Cross Hall
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The Cross Hall is a broad hallway on the first floor in the White House, the home of the President of the United States. It runs east to west connecting the State Dining Room with the East Room. The room is used for receiving lines following a welcome ceremony on the South Lawn, or a procession of the president and a visiting head of state and their spouses.
The space measures just under 18 feet by 80 feet. It allows access to the elevator vestibule, Entrance Hall, East Room, Blue Room, Green Room, Red Room, and State Dining Room.
[edit] Architecture and furnishings
The current architectural appearance dates to the 1902 renovation by the firm of McKim, Mead and White which based some of the architectural details on Château de Malmaison. A pair of nieches on either side of the entrance to the Blue Room on the south wall recreate nieches in Hoban's original plan. Though Hoban had urn-shaped cast iron stoves placed in them, the current nieches contain busts of President George Washington and President Abraham Lincoln. During the Kennedy Administration restoration, interior decorator Stéphane Boudin arranged the furnishings to more closely resemble the cross hall at Malmaison. While a red carpet has traditionally been in the Cross Hall since the early 1960s, the carpet has, over time, become more detailed and the color has evolved. The current carpet, manufactured during the Clinton Administration was designed to be more graphic, and to appear attractively in television broadcasts. The red was made more saturated, the shade slightly warmer, and a gold border of laurel leaves, medallions, and five-pointed stars, based directly on the carved stone border in the Grand Stairway was woven into the carpet's border. A collection of upholstered gilded beech chairs and settées once belonging to James Monroe are arranged against the walls. Three Empire style pier tables are placed opposite the Madison suite of furniture. Portraits of recent U.S. presidents hang on the walls of the Entrance Hall and Cross Hall.
[edit] History
The tradition of hanging presidential portraits in this hall dates to President Ulysses S. Grant. The Buchanan administration first began the tradition of keeping paintings of presidents for the White House collection. The Grants added to this collection, and hung portraits of presidents from Washington to Lincoln in the Cross Hall behind a glass screen.
At that time, visitors could come to the White House on weekdays, enter through the north doors, and walk down the Cross Hall past the paintings to the East Room. With a note from a congressman, visitors could view the other "State Floor" rooms, such as the Red Room, where they could see the large Grant family portrait.
