A Look Back at Blair House, Before It Became Government Property

Blair House is shown in the photo from around 1918, when it was still a private residence. It wasn’t purchased by the government until World War II, in 1942.

The house had been in the Blair family since 1837, when Andrew Jackson’s editor Francis Preston Blair, namesake of Silver Spring, Maryland, bought it from the estate of Dr. Joseph Lovell.

Blair House
Blair House

Source: Library of Congress