Not all Christmases are the same. Some are dazzling and lovely. Some are sentimental. And every so often one comes along that’s just plain lousy, even when you live in the White House. Consider what happened to President Herbert Hoover.
Taking the presidential oath on March 4, 1929, he roared into the glory days of the Roaring 20s. Jazz was playing, employment was up, and Wall Street was enjoying record highs.
It was a fun time to be president — until Wall Street collapsed in late October, triggering the worst financial crisis in America’s history. The Great Depression was underway. But the bad news soon turned personal for the new president, and it came at a time that should have been happy.
Dozens of kids filled the White House on the evening of Christmas Eve. It was a special party for the children of White House staffers and presidential friends. The Marine Band played carols in the hall while tots feasted on treats. There were many smiles and much laughter.
Until a White House messenger smelled smoke coming from the West Wing. He notified a Secret Service agent and a White House Police officer. They ran over to investigate.
What they found horrified them.
Since the days of President Teddy Roosevelt 25 years earlier, old pamphlets had been stored in the West Wing’s attic. It held held some 200,000 copies. Something had ignited them and the building was on fire.
The two law officers grabbed fire extinguishers. But they were no match for the rapidly growing blaze. They sounded alarms in both the chief usher’s office and Washington’s fire department.
Hoover was discreetly notified and he quietly slipped out of the residence. Mrs. Hoover, aware of the situation, gamely went on with the party to avoid panicking the children. She instructed the band to play louder to drown out the sirens that would soon be wailing when firetrucks arrived.
Meanwhile Hoover, his son, and two male secretaries reached the scene. As the president watched, the men crawled through a small window, removed the drawers from Hoover’s desk and carried them to safety. His desk chair and the presidential flag were also recovered. A tarp was placed over the president’s desk to protect it from the deluge of water that would soon be pumped into the building.
Incredibly, while all this was going on, the White House switchboard operator remained at his station in the West Wing basement. He wiped stinging smoke from his eyes and kept patching through emergency calls until his boss finally ordered him to leave.
The inferno was a four-alarmer, bringing 19 trucks and 130 firefighters to combat it. Two men were injured.
The Secret Service ordered Hoover to the White House’s West Terrace, where he watched everything while smoking a cigar and rubbing his hands to keep warm in freezing temperatures. The bitter cold made things harder for firefighters, who had to battle of sheets of ice from their water hoses as well as the flames.
When the party was over, Mrs. Hoover and her sister joined the president. Most of the children never knew about the emergency next door thanks to her calming influence.
By 10:30 p.m., it was over. The West Wing’s walls stood, but the building would need a new roof and extensive rebuilding. The president’s office was heavily damaged and the press room was destroyed.
It was the worst White House fire since the British had burned the place 115 year earlier. What caused it? Investigators never knew for sure. Maybe it was faulty wiring; maybe it was a blocked chimney vent. But everyone agreed on one thing: piling nearly a quarter-million papers in the attic had been incredibly stupid.
The White House wasn’t insured, so Congress had to pony up an emergency appropriation to pay for the repairs. They were finished less than four months later, and the West Wing returned to business as usual on April 14, 1930.
For Hoover, his presidency was all downhill from there as the nation slipped into the depths of the Depression. He spent another three Christmases in the White House, though none were as bad as 1929’s Yuletide tragedy.
Still, someone on the White House staff managed to hold on to their sense of humor. Kids invited to the following year’s Christmas party each took home a special gift: a bright red toy firetruck.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former broadcast journalist and government communicator. His weekly offbeat look at our forgotten past, “Holy Cow! History,” can be read at jmarkpowell.com.
