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Picture the White House at Halloween: pumpkins, cobwebs, maybe a ghost or two. It feels like it has always been that way. The building opened in 1800, though, and it spent a very long time without any of it.
By the late 1950s, Halloween in America had become a big retail holiday built around children and candy. Costumes and parties filled the stores and the neighborhoods. Yet the most famous residence in the country stayed out of it.
That changed on October 30, 1958. First Lady Mamie Eisenhower decorated the White House for Halloween for the first time, according to the White House Historical Association. The occasion was a lunch for the wives of staff members.
She chose the State Dining Room. Skeletons hung from the wall lights, yellow jack-o'-lanterns glowed, and shocks of dried corn stood in the corners. Brown cornstalks wrapped the columns, with pumpkins and red apples at their bases.
The tables got the same treatment. Miniature witches on broomsticks sat among 16 silver bowls of yellow and bronze chrysanthemums, plus autumn leaves, nuts, gourds and squash. It looked less like a spooky house and more like a harvest festival with a wicked streak.
The foyer got the creepiest part. Black cats, black owls, disembodied witch heads and goblins dangled from the chandeliers. Guests arriving for a polite lunch walked in under a ceiling full of goblins.
The idea stuck. In 1969, the North Entrance became the mouth of a 17-foot pumpkin for 250 local children. In 1978, a 16-foot jack-o'-lantern stood out front. It all traces back to that one lunch in 1958.
