How to Tour the White House

Every president since John Adams has lived in the six-story, 132-room, 55,000 square-foot structure Harry Truman famously called "the great white jail." Designed by Irish-American architect James Hoban and constructed between 1790 and 1800, the structure has undergone numerous expansions, renovations and redecorations. In fact, Harry Truman found the house to be in such an advanced state of dilapidation he had it gutted, reinforced with steel, then totally reconstructed.

There are three main components to the White House: the central residential portion, the West Wing, where the Oval Office and some other executive offices and meeting rooms are located and the East Wing, where the First Lady has her office and where the White House tour begins. The house is divided by an east-west cross hall. The main entrance, with a square portico with eight columns and four pilasters, faces north, while the curved portico with six columns, looks south over the White House lawn.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Tourists enter through the east lobby, pass through the Garden Room and into a corridor with views to the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and on to the Visitor's Foyer. The tour continues into the Ground Floor cross hall, where only two rooms are available for public viewing: the Library on the north side and the Vermeil or Gold Room on the south. (Vermeil is gold-plated silver.) Some of the ground floor rooms not on view are the China Room, Kitchen, Map Room, oval Diplomatic Reception Room and the Bowling Alley.

2. The tour proceeds up the main stairs to the first or State Floor and goes left, into the East Room, a ballroom that is the largest room in the house. It's the site of dances, receptions, concerts, weddings and sadly, funerals. From there the tour proceeds through the three sitting rooms on the south side of this floor—the Green, Blue (oval) and Red Rooms. On the western side of this floor is the State Dining Room, which used to be half its current size, because of the presence of a staircase that Theodore Roosevelt had removed in 1902. The tour concludes in the north entrance hall and visitors are led through the front door and out the northeast gate. (The other major rooms on the first floor are the Family Dining Room, the Usher's office and a pantry.)

3. The second floor, which regular people never see, includes the Yellow Oval Room on the south side, two family bedrooms over the entrance hall, the President's three room, two bathroom suite on the southwestern corner, the Family Kitchen, private Dining Room and Beauty Salon on the northwest corner, the two room Queen's Guest Suite on the northeast corner and the Lincoln Bedroom, Lincoln Sitting Room and Treaty Room on the southeastern corner. The cross hall is divided into family sitting rooms. The third floor is divided into a labyrinth of guest rooms, as well as a soundproof Music Room, Diet Kitchen, Workout Room, Billiard Room and the Sun Room.

Tips & Warnings

• Thanks to the climate of hysteria over security, it's not as easy to get a tour of the White House as it once was. Aspiring visitors have to get a ticket from a congressional representative, as well as a background check, from one to six months in advance, as part of a ten-person tour.