White Haven in St. Louis: President Grant’s Rural Retreat

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Painted a bright and 19th century fashionable “Paris green” when Julia and Ulysses Grant acquired White Haven after the Civil War ended, the home sports federal style architecture, a spacious upstairs and downstairs porch, and a stone fireplace/chimney. (National Park Service)

Julia Dent Grant grew up in the two-story federal-style home, and it was the first place her future husband, Ulysses S. Grant, would visit as a guest in 1843 when he was stationed militarily in St. Louis. Named White Haven by the Dent family to keep the title of former family residences owned prior to 1820, the house was painted the popular 19th-century color “Paris green” after the Grants purchased the home from her parents at the end of the Civil War.

Built between 1812 and 1816, White Haven was one of the oldest homes in St. Louis County. Nick Sacco, acting historian and curator of the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, refers to the architectural style as an “I-frame house,” the vernacular designation for symmetrical architecture at least two full stories in height and with other distinctions.

“Many homes in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa embraced this style of architecture,” Sacco said.

The house features 10 rooms: a basement, six main-level rooms (parlor, dining, sitting, kitchen, mudroom, and office), two second-level bedrooms, and an attic. The approximate square footage is 2,500. And part of the home’s construction is the distinct vertical log style, once prevalent along the Mississippi River due to French Canadian settlers preferring the method over horizontal log construction.

Although not showy architecturally, other than the distinct exterior hue, the home was apportioned with furnishings that were primarily practical but just ornate enough to convey the proper impression of affluence and social standing to anyone visiting.

Although a reproduction of the 18th president’s actual desk he used at White Haven, it serves as a peek into Ulysses S. Grant’s daily go-to spot for correspondence and business before, during, and after his time in the White House. The solid wood, leather-topped desk is indicative of the style of the times, with the only ornate feature being its carved legs. (National Park Service)

The Grants’ “game station” in the 1800s was a glass door cabinet, such as this mahogany antique, housed in the sitting room and stuffed with such popular activities as marbles, playing cards, ring toss, dominoes, and more. Books were also housed in the solid-wood cabinet. Family photographs commonly graced furniture surfaces, such as the one of Julia and her mother, father, and brother, as well as Grant as a young Army supply officer. (National Park Service)

In the home’s sitting room and winter kitchen is distinct vertical log style construction. Brought to the St. Louis area in the late 1700s to early 1800s by French Canadian traders settling along the Mississippi River, the vertical method was preferred in the area over the more traditional horizontal log construction because of quicker assembly and fewer materials being required. (National Park Service)

Chess and checkers were the favorite games played by the Grant family. The solid-wood, silk-damask upholstered antique chairs are suggestive of the ones used in White Haven’s sitting room. (National Park Service)

Sitting rooms in 19th-century homes were often large, with a fireplace and decorative andirons as the centerpiece and vignette seating areas throughout so that family members and visiting guests could read, converse, and play games separately or together. Historians determined that durable, black-dyed horsehair fabric settees often graced sitting rooms. (National Park Service)

Bark-covered log beams and stone construction are the main architectural elements for the functional basement-located winter kitchen, where the fire to cook the food also heated the home. A simple solid pine rectangular table, such as this antique featuring a natural stain, typically served as the prep space for the family’s meals. (National Park Service)

The wallpaper design is a Rococo Revival foliated pattern “most likely manufactured in France and acquired by the Dents through a St. Louis merchant between 1845 and 1855,” according to the curator of the Ulysses S. Grant historic site, Nick Sacco. The current reproduced wallpaper in the dining room matches the pattern that adorned the walls in Grant's day, although two previous layers covered the room’s walls in the early 1840s. (National Park Service)