Welcome to Blair House, Obama Family.

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Where History Meets Hospitality
119 Rooms, Decades of VIP Guests. Welcome to Blair House, Obama Family.
By Jura Koncius
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2009; Page H01


The Lincoln Room at Blair House, located diagonally across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, was decorated by the late Mark Hampton. It has an 1864 portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Edward D. Marchant. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Today, when President-elect Barack Obama and his family check in to Blair House, the president's guesthouse, they will be making themselves at home in a place with 119 rooms steeped in history.

Abraham Lincoln would stroll here across the street from the White House and prop his feet up by the fireplace, in a study now called the Lincoln Room. It's where silver candlesticks once belonging to John Hancock and a tankard made by Paul Revere are part of the furnishings. Like presidents-elect before him, Obama can choose a quiet corner for practicing his inauguration speech, away from the press and the public.

It's all part of the tradition, protocol and hospitality associated with Blair House, which for decades has provided a backdrop for diplomacy and the orderly transfer of power. Others who've stayed there include Charles de Gaulle, Imelda Marcos, Menachem Begin, Queen Elizabeth II and Ronald Reagan.

Today, Nancy Brinker, U.S. chief of protocol, will greet the Obamas at the front door. The staff of 14 will be standing by in the complex of rooms decorated in the style of a fashionable 19th-century home. The stately but comfortable interiors, last decorated in 1988 by Mario Buatta and the late Mark Hampton, are filled with English and American antique furniture, fine portraits, carved mirrors, floral wallpaper and Chinese export porcelain. The space has the feel of an elegant house museum (minus the velvet ropes) or a patrician aunt's home, loaded with old books, crystal chandeliers, fresh flowers, silver and Oriental rugs.

"The place looks like the beautiful home of someone who lives in a historic house with lots of family pieces," says Buatta, who checks in on Blair House several times a year. "They wanted it to look like a house, not a hotel."...

(F)or the Obamas, the staff has set up special homework areas for 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha. Since the Carter administration, every president-elect has stayed at Blair House for one to six nights before inauguration, according to assistant manager Ann Dorr. The Obamas had asked to check in before Jan. 5, when the girls started classes at Sidwell Friends School, but the house had already been reserved for former Australian prime minister John Howard and booked for other diplomatic functions....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/01/14/ST2009011401722.html?hpid=features1&hpv=national

[pnwmom]

1. So 22 Bushes could fit there in 1989. But the Obamas couldn't fit there

with a single other guest -- John Howard.

Unh-huh. Sure.

[boppers]

2. This is what victory feels like.

Rove can see the other side now.