The Andrew Dickson White House, commonly referred to as the "A.D. White House," is a Second Empire house on the campus of Cornell University, designed by William Henry Miller and Charles Babcock. It currently houses the Cornell University Society for the Humanities.
The house was commissioned in 1871 by Andrew Dickson White, its namesake, and co-founder and first president of the university. The house is richly decorated with stone carvings according to White's tastes, intended to remind students of men's accomplishments and inspire them to higher purpose and an appreciation of beauty. White left the house to the university for the perpetual use of later presidents. Presidents still use the study on the southeast side of the building as a private office/retreat.
In 1953, the house was renovated for use as the University Art Museum, and its carriage house converted into what is now the Big Red Barn, a graduate student lounge. It served in this role until 1973, and was considered for demolition. Henry Guerlac, Director of the university's Society for the Humanities, led the cause to prevent its destruction and have it placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The house library is now called the Guerlac Room in his honor.
Famous quotes containing the words white house, andrew, white and/or house:
“The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Itt is verry true, as the Welchman sayd,
Couetousness getts no gaine.”
—Unknown. Sir Andrew Barton. . .
English and Scottish Ballads (The Poetry Bookshelf)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The House of Commons starts its proceedings with a prayer. The chaplain looks at the assembled members with their varied intelligence and then prays for the country.”
—Lord Denning (b. 1899)