both of the cbs television news. our distinguished guest of the evening was mrs. eleanor roosevelt. all day today american history tv is featuring america's first ladies. who do you think was our most influential first lady. vote and join the conversation with us on facebook at facebook.com/c-span. american history tv usually shown on the weekends on c-span 3 will continue this week in primetime. our focus on tuesday night is black history month. at 8:00 eastern, with the groundbreaking of the new smithsonian museum of african-american history and culture, taking place wednesday on the national mall, the

museum's founding director, lonni bunch, take us through the storage facility to see some of the artifacts that will be on display. at 8:30, the relationship between martin luther king jr. and his mentors, benjamin maze and howard thurman. at 10:00, to memphis, tennessee, as we tour the national civil rights museum, built on the site where martin luther king jr. was assassinated. and at 10:30 from waterbury, connecticut, professor william foster teaches a class on the history of the "next" word in american literature and culture, with a focus on "uncle tom's cabin" and mark twain's "huckleberry finn." this is american history tv on c-span3. there's a new website for american history tv where you can find our schedules and preview our upcoming programs. watch featured video from our regular weekly series, as well as access our history tweets, history in the news, and social media from facebook, youtube, twitter, and foursquare. follow american history tv every weekend on c-span3 and online at c-span.org/history. >> welcome to american history

tv on c-span3, where all weekend, everywhere weekend, we're featuring the people and the events that tell the american story. we're marking this presidents' day weekend with the nation's first ladies. up next from our c-span's white house documentary, a tour with laura bush. >> where are we? >> this is what's called the west sitting hall. we're sitting right by the big fan window that i think people associate with the living quarters for movies that they've seen of the white house. this is where we really live. these are the couches we sit on in the evening when friends are here for dinner, before dinner, to visit and talk. our bedroom is right here on the side of the house. our dining room and kitchen are right here on this side. the dining room and the kitchen were added by jackie kennedy when she lived there, up until the kennedys, the family, ate dinner downstairs in the family dining room or ate on trays up

here. i think the eisenhowers had a television right here on the north side of the room, and they would eat dinner every night here when they were alone, on a tray brought up from downstairs. but, of course, mrs. kennedy had little children, very young children, so she really wanted an upstairs kitchen and dining room, and so this is where we eat all of our meals in the dining room that's right off here to the left and entertain friends, a lot of our closest friends, and of course, have family dinners with our girls and our parents and brothers and sisters, other people who visit us here. >> what's in the room? >> this room has the beautiful fan light, it has two couches like this, matching couches that are actually couches that mark hampton made for president george h.w. bush for the oval office, and then were re-covered for president clinton for the oval office, and then we moved

them here and re-covered them yet again for this space. these tables have been here since mark hampton brought them. i think they're great-looking tables for this space. pat nixon is the one who painted the walls yellow up in this large hall that you're looking down, the large cross hall. and it's a wonderful color, because this really is an interior hall. only the two big beautiful fan light windows at either end. but no other windows up and down the hall, so the yellow is a great, sunny color for an interior hall. >> how much time over the last seven, almost eight years have you spent here? >> we spend -- we spend a lot of time sitting here. in fact, almost every night. the president often sits in a chair here by the telephone and makes telephone calls at night. i love to come in late in the afternoon, before he gets home

from work and sit in the west window, especially in the winter when the sun comes in and it's warm and it feels great on your shoulders. this is where i'll come read late in the afternoon, after i finished my work for the day. of course, we get up and eat breakfast in this dining room, so this is really the part of the house we live in. and we have been here, many an evening, with president george h.w. bush and barbara bush when we would come visit them. so this space really does feel like home. >> what's the different feeling that you have today versus when you moved in here back in 2001? >> well, we were actually very familiar with the white house, because we had stayed here so often when george's parents were here. we knew the white house staff, the chief usher and the butlers, very well. so that really made us feel very comfortable. we knew this house could be lived in as a home, because we'd

seen our parents do it. so we felt like it was a home as soon as we moved in. i often think of personal stories from the lives of presidents who have lived here before us, and of course, everyone knows the white house as the major american landmark that is both home and office to the president of the united states. but i hope people also know it as a private and personal home for the families that live here. a home where people live, a private and personal life. and i think of the story i heard about nancy reagan where she was resting after breast cancer treatment and she was lying in the bedroom, which is right here, beside where we are. and president reagan came in to tell her that her mother had died. and there are just all of those stories that i've heard in all

-- either read in or heard from people who have lived here before, that are really the personal times. i mean, the times that jenna and i now are spending right here on these very couches, looking through brides magazines and planning her wedding. and i know that from lucy and linda johnson, they also spent those very heavy times with their mother and their father planning their weddings while they lived here. so it's both a very, very public house with public tours and a wonderful, private home for our president. >> when you came in here, did you bring much of your own personal effects, either in the bedroom or the sitting room? >> i really didn't bring a lot of our own personal furniture, because i knew what an unbelievable collection of furniture there was here. and what a privilege it is to be able to live with these pieces of furniture, that both remind us of our history and of the other families that lived here. for instance, and of course, the lincoln bedroom is the prime

example of furniture that belonged to president lincoln that was bought and ordered by mary todd lincoln for their fancy guest bedroom. and so i knew of all the things that has been here, all the great furniture that has been here for a number of presidencies, and then even the newer things that we've bought and mostly, upholstered furniture, but we've also acquired some really wonderful pieces of american art that i'm happy were acquired while we were here. so we didn't really bring much. we had just built our house at the ranch, we moved our personal furniture there. of course, we brought our personal photographs and, obviously, personal effects that we wanted to be able to live with while we were here. >> how do you decide who gets to come to the private quarters? >> well, we ask -- all of our friends have been in the private quarters. all of our closest friends have

stayed here, from people we went to the second grade with, who came for a really wonderful valentine's weekend once, and had valentine dinner in the red room, but of course stayed up here with us on this floor, in the third floor, where there are a lot of little bedrooms upstairs. our parents and our family, this very weekend, barbara bush and president george bush will be coming in for some parties that they're invited to. but also to host a party for jenna. a wedding shower for her, so that will be very fun. really, our closest friends, but also, tonight, for instance, we're hosting senators up on this floor. there will be a reception, walking around on this floor, really in the yellow oval room, which you, i know, already filmed, but also, they'll get to walk up and down the hall and see the lincoln bedroom and the other personal bedrooms that i know everyone wants to see.

>> what about e the artwork? do you have favorites in this room? >> i do have favorites of the artwork, and actually, i've hung -- re-installed some of the paintings in a different order, because they were the ones i wanted to look at the most. obviously, the monet that was given by the family of john f. kennedy after his death is a beautiful painting. it's down in this west sitting hall, just where the president or the first lady who might be sitting in the chair by the telephone look directly at the monet. and it's a wonderful painting to be able to study. i also hung on the opposite wall from the monet a hawn. it's a genera painting with a lot of figures in it. it's the california pacific beach coast in california and there are a lot of figures to look at, and i find it interesting. and under that is an alfred

barstat that is actually a painting of the south lawn of the white house. he stayed here a few times. the painting is a very different view than we have now if we look out the window, because, now, of course, the washington monument and the jefferson memorial are both in that view, but they weren't when he stayed here. so it's a painting of tiger creek, which has sort of turned into the tidal basin and it's a different view that other presidents would have had earlier. >> what of your renovation project? >> i've worked on a number of things. we've refurbished the lincoln bedroom. i would say that's the lincoln bedroom. i would say that's the biggest renovation project we've worked on. the lincoln bedroom was last done by truman when he set it up to be the lincoln bedroom, to have the lincoln furniture in it. when lincoln lived here, the room was his office, and at that time, the west wing was not built and the last -- at the end

of this hall, the far end that you're looking down when you look down this hall were the offices of the president and the cabinet room. so when lincoln lived in the house, the lincoln furniture, the bedroom furniture, was right here in what's now our dining room across the hall from where we are right now. but when they lived here, it was their very fancy state guest bedroom called the friends of wales bedroom and when truman re-did the house in the late '40s and early '50s, he set up that room, the room we now call the lincoln bedroom, to commemorate the fact that it was lincoln's office and it was the room that he signed the emancipation proclamation in. so the room itself is really a shrine, i think, to american history. truman redid the the room then in that renovation, and it had never been refurbished since and really needed it. the carpet was over 50 years old.

so i worked with the white house historical association, the preservation board, who are furniture curators, art historians, wallpaper specialists. they're the real scholars, and the white house curator, of course, and we looked back at the wallpaper lincoln had in his office, at the carpet he had in his office, and we did reproductions of those. and then we had old photographs of the way mary todd lincoln had draped the lincoln bed with the purple and gold and fringe and lace, really high victorian decorating, and we did have later photographs, not contemporary with lincoln, but of the bed still dressed the way she had dressed it. so we did that again. it was really a very interesting and enjoyable time to study the history of all the things the lincolns had here and the way the house was when they were here, and then to re-do and refurbish the bedroom that way.

>> you're a reader and there are books all over. how many of these books on these shelves are books that you put there and were some left from the last president? >> all of these books are ours, that are on our shelves. these are books that we've been given and that we've read over the time that we're here, because i had left our large library at the ranch. i also knew that we would -- that people would give us books. that american authors would give us books, that we would buy and friends would give us books, contemporary best sellers as well as histories they come across. in fact, for my birthday this year, i was given a first edition, found on the internet, of ladybird johnson's diaries. a very beautiful copy of it that's still in pristine shape that she had signed. so i knew that we would have all of these books. so i left our big library at home and this is just a part, of course, of the many books that we've acquired while we've been here.

on down the hall, in the center of this cross hall, are some sets of books that belong to the white house. they're writings by presidents, for instance. roosevelt's, the big set of teddy roosevelt's works and other presidents. and those sets are in the center part. but they're mixed in, now, with many books of our own. so these books will go with us when we leave. >> given the number of years you've been in here, including george herbert walker bush's time, how many different bedrooms have you slept in? >> we've slept in a lot of the bedrooms. we stayed both in the queen's room and the lincoln bedroom when george's dad was president and we would visit them, and then we've stayed in a couple of the rooms upstairs on the third floor, also, when we visited them. and now, of course, we've stayed in the, what has really been the traditional bedroom of the president and the first lady. the same room, of course, they stayed in when they lived here and that we stay in now, which

is right here, right in this part of the west sitting hall, the door to it is right here. so as you can tell, because of the kitchen and dining room on one side and our bedroom and our little den, study on the other side, and then the wonderful place to sit in the middle, this is the part of the house we really live in. >> how often do you leave this open? >> we leave this open all day, because it's such a beautiful, sunny side. and this is such a magnificent window. this big fan window. the fan window is original to the house, but below it, up until teddy roosevelt, was the grand staircase that went downstairs. and when roosevelt redid with the famous firm the dining room, he wanted the grand staircase taken out to make the dining room bigger, and we're glad, because even now, the dining room just seats about 140 people, which is not a big dinner party. which is one of the reasons that

state dinner invitations are so sought-after. >> as we walk down this hallway, can you explain, what is this? how long is this? >> this is a very long cross hall. this is above the same cross hall that is downstairs on the state floor. so at about right here is where you -- downstairs would be the dining room. this would probably be -- correspond with the red room, right here. and this is our little upstairs den. this room, i don't know if you want to go in here and look, but this room was often the bedroom of the president of the united states and the first lady would have the bedroom right here with these adjoining doors. now, of course, we share a bedroom. so this has ended up being our upstairs office. this is where we work on puzzles and watch baseball on tv. it's where i'm working on scrapbooks right now. you can see i have boxes of things out here.

>> who is -- who did the painting on the wall? >> this painting was done by one of barbara and jenna's friends. she's their age and the daughter of my roommate in college and she's a very excellent painter. also in here, we have one of the seven sezons that we own. it is so beautiful. and the chance to live with this kind of art is unbelievable. this is a whistler, one of his nocturnes. he did a very famous series of nocturnes and that's one of them. and then this is a beautiful andrew wyeth of island in maine, that, of course, reminds us of our summers that we spend in maine. >> is this -- did you do this room? >> i did this room. >> any of it your own furniture? >> none of it is our own furniture, but obviously, all of our own pictures are in here and all the things that make it feel like a home. >> what do your girls think about coming in and out of this place?

>> our girls love it. they really do. i think now that we're down to the last year, they are afraid they didn't take enough advantage of washington and they want to, i think, go to as many museums and smithsonians they can go to as fast as they can go over the next year. >> and how much of this is your own decorating? >> this is all pretty much the way it was here. this is the beautiful mary cassad. it's been in this spot with the two sconces and vases for as long as i've been coming here and the great chippendale table below it. this big screen, ted graver, nancy reagan's decorator, added to the white house, and it's a wonderful thing, because it really anchors this very big hall. when the screen was down while we were repainting up here, earlier, a few years ago, you could see how important this big piece is to it. this is an american empire set. it belongs to the white house. i'm the one who covered it in

the tiger velvet, which my mother-in-law said, i can't believe you're doing that. but i love the way it looks. >> why -- you were so emphatic about, i'm the one who covered it! >> because she didn't want me to, i could tell. >> when you look back at this experience after eight years, what do you want to be remembered for what you did in the white house? >> i hope the lincoln bedroom, because it's so beautifully refurbished, and then the green room downstairs, and then the acquisition of paintings like the jacob lawrence we just acquired for the green room. and i think the white house is historical, we want old things in it. we love the very major collection of american furniture that the white house owns. furniture both that either belonged to other presidents or it represents the very best of american furniture makers.

the seymores, duncan fife, bellter, all of those names, early furniture makers. but, of course, the white house goes on. and history continues to be made here. and so i also want the white house to reflect more modern presidents and more modern times. and i think that's one of the things the acquisition of the jacob lawrence does for the white house. >> so your best friend is here, and they say to you, take me to your absolute favorite things in the white house, where do you take them? >> well, many things. the mary cassad, i love this painting. that was actually the subject, this painting and this site of our very first christmas card an artist did for us. the red room is so elegant. last night, we had a dinner party in the red room for baseball players. every year we have one dinner party, where the president asks baseball players who he's admired and wants to meet

sometimes, they're ones we know from the texas rangers days. sometimes they're ones we're meeting for the first time. we had a valentine's dinner in the red room with our old friends that we were in the first and second grade with and there's no more romantic space for a valentine's dinner in the world, i think, than the red room at the white house. so that's a room that i love to take people to. i love to see them. but also, we love to entertain in the yellow oval room, which we're going to go look at right now. this is where we'll entertain senators tonight who are coming to the white house, and we use it to meet with -- i will have teas in here with spouses of heads of state who come to visit. we've had -- the president and i have met with the dalai lama in this room. it's also a room that i've had baby showers in for a niece or a nephew. you know, this has been really a wonderful room.

just recently, mrs. goel from turkey was here. she was one of the spouses of a leader. president goel was meeting with the president and she was here with me and i had -- it was really fun to be able to tell her that this rug is a turkish rug and all the turkish members of the party, mrs. goel and the others said, well, this doesn't look like one, but i could get out my trusty guide book that the curators have put together and tell her that this was a harriki made in harriki for the french market, which is why it looks like a european rug rather than a turkish rug. >> can you remember the most interesting time you ever spent in this room itself? >> i can remember a lot of very interesting people i had the opportunity to meet here, like the dalai lama, that president bush and i have met with in here. i remember fun times of parties here, that were just fun personal parties and a baby

shower for our niece that was so cute and fun party in here, where we had the chef had made up really cute things like good night moon pies for dessert and things that had to do with really cute children's books. a lot of this room was done this way, both by jackie kennedy first, the chairs there she brought to the white house. we did have a luncheon for queen elizabeth and prince phillip in here the day of their state visit last fall, and we were able to point out the mantel set of the clock and the two torchairs there that were her gift from her father, king george, to president truman when she visited the white house as princess elizabeth. so there are years of history in nearly everything in this room. and i think that's what makes it so much fun. these are two more of our

saizons that the white house owns that were given to the white house in 1957. >> what do you notice about people that come to visit you in the white house? how nervous are they? how long does it take them to quiet down. >> i do notice that certain people, certainly not other heads of states or their spouses, but people are a little nervous when they come to the white house the first time. but i also think that people feel at home immediately. this is a very warm house, the way it's decorated and really even the stories of it. this is a south-facing room, so as you can tell, even on a cold january day, the sun pours in these beautiful curved windows. that's the truman balcony out there, that truman added so that presidents could walk outside from this floor, because before that, presidents had to go downstairs to go out. and we've sat out on that

balcony in the evening, in the beautiful spring evenings or summer evenings in washington. i had my garden club come stay with me from austin, and we had a party out on the truman balcony one of the nights that they were here. so, you know, our memories are going to be both a mix of our personal family memories as well as, you know, times with our best friends. and then one time we had a dinner, in fact, it was really the last dinner we had here while he was still prime minister, with cheri blair and tony blair. and the president and men just the four of us at a table over there by the windows. >> is there ever a time you feel lonely in this place? >> i think there are moments of loneliness in the white house, but when you live here, because you are so aware of everyone that lived here before you and every challenge that our country has faced before us, you're encouraged.

i think there's always a feeling of encouragement, a real strong faith in the american people and our ability as a people to overcome challenges. certainly, lincoln is the larger than life president in the times he lived here were so very, very difficult for our country, at war with itself. and also so difficult for him and his wife, personally. willy died, their child, died in the lincoln bed when it was down the hall across from what was probably their bedroom, although we're not sure what bedrooms the lincolns used, from our records. but probably they brought him to that bed, when he got sick, so that he'd be right across the hall from them. so you're knowing how other presidents and other families who lived here faced both the public challenges, the challenges of war or other challenges that our country

faces, and their own private sadnesses, sometimes. regular life sadnesses, is encouraging to both george and me. it really is. >> when will you have your portrait done? >> we'll do our portraits for the white house after we leave here. and we haven't started, really, even looking for a portrait painter. but the portraits are done after and then they -- they're acquired by the white house. we had a really fun event with the clintons, when their portraits came to the white house, and then i remember when they had one for barbara and george h.w. bush when their portraits were done. >> do you have a favorite first lady's portrait? >> well, i have many. i love all those portraits downstairs. i think nancy's reagan's there and it's so elegant in the red dress. it's in the cross hall downstairs where there's a red carpet. it looks particularly beautiful there.

heniretta wyeth did pat nixon. so she was an artist that was well known in my part of texas, because a lot of people ask her to do their portraits, because she was so close and so good. all of those portraits i like, aaron shikler also did jackie kennedy's very elegant and lovely portrait. and another painter that also lived in texas did the portrait of eleanor roosevelt that's downstairs. the ones where he not only does 3/4 portrait, but all around it are hands, busy, working at various things. and i think it's a style that people associate with him as a portrait painter, chandor, but also interesting to me, because