperies, and the light standards bordering the windows -- all of which are original to the 1902 redesign.
There have been some additions over the years -- including the portrait of President Roosevelt on my left, which was painted by John Singer Sargent in 1903. But even when the Truman administration gutted the entire White House in a dramatic renovation, the State Floor was rebuilt in the style chosen by McKim, Mead, and White -- and President Teddy Roosevelt.
President Roosevelt had at least one regret from the massive project. According to his aide, he grumbled that architect Charles McKim and Mrs. Roosevelt "forced [him] to accept" stone lions' heads on the mantel piece in the State Dining Room.
President Roosevelt took six years to emerge victorious in this marital spat. In a 1908 letter to the architects, he demanded that the stone lion heads be re-carved as bison heads, which he explained "made a much more characteristic and American decoration." At tonight's reception, you'll see that American buffalo do adorn our mantel -- in honor of President Roosevelt's firm request.