2 November 2009 / AP , WASHINGTON
Lady Bird Johnson said walking through the White House was like walking “through history.” Hillary Clinton called the home “a repository of America’s storied past.”
Michelle Obama has called it “awe inspiring.” The authors of a new book have another name for the president’s residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: “the American house next door.” “Americans have this sense of the White House as something apart ... it doesn’t seem to change from the outside, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed constantly,” said Ulysses Grant Dietz, the great-great grandson of the 18th president and co-author of “Dream House: The White House as an American Home.” Dietz and Sam Watters write that over the past 200 years, the White House has morphed from a country house to a suburban home to a museum. In the process, they say, changes the presidents have made have reflected Americans’ changing ideals about what a home should be.
