Grand Staircase (White House)

The Grand Staircase is the chief stairway connecting the State Floor and the Second Floor of the White House, the official home of the President of the United States. The stairway is primarily used for a ceremony called the Presidential Entrance March. The present Grand Staircase, the fourth staircase occupying the same general space, was completed in 1952 as a part of the Truman White House reconstruction. The Grand Staircase is entered on the State Floor from the Entrance Hall.

Though White House architect James Hoban originally located the main ceremonial staircase at the west end of the Cross Hall, he placed a staircase in the present site of the Grand Staircase in both his initial 1793 plan and 1814 reconstruction designs. No section study exists to illustrate either of Hoban’s staircases. Hoban’s original design of the Grand Staircase at the west end of the Cross Hall was altered by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1803 during the administration of Thomas Jefferson. Hoban envisioned the Imperial stair form with a single central stair rising from the east to a landing on the west wall with double runs returning to the east on each side. Latrobe's alteration placed a double run on either side rising from the west to a landing on the east and a single run returning west to the second floor.

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt engaged architect Charles Follen McKim, of the firm McKim, Mead, and White, to reconfigure and redesign the White House. McKim’s plan removed the Grand Staircase at the West End of the Cross Hall to increase the size of the State Dining Room by more than a third. McKim relocated the new Grand Staircase in the eastern end of the Cross Hall, opposite the entrance to the Green Room in the site of Hoban's less formal east staircase.

McKim's Grand Staircase adopted the Imperial stair form: a central run beginning on the south and rising to a landing on the north, with double runs doubling back to the south as it rises to the second floor. Formal in plan, its relatively narrow opening into the Cross Hall limited visibility of the President, First Lady and their official guests. McKim's Grand Staircase was entered through an arched opening with the first two steps protruding into the Cross Hall. A decorated wrought iron gate on the State Floor was normally kept closed except during state ceremonies. A pair of niches flanked the center run and the first course used a heavy crimson silk cord as a decorative railing. The stair was constructed in Joliet marble and covered in a crimson stair carpet. A lantern similar to one selected by McKim for the Entrance Hall was hung above the landing.

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