This engraving is of the inaugural reception of President Franklin Pierce at the White House in 1853. It was published in "Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion" on March 11, 1853, shortly after his inauguration. Pierce, whose son Benjamin had died just prior to the inauguration, decided to hold a reception in the East Room rather than the usual formal inaugural ball.

This wood engraving of the East Room was published in the May 6, 1865 edition of Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, a popular illustrated periodical published in Boston, Massachusetts. It depicts the East Room of the White House shortly after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.