President Jimmy Carter died on December 29 at the age of 100. And though it’s been decades since the 39th president lived in the White House, it’s worth taking a look at how his one term from 1977 to 1981 shaped the famous home. white House Residents leave aesthetic legacies that last for a moment, their decor to be admired for four years or eight years and then swept away. Some are widely known and widely imitated, such as the French-style interiors that Stéphane Boudin created for the President and the President. Mrs. John F. KennedyOthers are little known and have no influence beyond the White House and its four walls. Arguably, this is also the case with the interior decor installed in the White House under Carter.
“It is the president’s prerogative to mark his territory, and Carter’s legacy was the following: I’m your good friend, salt of the earth,” says Patrick Phillips-Shrock, author of The White House: An Illustrated Architectural History (McFarland & Company, 2013), during a FaceTime conversation from her home in Lisbon, Portugal, where she and her husband had retired. This does not mean that electorally speaking, the former president and his wife Rosalynn did not appreciate the grandeur they had inherited. There are state rooms on the main floor of the White House, Those that were decorated during the Nixon administration under the dictatorial direction of White House curator Clement Conger were still in good condition when the Carters took up residence. Phillips-Schrock explains, “Thus, Mrs. Carter did not see the need to change much in those spaces,” other than moving paintings and relocating objects to different locations that were more pleasing to her eye. She noted the good maintenance of the rooms, and the fact that Conger had ordered double the amount of fabric when redecorating the rooms for Nixon, which made her job easier. However, the interesting thing is that nancy reaganWho became the next First Lady, she thought the house was very dirty and needed cleaning. I think it was a very political statement.”
