Before you, Teddy, there were no clever names for the president’s house, folks calling it The President’s Palace and the Executive Mansion—neither of which has any real descriptive character. Then you came along, the Trustbuster, the sickly boy who made good on his father’s suggestion to engage in more physical activities, including rowing and boxing. So, it’s safe to say that you transformed from a dark horse to a gleaming white steed in the span of only a few short years.

Everything about you reads good-natured affability, a clean white slate of a man—a man with principles in a time when culpability was rampant and everyone had a scheme up their sleeve. Your sleeves were decidedly snow white despite your days as a “rough rider” cowboy. Then there was that day in 1899 when, donning a pair of white swim trunks, you swam through shark-infested waters to explore a shipwreck off the coast of Gibraltar.

The first U.S. President to win the Nobel Peace Prize, yet again, you were bathed in white light, heralded as a hero, brokering an end to the war between Russia and Japan. Shot in the chest by an angry saloonkeeper in 1912, you refused to go to the hospital until you had finished your speech and so bled straight through your once crisp white shirt. Your influence is far-reaching. Even a child’s stuffed white bear was named after you by a famous toymaker, who, upon learning you had once saved a cub from slaughter, promptly named the toy “Teddy” in commemoration of yet another good deed.

The White House was not always white. Made from Red Seneca sandstone, it once sported a distinctly red tinge, yet by the time you took office, the stately building had been painted over 100 times with more than 950 gallons of white lead paint. Leave it to you to state the obvious as the once Executive Mansion became the White House we know today. It might seem like a simple deduction, yet as with everything that concerns you, Teddy, it was, in fact, a stroke of pure genius, calling it what it is—the great White House!

 

  • Robert Motherwell, "Drunk with Turpentine," 1979.

  • Ellsworth Kelly, "White Angle," 1966.

  • Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1974.