Trade Publication Article

A stately setting

Magnet, Myron

2024

Overview

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, lacking government funds to replace the department-store furniture that then embarrassed the White House, had just formed a committee to solicit donations of antiques, and Conger, following her lead, set up his own fine-arts committee. [...]the decoration is rich indeed, from the marble-looking plaster pilasters of the elevator hall now named in memory of Jones to the entrance hall's ceiling piasterwork copied from the Philadelphia house of the formidable Elizabeth Powel, who famously asked Benjamin Franklin, as he emerged from the Constitutional Convention, what kind of government the delegates had given America, drawing the more famous reply, \"A republic-if you can keep it.\" The circular niches over the paneled mahogany doors on either side of the fireplace echo the round windows in Monticello's dome room and its bedroom portholes, and they contain busts on consoles, like Jefferson's tea room. With its restrained shades of buff-colored paint, it is composed of few, though opulent, elements: paired rose-colored faux-marble columns with gilded Corinthian capitals framing pedimented French doors out onto the terrace, a coved ceiling with gilded coffers in the cove, a gilded ceiling medallion showing the Great Seal of the United States, eight grand crystal chandeliers, and a fireplace also flanked by paired rose-colored columns.

• Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
• Subject: Antiques / Architects / Architecture / Diplomatic & consular services / Fireplaces / Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790) / Marble