6/12/2023 0 Comments Vice president house![]() Vice President Nelson Rockefeller never actually moved into Number One Observatory Circle, though he used it for official events. (The CNO was relocated to Tingey House, an 1804 Georgian-style mansion that stands in the Washington Navy Yard.)īut the transition didn't occur right away. In 1974, Congress passed legislation that took Number One Observatory Circle away from the CNO and made it the vice presidential residence. Those retrofits were only needed for nine months, because Ford eventually replaced Nixon as president.Įventually, as Cleere's book notes, Congress decided that what was, at the time, called the Admiral House presented another, cheaper alternative. Ford to replace Spiro Agnew as vice president when Agnew resigned in 1973, construction workers descended upon Ford's home in Alexandria, Virginia, to make extensive modifications, including installation of bullet-resistant windows. After President Richard Nixon picked Gerald R. Meanwhile, the government continued to spend a fortune outfitting vice presidential residences. But as the cost of the Vietnam war escalated, then-vice president Hubert Humphrey asked that the project be delayed as "an example of prudent budget practices," and the new house was never built, according to this 2017 Indianapolis Star article. "The great office should have a settled and permanent habitation and a place, irrespective of the financial ability of its temporary occupant," Coolidge wrote in his memoirs.īy the mid-1960s, though, the expense of outfitting vice presidential residences with adequate security and communications equipment prompted Congress to pass a bill authorizing construction of a new home for the vice president on a portion of the Naval Observatory grounds, at a cost of $750,000 (about $6 million in today's dollars). Coolidge, who became president after Harding's death in 1923, may have been the first to advocate the notion of giving the vice president an official home, in keeping with the dignity of the position. Most either resided in their own homes, or as Calvin Coolidge did during the Warren G. Vice presidents, though, had to find their own places to live. He moved into the house the following year, according to Cleere's account. ![]() But the mansion was coveted by various officers who held the post of Chief of Naval Operations, and in 1928, Congress finally passed a law giving it to the CNO at the time, Admiral Charles Frederick Hughes (known as "Handlebars" because of his lush moustache). A dozen observatory superintendents lived in the house from 1893 to 1927.
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