Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 58, originally released in print form in 2020. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. Š 2020 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
The New Year’s Day White House RECEPTION A Bygone Chance to Shake the President’s Hand
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i n 2 0 2 0 , a m e r i c a n s a c c e p t t h at security concerns largely separate them from the president, his family, and the fortress once called “the people’s house.” One might tour the White House after passing a background check, or perhaps see a president at a carefully managed public event, but the privilege of seeing the president and first lady at the White House is largely reserved for select groups. Less than a century ago, however, such an opportunity—the White House New Year’s Day reception—was available, and even expected, for Washingtonians and visitors. Guests from across the social strata could attend and shake the hand of the president. Full of cheer and hope for the New Year, they flocked to the White House like their present-day counterparts flock to Times Square. It was a day when “the people’s house” and its occupant truly belonged to the people.
THE FIRST RECEPTIONS
previous spread
The presidents’ New Year’s Day receptions never failed to draw crowds, even on snowy days. Long lines extended down the White House drive to Seventeenth Street as seen in these photographs from 1909 (left) and 1922 (right). left
President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln greet guests from all walks of life at the 1862 New Year’s Day White House reception, as seen in this drawing published in the Illustrated London News.
SHUTTERSTOCK
The origins of the New Year’s Day reception go back to colonial Dutch New York and ancient Rome, both cultures where it was common to spend the first day of the year paying social calls on friends and civic leaders.1 As with many presidential traditions, George Washington receives credit for inaugurating the custom of a presidential reception
on January 1, holding receptions both in New York City and in Philadelphia. However, his successor, John Adams, was the first to host a New Year’s Day reception in the White House. This took place in 1801, following the government’s relocation to Washington, D.C., in November 1800. It was held in one of the few rooms ready for entertaining, the Ladies’ Drawing Room, the Second Floor oval room now known as the Yellow Oval Room. Adams’s successor, Thomas Jefferson, set precedents of his own. He held his receptions in the present-day Blue Room, which eventually became the traditional location for the president to receive guests, even when the reception far outgrew one room.2 The Democratic-Republican Jefferson also instituted the practice of shaking hands when receiving visitors at presidential events, in contrast to his Federalist predecessors’ practice of bowing and accepting the courtesies of guests. Before long, the reception became a beloved tradition and “major event in the social life of the nation’s capital.”3 As the years passed, the New Year’s Day festivities in Washington expanded as other government officials and city elites held their own receptions. Newspapers listed many of them so that Washingtonians would know on whom they could call. In 1863, longtime district resident Elizabeth
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President Andrew Johnson receives guests as they stream through the East Room in 1866.
Blair Lee wrote of the eighteen receptions she and her father attended.4 However, the White House reception continued to be the undisputed main event. In fact, etiquette demanded the attendance of government and foreign officials. An 1861 guidebook to the city laid out the protocol for newcomers and visitors. Domestic government officials would be received first, between 11:00 a.m. and noon, with foreign ambassadors and American military officials coming next. Cabinet officials might stay as part of the executive branch receiving party afterward or they could leave to prepare for their own events. With the small-scale receptions out of the way, the doors would be open to the public “en masse.”5 Unlike in the monarchies that many of the diplomats represented, the people of America were ostensibly sovereign, and therefore entitled to call upon the president at their house. They certainly came in massive numbers, often by the hundreds and then thousands. The people relished the opportunity to share space and hopefully words with their elected leader.
PERLEY’S REMINISCENCES
THE CROWDS AND THE HANDSHAKING The crowds at White House New Year’s receptions quickly attracted attention and commentary. Sarah Seaton, an attendee of the 1814 reception, remembered how “the marine band, stationed in the ante-room continued playing in spite of the crowd pressing on their very heads.” He also related that poor, diminutive President James Madison suffered the indignity of “being confounded with
the plebeian crowd; and was pushed and jostled about like a common citizen.”6 Later, taller presidents would luckily avoid being moved about, as the increasing attendance numbers necessitated that the president receive visitors in a line rather than milling about them. Longtime Washington resident and reception attendee Benjamin Brown French marveled at the number of guests at receptions from the Andrew Jackson to the Andrew Johnson administrations.7 Apparently, his frequent attendance did not lead him to expect enormous numbers as a given. While each guest shook the president’s hand, and maybe those of a few others in the executive branch party, the hapless president was expected to shake as many hands as he was able, an unenviable task. French noted in 1846 that James Knox Polk “had to shake, shake, shake, till I should think he had almost shaken his arm off.”8 Nonetheless, first couples soldiered on as best they could. First ladies could retire from shaking hands a little earlier, but there would still be plenty of people in line. Helen Herron Taft, first lady from 1909 to 1913, recounted in her autobiography that she could see “the line of waiting people stretching out through the spacious grounds, down the street, and around the corner and out of sight at a time when I had already given up in utter exhaustion.”9 While mere mortals might tire and rest after receptions, those adhering to “the strenuous life” did not. In a letter written after the 1908 reception, Theodore Roosevelt boasted in a postscript: “This morning I shook hands with six
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BOTH IMAGES: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The schedule for the 1913 New Year’s Day reception at the White House, published in the Evening Star on December 30, 1912 (right), detailed the order in which the president would receive his guests. Members of the cabinet and the diplomatic corps were received at 11:00 a.m. Twenty minutes later the judiciary and others were received. Members of Congress were admitted at 11:30, officers of the armed forces were admitted at 11:45, other government officials were scheduled to enter at 12:00 p.m., and members of various societies followed at 12:15. Finally, at 12:30, the president began to receive the general public. In 1931, President Herbert Hoover took pity on a railroad worker, Charles P. Ruby (below), who arrived in the early hours of the morning prepared for a long wait in the cold to be admitted with the public. Ruby made the news when Hoover invited him in for breakfast and an introduction to members of his Hoover Ball team.
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TOP: ALAMY / BOT TOM: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Diplomats, such as those pictured here arriving at President Grover Cleveland’s reception in 1886, were traditionally included in the first groups of guests to be received by the president on New Year’s Day. right
Military officers traditionally followed members of Congress into the White House on New Year’s Day. Veterans from the Spanish- American War can be seen in this queue along the North Drive waiting to shake hands with President William McKinley in 1900.
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ALL IMAGES: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Plans for the annual New Year’s Day White House receptions often made front page news. In 1902, the Evening Star (top) speculated on President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt’s plans to distribute gifts to their children and reported that the ongoing renovations to the White House would not interfere with the annual New Year’s Day reception. In 1912, the Evening Star confirmed that plans were in place for the New Year’s Day reception, although the weather conditions were expected to be “ more unpleasant than they have been for former functions of the sort.” The column went on to predict that President-elect Woodrow Wilson might not continue the tradition.
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near right
Postmaster General and Mrs. Harry New, seen leaving the White House on New Year’s Day 1928, stand out from the crowd in their long coonskin coats far right
LEF T: SHUT TERSTOCK / RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon and his stylish daughter Ailsa pause for a photograph on the North Portico steps at the 1925 New Year’s Day reception.
thousand people at the White House reception. This afternoon I took a two hours good hard ride.”10 Though handshaking was tiring for the presidential party, it was indispensable to the New Year’s reception. As the crowds grew and guests were ushered out rather than being allowed to linger, it became the only chance those without an official position might have to speak with the chief executive. Additionally, shaking the president’s hand implied an equality with him, in contrast to the bow or curtsy one would give to a monarch. Jefferson was cognizant of the egalitarian nature of handshaking when he instituted it at his receptions, and it became an important mark of life in a republic. The obligation to shake as many hands as possible also could have reminded the president that he owed his office to the support of the American people, not just a select few.
THE FAMOUS AND THE FINERY Meeting the president was the main pleasure for visitors to the White House. However, seeing what other notable people were in attendance and
glimpsing the finery on display proved to be enjoyable secondary diversions. Senator Henry Clay, a former secretary of state, drew attention when he came to the 1850 reception, as did former president William Howard Taft when, in his new position as chief justice of the Supreme Court, he came to Warren G. Harding’s 1922 reception.11 Diplomats often attracted attention, as Americans were intrigued by the cultures they viewed as exotic. Writing in the 1840s, Margaret Bayard Smith recalled the excitement and interest the Turkish and Osage legations generated with their vibrant and different style of dress at one of Jefferson’s New Year’s Day receptions.12 In the early 1900s, the Washington Evening Times noted that while many East Asian legations had adopted Western modes of dress—much to the chagrin of the Washington press—the Chinese ambassador wore a traditional silk costume that “rustled in a way to make the heart of a woman green with envy.”13 Both the diplomats and the dames of Washington society placed great importance on fashion, well
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NOTABLE EVENTS The New Year’s Day reception could also play host or companion to major events. Despite the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln continued to hold a variety of receptions, and two of his New Year’s Day
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receptions were particularly important. The 1863 reception fell on the same day Lincoln planned to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, a decree that would free the enslaved people in areas under Confederate control. According to Francis Carpenter, a painter who resided with the Lincolns and attended the signing, Lincoln worried about the impact of the event on posterity and his legacy, commenting, “I have been shaking hands since nine o’clock this morning, and my right arm is almost paralyzed. If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the document hereafter will say ‘He hesitated.’”16 Fortunately, Lincoln signed with a firm hand. Perhaps appreciative that Lincoln had taken a stand on emancipation, several African American Washingtonians came to the 1864 reception. This was the first time that anyone could recall any African Americans guests. Observers were surprised, but the group was allowed to wait among the general crowd.17 This welcome was unfortunately
Horse-drawn carriages line the North Drive awaiting President Grover Cleveland’s exiting guests on New Year’s Day, 1889.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
aware that while they would see the president, they would be seen by a great many others. American men’s dress in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offered in the little way of ostentation, but women’s dress, with its variety of styles and silhouettes, drew constant commentary in letters and the newspapers, particularly the outfits of the women in the presidential party.14 Others felt that extra attention should not be paid to the high ranking and fashionable. In 1842, the Daily Madisonian remarked: “We saw the dashing dweller of the city, in fashionable array, and the hardy farmer, proud of his homespun costume—all welcomed, as they should be, with courtesy—though we thought that the warmer gratulation was extended to the true citizen—the industrious yeoman.”15 This egalitarian sentiment was definitely a minority opinion.
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not continued by Lincoln’s successor. Two years later, during Andrew Johnson’s presidency, African Americans were allowed to come only during a fifteen minute window following the much longer reception for white Washingtonians.18 If the reception was ever quietly reintegrated, it went unnoticed. Chester A. Arthur’s 1883 reception was the most uniquely morbid reception, as an official died in the middle of it. Elisha Allen, representative of Hawaii Kingdom, had had the honor of leading the diplomatic corps to greet the president in the Blue Room. Afterward, he began suffering from heart pains in a side room and succumbed while the president was still receiving government officials. People waiting outside were turned away, as Arthur closed the reception for the sake of decency and decorum.19
THE END OF THE TRADITION Though not apparent at the time, William Howard Taft’s reception in 1913 proved historic in that it would be the last for almost a decade. Woodrow Wilson, president from 1913 to 1921, never held a reception as president. His term was the first time
since the British burned the White House in 1814 that the reception had not been held for more than one year in a row. Wilson had some good reasons for not hosting the New Year’s Day reception: mourning for his wife, the nation’s entrance into World War I, and a nearly paralytic stroke. At other times, no reason was given for the event not being held. The Washington press claimed to be sympathetic to the extended absence of the reception, but the people of the city had come to expect the New Year’s reception and missed it.20 When Wilson’s successor Warren Harding announced the event’s return, the Washington Evening Star ebulliently commented, “Supreme joy reigns, since tomorrow the greatest of all events—the New Year day reception — will again be reinstated.”21 The reprieve would be temporary, however. Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, Harding’s immediate successors, would hold receptions for most of their time in office, only skipping their last years. The historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony has noted that the already unpopular Hoover gets the blame for “ending the last democratic chance for
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unmanageable. From a security standpoint, it is surprising that the Secret Service let it continue after three presidents had been shot at close range in the late nineteenth century. The increasing security bubble around presidents that developed in the mid- to late twentieth century precluded any meaningful interaction between the president and the public. Aside from several much smaller inauguration “open houses” that were mostly decided by lotteries, proportionally much smaller than earlier receptions, and subject to intense security in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, truly open presidential receptions like the New Year’s Day receptions of the early presidents became a relic of a time when being among the people was considered safe for the president.25 The White House New Year’s Day reception was beloved by visitors, if not its presidential
J. W. Hunefeld seen here at the head of the line in 1930, attended every White House New Year’s Day reception from 1911 to 1931. He made the news when he returned to wait in 1934, to no avail, as the reception had become a tradition of the past.
W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
citizens to meet their President,”22 but this charge is unfair. In actuality, Franklin Delano Roosevelt more or less ended the tradition by never hosting a reception. At least one longtime attendee, J. W. Hunefeld, waited outside in vain in 1934. Two years later, he was waiting again, but there would be no reception.23 The Roosevelts never gave a formal reason for forgoing the event. It may have been cost-consciousness during the Depression or that the crowds had simply grown too large. Roosevelt’s disability may have played a role, since he did attempt to hide his wheelchair use from the general public.24 The length of the reception and large crowds would have made that sort of privacy impossible. Roosevelt may have been responsible for the demise of the reception, but it might not have lasted much longer anyway. Attendance had become increasingly unwieldy and shortly may have become
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participants. It allowed them to meet and briefly talk with their elected leader in a nonpartisan setting, even if they did not hold an official position. A president you could engage with one-on-one, even for just a fleeting moment, became much more real than a president you could only read about or see in images. A man you could look in the eyes and shake hands with was one you could believe was accessible and accountable. This relationship stands in contrast to recent decades, when an audience with the president has increasingly become the privilege of the few. Americans might “see” their presidents and officials more than in the past through social media and the 24-hour news commentary, but they rarely are able to interact with them. Despite the headaches and crowds, the chance to grip and grin with the president was the simple magic and delight at the heart of the New Year’s Day reception. For the president to be seen as one of and for the American people, it is essential that he be among them. After all, it is the people who put a president in “the people’s house.” notes 1. Ann Haddad, “‘This Fine Old Custom’: New Year’s Day ‘Calling’ in Old New York,” posted December 14, 2017, Merchant’s House Museum website, www.merchantshouse.org; New-Year’s Day,” Ladies’ Repository: A Monthly Periodical Devoted to Literature and Religion 26 (1866): 28–33; Becky Ferreira, “Why We Celebrate the New Year on January 1,” posted December 3, 2015, Motherboard website, www.vice.com. 2. Betty Monkman, The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2014), 29. 3. “New Year’s Day Receptions,” White House Historical Association website, www.whitehousehistory.org. 4. Elizabeth Blair Lee to Samuel Philips Lee, January 1, 1863, Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee, ed. Virginia Jeans Laas (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 224; “Open House To-day” Washington Daily National Whig, January 1, 1849, 2; Washington Daily National Republican, January 1, 1872, 1. 5. James Philp’s Washington Described: A Complete View of the National Capital and the District of Columbia, with Many Notices Historical, Topographical, Geographical and Scientific of the Seat of Government, ed. William D. Haley (New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1861), 200–201; “The Day at the White House,” Washington Critic, January 2, 1891, 4.
Morison (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), 883. 11. French, diary, January 4, 1852, Witness to the Young Republic, 215; “President Clasps Hands for All Hours,” Washington Herald, January 3, 1922; Washington Evening Star, January 8, 1922, graphics section, 69. 12. Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1906), 400–401. 13. “Welcomed by Nation’s Chief,” Washington Evening Times, January 1, 1902, 1. 14. Ibid.; Seaton, Seaton of the “National Intelligencer,” 112; Washington Daily National Republican, January 2, 1872, 1. 15. “New Year’s Day,” Washington Daily Madisonian, January 4, 1842, 3. 16. Quoted in Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), 269. 17. “The New Year’s Reception at the White House,” Washington Weekly Chronicle, reprinted in New York Daily Tribune, January 4, 1864, 1. 18. French, diary, January 1, 1866, Witness to the Young Republic, 496; “The President’s Reception,” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1866, 2. 19. “New Year, 1883, ” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1883, 1. 20. “Clear Skies Aid in Observance of New Years Day,” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1914, 1; “Official New Year Customs Omitted,” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1915, 1; “City Is Observing New Year Day in Quiet Manner,” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1916, 1; “Capital Observes New Year Advent with ‘Open House,’” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1917, 1; “Quiet First Day of the New Year in Capital City,” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1918, 1; “Capital Spends New Year Day in Quiet Fashion,” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1919, 1; “Advent of 1920 Marked by Open House, Greetings,” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1920, 1. 21. “Society,” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1921, 7; “President and Mrs. Harding to Reinstate Time Honored ‘New Year Day Reception,’” Washington Evening Star, January 1, 1921, 20. 22. Carl Anthony, “New Year’s Day Reception: Good Riddance to a Miserable Tradition,” posted January 1, 2012, Carl Anthony Online website, www.carlanthonyonline.com. 23. “He Tries Anyway!” Midland Journal, December 30, 1936, 6. 24. Amy Berish, “FDR and Polio,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum website, www.fdrlibrary.org. 25. “Open House at the White House,” January 21, 1989, video, C-SPAN Video Library, www.c-span.org; Helen Thomas, “White House Tour Reserved for a Few,” January 21, 1989, UPI Archives website, www.upi.com/Archives; “Presidential Open House,” January 21, 1993, video, C-SPAN Video Library; David E. Sanger, “The New Administration: The President; On First Day Bush Settles Into a Refitted Oval Office,” New York Times, January 22, 2001, 1; Associated Press, “Obama Releases Details of Jan. 21 Open House,” January 16, 2009, NBC News website, www. nbcnews.com.
6. Quoted in Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of the “National Intelligencer”: A Biographical Study (Boston, Mass.: James R. Osgood, 1871), 112, 113. 7. Benjamin Brown French, diary, January 4, 1834, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870, ed. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989), 36, and diary entries for January 1, 1842, 135; January 1, 1850, 213; January 2, 1855, 253; January 1, 1864, 443 and January 1, 1866, 496. 8. French, diary, January 2, 1846, ibid., 183. 9. Helen Herron Taft, Recollections of Full Years (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1914), 374. 10. Theodore Roosevelt to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, January 1, 1908, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 6, ed. Elting E.
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