Elle Decor: Jackie Kennedy
ELLE DECOR
NOVEMBER 2024
Thank you @elledecor and @davidbryannash for including my thoughts about Jackie Kennedy’s incredible project of restoring the White House and making it into the people’s museum!
“Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there.” As election day approaches, Jackie Kennedy’s words from 1961 feel particularly poignant. Her vision transformed the White House from just a presidential residence into America’s most important living museum, setting a standard for preservation that still resonates today.
At just 31, she orchestrated what designer Glenn Gissler calls “a herculean task,” bringing history back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Jackie’s mission wasn’t about redecorating – a word she equated with “sacrilege” — but about resurrection.
“Well, I really don’t have one, because I think this house will always grow and should,” she replied. “It just seemed to me such a shame when we came here to find hardly anything of the past in the house—hardly anything before 1902. I know when we went to Colombia, the Presidential Palace there has all the history of their country in it…every piece of furniture in it has some link with the past, [and] I thought the White House should be like that.”
And that’s something New York-based designer Glenn Gissler (whose own interest in historic preservation spans decades) can agree with. “She didn’t use [the restoration] as an opportunity to express herself, but rather to express the history of America,” he shares. “She was a very well educated and well-traveled person, and she found purpose [in this project]. Jackie used her connections and moxie to make things happen—and she was only 31 years old!”
“It isn’t just the president’s house, Jackie made it a museum owned by the people,” adds Gissler. “There’s a sense of altruism around what she did, and a collective responsibility to our history and the future. Her legacy is a benchmark in preservation for America.”
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