visitors who come to the museum here in silver spring is a chance to see through the looking glass as it is into a working museum laboratory. this special lab was equipped to help us prepare and manage the wide range of artifacts in the museum's care. what you see on the counter there now is a set of human remains, anatomical specimens, bones, that are laid out on the counter there and museum staff person doing some lab work in preparation of dealing with some objects in conservation, but we could use this lab to manage paper materials, other types of tissue or to prepare objects for long-term storage or for exhibit or display. so our last stop on our visit to the medical museum is here in front of one of the museum's

storage rooms where we manage our growing 25 million object collection. you can see just a few of the paintings in the museum's holdings here in the row behind me and the large painting there features our -- the museum's founder surgeon general william hammond who founded the museum in 1862. one thing that i personally find important about working here at this museum is the stories that we tell are the stories of america's soldiers, sailers, air men and marine -- and marines. it's important to share the sacrifices that they made for doctors and researchers and innovators to be able to help convey their stories and glad to be able to share that with visitors who come to see us every day here at the museum. >> this was the second of two

programs from our visit to the national museum of health and medicine, the first focused on the museum's civil war collection. you can watch all of our american artifacts programs in their entirety by visiting c-span.oval/history. >> on sunday, october 25th american history tv will feature an oral history project with the former chair of the naacp julian bond who died in august. he talks about his involvement with the student nonviolent coordinating committee in his later political career. one of several oral histories from the yoofrt of virginia exploration in black history project. sunday at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 3. >> each week american artifacts takes you to museums and historic place toss learn what artifacts reveal about american history. just down pennsylvania safe from the white house is the white house visitor's center which offers a look at how the

executive mansion functions, both as an office and a home. we toured the center with curator william all man who shows us the desk franklin roosevelt used while broadca broadcasting his fireside chats and recreational items such as radios and bowling balls for the first families. >> my name is john stand witch and i am the lisa son to the white house and i'd like to we will come you to the white house visitor's center which is located a short walk away from the white house itself. for anyone going on a white house tour it will help them understand what they're seeing and bring much more context and meaning to their visit to the white house. for those who can't go on a white house tour this is really an experience in its own right as well. so you are here in the white house visitor's center which is theme at clee based around five different themes to understand the white house story.

it is a home, so it's obviously home to the first family, it is an office for the president, it also, too, is a stage that we as a nation, we celebrate great events there, obviously state arrivals, events as well take place there like the white house easter egg roll. it is also, too, a park. it is part of a national park and we are proud as a national park service to consider it as such. and also, too, it is a museum pause the white house collection is inside the whitehouse and that helps to tell the story of the first family's connection with the structure and also to the story of our nation alongside it. located directly behind me is a scale model of the white house. it is really the centerpiece of the white house visitor's center and it is an amazing tool to understand the white house. both from an architectural standpoint because you very rarely if ever can understand the whole totality of what the

white house s you can see the main part of the house but also, too, it's wings as well. you can do a 360 degree walk around the white house and see the construction of it and see really one of the most important historic objects in our nation, the white house, and understand its story much more, plus with the advent of technology we have touch screens where you can actually go inside the rooms and see them, see the objects in them, and then also explore them lieu the various centuries that the white house has been here. >> i'm here today in the white house visitor's center. we're going to take a look at some objects that have been lent from the permanent collection of the white house for exhibition here as part of the new and vastly improved white house visitor's center that opened last fall. we're standing next to a

mahogany desk. im it dates to about the time that the white house opened in 1800. the government was still in philadelphia when construction began on the white house in 1792 with the goal of moving the federal government to the new capital city and it's new quarters and the capital and the president's house. so construction went on until 1800. john adams moved to the city as the first president to occupy the new president's house. george washington had picked the site, picked the architect, supervised construction but was out of office and passed away by the time the government came to philadelphia. the job he gave to picking the architect to both designing and building the president's house went to irish born architect james hoban who he had met in charleston, south carolina, and he thought he was a very

practical builder so he gave him the job of constructing the white house. towards the end of that period obviously there were some building materials left over and so according to family history the hoban family history, this small desk which isn't the most elaborately designed piece of furniture that we have in the white house collection, but it was reportedly built by hoban himself out of mahogany that was left over from the construction of the floors and the windows and the doors of the what'ite house. so it's not made of material that has been removed from the building, it is simply surplus materials of the same type that was being used in the construction of the house. so it has not been in the white house collection but for the last 40 years, it was donated in the 1970s by a member of the family with the history of having been associated with hoban and his completion of the house. hoban was also part of the white

house again in 1815, having stayed in washington, he was given the job of reconstructing the burnt out white house after the war of 1812 when the british marched into the city and set fire to the public buildings, including the president's house. he was still in washington in 1823 when he added the south portico to the white house and 1829 when he started adding the north portico to the white house and it was completed in 1830 and he pass add away. he left an enormous architectural footprint both in terms of the original house, it's rebuilding and addition of two enormous porches on the north and south side. the basic form is late 18th century federal style furniture with the simple tapered legs, inlays used as cuffs, inlays used as decorative element across the bottom, a fold out writing board and little slides to support it. in fact, it also has hidden

section behind the top that can be locked. so in many cases a desk would have been a little bit bigger and perhaps had book shelves above it, but this one was a small and relatively comfortable piece. not atypical, just not as fence i will made perhaps as high style would have been done in new york or philadelphia. >> so now we will leave our james hoban desk of 1800 and take a look at some furniture that dates to a later period of white house history. >> in this case we're looking at a couple of objects that relate to the president's use of the house as his office. this is a side chair, called the gothic style, was made in 1845 probably. it was purchased in 1845 anyhow.

it wasn't especially made for the white house, it was a style of chair that was made by many cabinetmakers and could be purchased on the general market. what made these interesting was that there were 24 of these black walnut side chairs that were purchased by the white house for use around the president's office table, the cabinet table, on the second floor of the house. there was no west wing until 1902. the president occupied the rooms on the second floor, both for his family and for his offices. so this chair would have seen -- was purchased under president james k. polk so it would have been occupied by members of his cabinet during the next can american war and all the activities that went on then. it would have been used throughout the 1850s, was still in use in the 186 os and as most interestingly seen in images of president lincoln in the cab

knelt room. the first reading of the emancipation proclamation took place with him seated in a chair of his own and the cabinet members seated in this type of chair and they are very accurately drawn in the painting and prints from the painting that documented that particular event. so they said in use until the 18 -- until 1869 when president grant moved the office from where lincoln had it in what is now the lincoln bedroom to the adjacent room that is now called the treaty room and was used as the cabinet room until the turn of the 20th century at which point president grant bought a whole new sweet of elaborate furniture, cabinet table and chairs and he also bought an enormous black marble french made clock that sat on the mantle that had not only the clock works but a barometer and a calendar and a thermometer. so you could monitor the

conditions inside, not outdoors, it wasn't -- it didn't have an outdoor gauge somehow that was collected to this block chock. so this sat on the mantel also from 1869 to 1902 and would have been how the cabinet when it was meeting kept track of the time that was going by. one of the things that happened in the 19th century was if a president came into office and had things that he didn't find stylish any longer the government actually authorized public sales and white house things simply got away legally because they were authorized. so with some of these kinds of things that were the most historic that didn't leave. there are only four of the chairs that we have had continuously since the 1840s. so, in fact, 20 of them did get away. they were used in other parts of the house, as was the clock. so these are treasures now that

have survived those auctions and remained in the white house's possession and have been used at different times. sfrl of these chairs are currently used in the lincoln bedroom as part of the décor of the room showing what would have been in there when it was lincoln's office. so they've come down here because they weren't in regular use at the house and they told such interesting stories and went with images that showed them in place that made the story even more powerful by being able to see one of these chairs in position, the block clock on the mantel. for the visitor's center we thought these told the greatest stories because they were beautiful, they were historic and backed up by graphics that helped placed them in time. >>4q above the chair here is a wonderful drawing that was done in 1864 by a local government employee named tellwagon who was

doing drawings for various publications and was able to go into lincoln's cabinet office and room and you can see a man sitting dead center in the middle of the room with the back of one of these chairs very accurately depicted and others of the chairs around the table. the picture above it shows the other cabinet room, what is now the treaty room, with the clock on the man tell behind two members of the president's staff who have come n but that's the furniture that dates to the grant administration rather than the polk administration. next we will look at a typewriter used by president wilson and a desk that was used by franklin delano roosevelt for his fireside chats. one of the objects we have on exhibit, it's a typewriter that

belonged to president woodrow wilson and was used by him when he was personally drafting the 14 points, which was the document at the end of world war i where he was trying to establish principles by which the peace should be noesegotiat so that war wouldn't happen again and that nations would be properly treated. it wasn't a successful fight that he tried to lead to get the united states to -- to agree to the league of nations which was the out growth of his 14 points, but the peace treaty was finally signed after he traveled to paris and helped negotiate the treaty of versailles and this typewriter was simply a tool that he used in the pre computer age to put together his thoughts and create his documents. i'm sure the final version was rp& person but the president would do all of his drafting. it is an interesting object to represent technology and

presidential activities without being just another piece of furniture. now, in terms of furniture i'm standing beside a desk and it's very simple, simply a government issued desk and it worked just fine for president frankly roosevelt beginning in 1933 when as he inherited the economic depression that had happened under president her better hoover he decided that he would make speeches to the nation explaining the steps that the government was going to take to try to relieve the economic angst of people across the country and the business community as well. these were radio addresses, there was no video component so it didn't require anything other than a government desk. this particular one had large holes cut in the top. that's where microphones were mounted to the desk and the microphones were enormous at the time. not as big as his face but pretty close. you can see them on the

photograph that shows the president seated at his desk making one of his speeches from the ground floor oval room in the white house. so these address you may recall were fireside chats. it was often thought that he was by his fire side but in fact the fire plais in that room had been walled up in 1902. probably it was more likely that the meaning was you were at home where your family radio resided which was next to the fireplace in your living room listening to the president give great remarks about how he was trying to lead the country to economic prosperity. and he did this throughout the 1930s and clear into the 1940s in the days of world war ii as well, giving these fire side addresses, the chats to the nation. the desk pretty much went into storage. i mean, it really was feared towards radio purposes and by the 1950s you started having television.

so it's use -- it was no longer as attractive, it has holes cut in, it has patches where holes had been cut on it, on the backside there are some drawers and then one section that has no drawers and no cover because it was behind the desk. even if someone took a still picture of the president making a fire side chat you wouldn't see that part of the desk at all. it ran its course in the 1930s and '40s in the hands of franklin roosevelt. we have an opportunity now to link the desk that have used to make radio address toss an radio that was used in the white house and would have been the kind of radios that people had around the country and part of what life in the white house was like for the first family beyond its formality. >> so we've moved over from the white house as office to the white house as home and it's been that ever since it's opened, it's one of its inherent jobs is to provide the president and president's family with a

place to live while the president is in office. here we have a radio, this is a pretty standard 1941 issue tabletop radio made by the emerson company. it was one of a dozen or so that were purchased for the private quarters rooms at the white house. they weren't the first radios to exist in the white house but this is the earliest one that has survived in our collection. a lot of the more technological things weren't treated as historical objects as readily as the furniture was and so radios would be replaced and once new ones arrived the old ones were generally discarded as being outmoded the same way one would do today with computers and iphones. this particular one it shows in a picture -- again, we picked things that had great documentation. there is a photograph of one of the third floor bedrooms with one of this set of radios, not necessarily this exact one, located between two single beds where either guest could reach

over and turn on the radio in an era before television. this was acquired in 1941 just before the start of world war ii. the white house has also had other means of recreation. president coolidge was shown in a photograph as vice president using indian clubs. this was a form of exercise, they were weighted wooden clubs that you would raise and move and do calisthenics with. this particular picture was not at the white house but it was a great image of one of these in use. we have a pair of these wooden clubs and they are stamped u.s. to represent they are government property and they have survived in our limited collection of historic recreational artifacts. as is this bowling ball which is marked white house, it's of a size that would have been used by a woman or a child, it's a little bit lighter weight than the standard issue for a man bowler in.

1947 dr. harry true man added the first white house bowling alley, at that point it was in the basement of the west wing. when it was later moved to the old executive office building next door to the white house, but in 1970 president richard nixon was a big bowler, he said i really would like to have a bowling alley as part of the residential complex and so a new single lane white house bowling alley was located under the north lawn. when you are standing on pennsylvania avenue looking into the white house house and seeing a beautiful mountain new things located under the north lawn where there are service areas and electrical facilities and the white house bowling alley. >> now, the children at the white house often found ways for recreation, including gym equipment, swing sets, pets that could run out and play on the grounds with them. in the late 1960s before leaving the white house first lady, lady

bird johnson, created what's called a children's garden, it's a small secluded spot down on the south lawn not too far -- actually close, adjoining the white house tennis court. in that garden -- which it was honored all of the grandchildren of the presidents starting with the johnsons and they had wonderful rust stick furniture was made in children's size to place around the garden and it has a fish pond as well. the main feature was that she had her grandchildren create their hand prints and they were cast to look like stone and used as pavers on the ground. the walkway leading into there now has such handprints for all of the grandchildren of the johnsons to the present presidents, grandchildren that were alive at the time that they were presidents. so if it was a child who came after his term of office they are not included. so samples of the prints are

seen here in the white house visitor's center including a hands on spot for children to place his hands in the prints in a modern creation. >> probably everybody has heard about the blue room of the white house. the white house has three parlours on the state floor that are named for colors, traditional colors that have been used for up who will trees, carpeting and textiles, the windows, draperies and such. it wasn't always the blue room, though. this chair was acquired byment james monroe in 1817, purchased from paris, as part of the refurnishing of the white house after the rebuilding of the interior of the white house after the fire of 1814 when the british set fire to the -- to the building during the bar of 1812. there were 53 pieces in this gilded sweet, it was very high

style, congress actually thought the president was being rather wasteful and especially by buying in france and not buying in america and he had to justify that the furniture was of such good quality that it would last for 20 years. in fact, it lasted at the white house in its first use until 1860 so they got 43 years of use out this have wonderful suite of furniture and then unfortunately like so many other things it was sold at auction. mrs. kennedy was given back this chair, this was the first one returned to the white house in 1961 by people who lived here in washington who had attended some of the white house sales, whose ancestors had attended some of the white house sales. so this chair became the model for reproductions that were placed in the blue room to try to recreate the monroe era. when these chairs arrived at the white house in 1970 they were up holstered in crimson, that's how the room looked