• Mrs. Nixon in the Newly Renovated Blue Room
    Unknown
    State Floor
    Blue Room
    renovation
    refurbishment
    In this photograph, taken on May 15, 1972, First Lady Pat Nixon beams proudly beside an early 19th-century marble mantel in the newly renovated Blue Room. Mrs. Nixon was assisted in her restoration project by White House Curator Clement E. Conger and design consultant Edward Vason Jones. The refurbished Blue Room’s style was inspired by the French Bellangé suite of furniture President James Monroe purchased for the room in 1817. The walls were covered with beige wallpaper, featuring an upper frieze with a flower and bowl design, and a lower border of pink flowers, cupids, and Greek figures. Blue curtains hung the length of the room. The room also included a new oval plaster design in the center of the ceiling completed by Herbert John Millard, a wood carver from Roswell, Georgia.