Skip to main content

The People’s House

March 2023
1min read

This diminutive photo (the original is an inch by an inch and a quarter), came to us just days before President Clinton made the reluctant decision on May 20 to close Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicular traffic. Robert Spencer sent it with the following explanation: “In 1937 Marguerite and I were married and we began our honeymoon in Washington, D.C. Of course we wanted to see the White House.

“There was no gate, fence, concrete barrier, not even guards, so we drove in, right up to the portico, parked, and took a stroll around the grounds. No one interrupted our walk until a man in civilian clothes came out of the White House and politely requested us to move our car because the President was waiting to leave. When we asked if we could take a photograph first, the President’s aide agreed, as long as we hurried. The result is enclosed.

“Not too long ago we traveled again through Washington and were saddened by the security that is now needed to protect the President, Congress, and other government officials and buildings.”

One thing hasn’t changed, Mr. Spencer tells us: “Oh yes! I am still happily married to Marguerite. It has now been fifty-eight years and still going strong.”

We continue to ask our readers to send unusual and unpublished old photographs to Carla Davidson at American Heritage, Forbes Building, 60 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011. Please send a copy of any irreplaceable materials, include return postage, and do not mail glass negatives. We will pay fifty dollars for each one that is run.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "September 1995"

Authored by: The Editors

The American Album
Works by Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, and Lukas Foss

Authored by: The Editors

The American Comedy Box, 1915-1994

Authored by: David Lehman

World War I made the city the financial capital of the world. Then after World War II a very few audacious painters and passionate critics made it the cultural capital as well. Here is how they seized the torch from Europe.

Authored by: David Neal Keller

The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery in 1865, but right on into this century sailors were routinely drugged, beaten, and kidnapped to man America’s mighty merchant marine

Authored by: Mark C. Carnes

The author sent dozens of historians to the movies to find out how much—and how well—films could teach us about the past

Authored by: The Editors

Wyatt Earp in the movies, adapted from John Mack Faragher’s essay in Past Imperfect

Authored by: Oliver Conant

A distinguished scholar of American literature discusses why, after a career of study and reflection, he believes that Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman are bad for you

Authored by: The Editors

Part Two: American Journalism 1944-1946

Authored by: The Editors

The Preacher King: Martin Luther King and the Word That Moved America

Authored by: The Editors

Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.