Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration and Its Legacy

by James Archer Abbott, Elaine Rice Bachmann

On February 23, 1961, Jacqueline Kennedy launched the most historic and celebrated redesign of the White House in its history. The White House announced Mrs. Kennedy’s plan to locate and acquire the finest period furniture, with which the historical integrity of the Executive Mansion’s interiors would be restored. Thanks to the vision of the young first lady, who was determined to make her new home the most perfect house in the United States, a committee was formed, a law was passed, donations were sought, a nonprofit partner was chartered, and an inalienable museum-quality collection that would belong to the nation was born. An illustrated chronicle of the restoration, this volume celebrates the sixty-year legacy of one of the most influential interior design projects in American history. First-person reflections, personal and public correspondence, media accounts, and photographs are included with detailed room-by-room analyses of the restoration, anecdotes about the people involved, and insights into the decisions made by Mrs. Kennedy in transforming the house into the national treasure we know today.

Mrs. Kennedy’s extraordinary and transformational vision for the White House, so masterfully executed in barely one thousand days, is preserved in the fabric of the historic interiors and through the work that has been carried on by the White House Historical Association, the private nonprofit partner she founded sixty years ago.
— Stewart D. McLaurin, President, White House Historical Association

My mother shared my father’s belief that American civilization had come of age, and she was eager to show the very best of our art and culture to the world. So she transformed the White House into one of the nation’s most important museums of American art, decorative arts, and history, and created a stage for the greatest performing artists of the day.
— Caroline Kennedy

Genres: Nonfiction, History

392 pages, Hardcover

First published July 28, 2021

About the author

JAMES ARCHER ABBOTT is a graduate of Vassar College (B.A.) and the State University of New York’s Museum Studies Program through the Fashion Institute of Technology (M.A.). Currently the executive director of the Lewes Historical Society in Lewes, Delaware, Abbott has served as director of Johns Hopkins University’s Evergreen Museum & Library, curator of American and European decorative arts for the Baltimore Museum of Art, and curator and educator for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Boscobel House and Gardens, and Historic Hudson Valley. His publications include Jansen (Acanthus Press, 2006), Jansen Furniture (Acanthus Press, 2007), and Baltimore’s Billy Baldwin (Evergreen Museum & Library, 2010).

Reviews

[Joseph J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having owned and enjoyed the 1997 edition of this seminal White House history, I was curious about the WHHA edition, enlarged and updated. Not able to obtain it through the library, I purchased a copy through Ebay to find the story revised with tremendous pops of color accenting previously unseen archival photographs. We see the dreary and undistinguished rooms-see the second and third floor bedrooms-which Jacqueline Kennedy found upon her arrival transformed into places of history and taste. All together bigger and more colorful, and ending with an inventory of gifts to the White House from the Historical Association from the Kennedy through Trump years. A beautiful tribute to the White House and the historical vision of Jacqueline Kennedy. A story of rediscovery and restoration.

[Laurie Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully detailed book, full of photography of the before, during, and after of the White House renovation, including photos of the fabric samples and renderings of various proposals from which to choose.