Nikki McCann Ramirez writes:

On Valentines Day in 1962, millions of Americans tuned in for a never before televised event: a tour of the White House.

A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy would go on to be viewed by a global audience of over 80 million in its initial airing. The black and white documentary was syndicated in over 50 countries, including the Soviet Union, and was a transformational use of American soft power through an emerging technological medium. It showed the seat of a still-young nation, powerful amid the post-World War II order, projecting an image itself not as the ostentatious shadow empire it would grow into, but as a noble, restrained republic cleaved to the egalitarian and anti-aristocratic principles of its founding.

The tour was a chance for the American public to view the large-scale renovation and historic preservation project that First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis undertook during her first year in the White House. It was, at its core, a measure of accountability — a way to show the American public, most of whom would never have the chance to see the Lincoln Bedroom or the Oval Office in person, what was going on in the people’s house.

“Can you make these changes according to your own personal tastes and desires?” CBS anchor Charles Collingwood pointedly asked the first lady.

“Well no,” Kennedy responded, “I have a committee which has museum experts and government people and private citizens on it. And then everything we do is subject to approval by the Fine Arts Committee.”

At the time, the renovations were funded through private donations, disclosed to the public via a published booklet. Individuals and organizations could give anything from money to artifacts connected to the presidency. But the committee and approval system the first lady implemented would lay a foundation of public transparency and accountability to the construction, renovation, and remodeling process for the White House and other federal buildings going forward.

It was a necessary change. More than a century after the nation’s founding, the post World World II economic revitalization had ushered in new construction practices, architectural schools of thought, and attitudes towards historical preservation in the wake of two devastating wars. The White House had already undergone several rounds of major renovations and a string of inhabitants that had turned its interior to a hodgepodge of differing tastes and styles. Older buildings in the capital were being renovated or outright torn down with little regard for their historic value or design. The nation, still young compared to many of its European allies, risked inadvertently erasing portions of structures built with a very specific intent: to transfer the philosophical principles of the American Revolution into the physical cityscape that would represent the American seat of governance. [Continue reading…]