The new furnishings, which remain in the White House collection, came from firms that McKim had worked with on previous projects. The Boston firm of A. H. Davenport, one of the leading manufacturers of furniture in Colonial Revival styles, received the commission for the State Dining Room, Family Dining Room, the Green Room, and rooms in the family quarters that were converted from office spaces to bedrooms and sitting rooms. The fashionable New York decorating and manufacturing firm of Leon Marcotte Company, in business since the 1870s, produced furnishings in the Louis XVI revival and French Empire styles for the major reception rooms on the state floor—the East Room and the Blue Room.¹²

Two rooms have retained their 1902 furnishings for a century—the State Dining Room and the East Room. The enlarged State Dining Room, with its richly carved oak walls hung with Flemish tapestries, gave the appearance of an English men’s club. Stanford White designed for it William and Mary and Queen Anne style chairs and three mahogany serving or console tables with massive carved eagle pedestals and marble tops modeled after Italian tables in his own New York home. For the East Room, Marcotte manufactured carved and gilded window cornices, benches in various sizes covered in silk velours, and four marble top console tables (presently in storage), all in the Louis XVI revival style of the room’s white enameled wood paneling. Its architectural details had been adapted by McKim from the Chateau de Compiegne north of Paris.

McKim turned to France, too, for the Blue Room. The gilded suite of French Empire furniture that had been purchased for the room in 1817 had long since been removed and dispersed at auction. Marcotte copied, instead, a painted and gilded suite of French furniture of the Napoleonic period from Compiegne and made small, shieldback chairs derived from English designs, all painted white with gilt trim to imitate bronze mounts. Marcotte also executed the interior deco­ration selected by McKim for the Blue Room, covering the walls in a dark blue silk rep with a gold Greek key border. Gilded bronze andirons in the Egyptian revival style with reclining sphinx copied from early-19th-century French chenets were supplied by Marcotte for the Blue Room and Red Room.

The Family Dining Room furniture was produced by A. H. Davenport in Chippendale and Sheraton styles, all made from special designs that were larger in scale and with different details than original pieces of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. The Colonial Revival mahogany bedroom furniture made for the family quarters imitates other early-19^th-century American styles. In the Green Room with its dark green velour walls, Mckim installed a large, caned-back sofa and chairs derived from early-19^th-century English and French designs, all painted white and with tapestry upholstery.

In contrast, the Red Room received heavily stuffed and tufted, comfortable red damask upholstered sofas and chairs, retaining a more late- 19th-century Victorian appearance than the other state rooms. White painted shield-back chairs similar to those in the Green Room stood out against the dark red velvet-covered walls.

Eleven years after the White House was first wired for electricity, the contract for new lighting fixtures was awarded to Edward F. Caldwell and Company of New York at the suggestion of McKim, Mead & White, who approved all the designs and supervised the work. Caldwell, in business since 1895, was a prominent designer of lighting fixtures who had worked on earlier McKim, Mead & White projects. Washington architect Glenn Brown, superintendent of the White House project, observed that the fixtures made for the White House were probably the “most artistic that have been designed in the country.”³ Caldwell was paid $23,588 for three large Bohemian glass chandeliers (East Room), a silver chandelier and eight silver wall sconces (State Dining Room), a gilded metal chandelier and sconces (Red Room), cut-glass chandeliers and sconces (Blue Room, Green Room, Family Dining Room), glass lanterns (Entrance Hall and North Portico), eight gilded metal standards (Entrance Hall/Cross Hall), four torcheres and four pairs of candelabra (East Room), ceiling fixtures throughout the house, lamps for the private quarters, and repairs and new parts for old gas fixtures that were reused in service areas. Caldwell also supplied electrical fixtures for the new office building. Of the highest quality craftsman­ ship, these elaborate custom-made fixtures survive in the White House collection. Their designs reflected diverse styles derived from European precedents: the East Room torcheres, modeled after a French candelabrum of the Empire period, have Egyptian motifs such as winged lions; the cut-glass chandeliers were copied from 18^th- century English and French sources.

The newly renovated and refurbished house was opened to the public on New Year’s Day, 1903. Visitors noted the dignified, tasteful yet simpler and starker interiors that gave the room a more spacious appearance with a sophisticated international flavor. Charles Moore, who later became chair of the Commission of Fine Arts, noted that forms and materials “belonging to all times” had been used to express ideas of permanence and dignity.⁴ Another observer remarked that “the Colonial note is struck at once” when one entered the Entrance Hall.⁵

The philosophy that had governed the redecorating—to refurnish the interior of the building in harmony with its exterior architecture—continued to influence the furnishings of the White House state rooms throughout the 20th century, the international century shaped by the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.