Green Room
Dalvin Taylor
Green Room Info.
Throughout much of its existence, the Green Room has served as a parlor for teas and receptions. Here, Frances Cleveland held her first White House reception, and Edith Roosevelt received guests before the Friday musicales and concerts held in the adjoining East Room.
Under Thomas Jefferson, it was a dining room with a green canvas floor cloth. By 1825, under John Quincy Adams, the room had become the “Green Drawing Room,” named for the color of the draperies and upholsterers.
In 1862, Willie Lincoln died in the White House of typhoid fever, and his grieving parents placed his open casket in the Green Room. An account of the time stated that Mrs. Lincoln never again entered the room.
With its intimate size, green silk-covered walls and early 19th-century American furniture, the Green Room is a favorite White House parlor. The room was referred to as the “Green Drawing Room" as far back as 1825 after a green floor covering was placed there during the Jefferson Administration.
In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy began a program to give a more formal, museum-like character to the public rooms of the White House. The Green Room was one of the notable rooms that Mrs. Kennedy helped redesign. Artwork in the room today includes Henry Ossawa Tanner's Sand Dunes at Sunset,Atlantic City, the first work by an African American artist to be added to the permanent White House collection.