THE WHITE HOUSE: IT'S WHERE HISTORY HAPPENED.

Byline: Michael Kilian Chicago Tribune 

The Clintons may have renewed their lease on the White House for another term, but it remains a place with nearly two centuries of masters.

Every president since George Washington - who was president before it was built - has lived there, and there is no house or building in America containing such a vast heap of history.

Consider just the Red Room on the White House main state floor. Dolley Madison introduced the serving of whiskey to presidential guests there while her husband drummed up support for the War of 1812 down the hall. Mary Todd Lincoln held at least one seance there trying to contact her two dead little boys. President Grant and his old generals refought the Civil War on its carpet using salt shakers and nut dishes as troops.

Those taking the 15- to 20-minute self-guided walking tour of the main floors of the White House, or the 30- to 40-minute VIP guided tour, often complain that they don't get to see the presidential family quarters that occupy the floors above.

``They're really not missing anything,'' said White House historian William Seale, author of the two-volume ``The President's House,'' published by the White House Historical Association. ``The State floors are my favorite part of the house. That's where it all happened.''

The downstairs public rooms are the very essence of what was once called the President's Palace - and living history of the most enchanting sort.

They've been restored, decorated and furnished to look as they did in the nation's early 19th-century Federalist period - a concept of first lady Jacqueline Kennedy's that was actually carried out by first lady Pat Nixon. This is a marked departure from the early Victorian era, when the White House more resembled the abode of ``The Addams Family,'' with gloomy stained-glass windows and dark wood paneling and seeming acres of huge, ugly potted plants.

Most visitors to the White House enter through the East Wing, which was begun by Teddy Roosevelt and completed, with the addition of war-time offices, by his cousin Franklin Roosevelt. This leads to the Ground Floor, which until Teddy Roosevelt's expansive 1902 renovation was just a dank and creepy basement.

``It was nothing but dingy old rooms - meat rooms and servant rooms - before 1902,'' Seale said. ``It had no direct access to main floors.''

Now the rooms look palatial, indeed. Sumptuously red-carpeted, the Ground Floor Corridor is hung with life-size paintings of former first ladies and lined with pedestaled busts of Washington and other presidents. Proceeding through it, visitors pass the Library and Vermeil Room (which are mostly just reception or holding rooms for guests waiting to go upstairs), and the China Room, containing that once-notorious red-rimmed china of Nancy Reagan and other presidential platters.

The other two Ground Floor chambers are most closely associated with Franklin Roosevelt. Wheelchair-bound, he used the Map Room as his war headquarters. According to Seale, it was patterned on Winston Churchill's personal war room in London.

The oval Diplomatic Reception Room, which leads out to the South Lawn, is where visiting heads of state and highly honored guests arrive at the White House, but is remembered most as the chamber where FDR broadcast his legendary ``fireside chats'' - even though it didn't get a working fireplace until much later.

The long Ground Floor stairs lead up to the White House's Grand Foyer or Entrance Hall. Because there never has been a proper ballroom in the house, this is where dancing has traditionally been done - except during the Polk administration, when the gracious but sternly Presbyterian Sarah Polk banned dancing.

If guests have had to dance in the foyer of the presidents' house, for decades - at big state dinners and the like - they had to eat in the hallway, what is formally called Cross Hall, which runs the length of the house.

The alcoves one sees there now harboring busts of historical worthies were actually emplacements for woodburning stoves, which White House architects disguised by masking them with masonry designed to look like classical urns. Even with the stoves going full blast, it was often frigid in the drafty hall. Sometimes servants had to place pillows around the feet of lady diners.

At the end of Cross Hall, where the Family Dining Room comes together with what is now the State Dining Room, there was the original grand staircase that Teddy Roosevelt had torn out in 1902 so he could enlarge the current State Dining Room.

Teddy also created the West Wing, with its Oval Office, and made the term ``White House'' official.

From the State Dining Room, visitors progress east again through the Red Room to the Blue or Blue Oval Room, which opens toward the White House front door and has an immense window and balcony view of the South Lawn and the Washington Monument.

This has always been a favorite reception room and, despite the few bits of furniture set in it, is mostly for standing. The president and first lady pose for pictures and host receiving lines here, and it is here where they take coffee after state dinners with their principal guests.

A century and a half ago, it was the realm of Harriet Lane, niece of bachelor President James Buchanan. According to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, a local newsman first coined the phrase ``first lady'' in her regard. The term ``First Lady,'' spelled upper case as a formal title, was first applied to Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, known as ``Lemonade Lucy'' because she banned alcohol from the White House.

James Madison liked to use the adjoining Green Room to politick useful guests after they'd been liquored up by Dolley. Willie Lincoln was embalmed in the Green Room, then lay in state there.

The East Room is where the major White House entertainments are presented, with performers ranging from sopranos Frederica von Stade and Leontyne Price to Joel Grey singing the ``Money'' song from ``Cabaret'' (which saw Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on his hands and knees picking up the stage money Grey had tossed about) and Bob Hope, who in the presence of a visiting Queen Elizabeth told a bathroom joke involving Lincoln's hat.

When the John Adamses first moved in, only six rooms of the White House were habitable and the East Room was not among them, so Abigail used it to dry laundry in. Explorer Meriwether Lewis literally camped there in a tent while visiting Jefferson, going out onto Pennsylvania Avenue to shoot squirrels.

How much of a role does the White House play in presidential inaugurals?

As little as possible.

The lesson was learned in 1829, when populist Democrat Andrew Jackson first moved into the White House. A huge, unruly, inauguration day mob of supporters followed him in. They tracked mud onto the carpets, pulled down curtains, broke china and might well have torn the place apart had they not been lured out onto the White House lawn by means of hastily provided tubs of free whiskey punch.

At Jackson's next inaugural, the White House staff was ready. Instead of being allowed in the house, the mob was directed immediately to the lawn, where this time the attraction was a gigantic New York State cheese.

On Location

The White House is open for public self-guided tours from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesdays through Saturdays, except Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Free, time-stamped tickets are issued at the new White House Visitors' Center, 15th and E streets NW, on a first-come, first-served basis the same day as the tours. There are no advance ticket sales and no one may pick up more than four tickets. The visitors' center is open from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., seven days a week, and lines form early because tickets are not issued after 10 a.m.

The visitors' center also has a museum with exhibitions and displays on First Family life and how the White House operates. There is no parking and tourists are advised to use public transportation. The Metro Center and Federal Triangle Metro subway stops are nearby. Information: [phone].

Passes for guided VIP tours, lasting from 8:15 to 8:45 a.m., can be obtained from visitors' senator or representative, but are very hard to get.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: Visitors to the White House in Washington, D.C., find a wealth of history between its old walls.

Box: On Location (See text)