Trump's pre-inaugural Blair House stay follows presidential tradition

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump spent Thursday night at the presidential bed-and-breakfast known as the Blair House, following a presidential tradition that goes back to President Jimmy Carter.

But the hotel magnate will likely spend less time there than any president since then.

The house sits right across the street from the White House, at 1651 Pennsylvania Ave., and is owned by the State Department, serving primarily to house visiting foreign dignitaries.

Indeed, it was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's visit to the White House in December 1941 — in which he ate, drank, smoked and roamed the residence at "unconscionable hours" — that prompted President Franklin Roosevelt to authorize the purchase of the Blair House in 1942.

Named for Francis Preston Blair, a newspaper publisher who came to Washington during the Andrew Jackson administration and served in Jackson's "kitchen cabinet." The house has a notable history even before becoming the presidential guest house: It was there that Blair, at the request of President Abraham Lincoln, offered command of the Union Army to General Robert E. Lee. (Lee declined.) Union general William Tecumseh Sherman was married there.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, USA TODAY obtained a roster of every Blair House guest since 1942 — giving the first comprehensive public accounting of who's stayed there and for how long.

Here's a brief history of presidential overnights at the executive guest house:

Harry Truman (1,247 nights)

Truman was the first modern president to stay at the Blair House — and the one who has stayed there longest.

His first stay was for three weeks after President Franklin Roosevelt died, giving former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt time to move out. When Mrs. Roosevelt gave Truman and his wife Bess a tour, Truman was surprised to see the structural condition of the White House. So he ordered a complete renovation, and spent more than three years living in the Blair House while the rehab took place from 1948 to 1952.

It was during that stay that the darkest chapter in Blair House history happened. Two Puerto Rican nationalist attempted to enter the house in an assassination attempt on Dec. 1, 1950, but were stopped by Secret Service agents. One of the men mortally wounded White House Police Officer Leslie Coffelt, whose name is memorialized in a plaque at the site today.

Truman came back to his old home across Pennsylvania Avenue in later years, to attend the funeral for President John F. Kennedy, to have lunch with President Lyndon Johnson in April 1964 and again to celebrate his 80th birthday in May 1964.

After he died in 1972, his daughter, Margaret Truman Daniels, stayed at Blair House for the funeral.

Gerald Ford (0 nights)

Ford was the last president never to spend a night at the Blair House, perhaps owing to the unusual circumstances of his elevation to the presidency. He lived in a house in Alexandria, Va. when President Richard Nixon resigned, and chose to simply commute to the Oval Office for three weeks while the Nixons moved out.

When he died in 2007, the Ford family spent three nights there for the funeral.

Jimmy Carter (7 nights)

It was Carter who began the modern tradition of staying at the Blair House the night before the inauguration, with four stays during his presidential transition.

He was the first president since Roosevelt to come from outside Washington, and needed a base of operations to organize his government. The tradition stuck.

His wife, Rosalynn also spent a night without him.

Ronald Reagan (12 nights)

Reagan ran transition meetings out of the Blair House, which the chief of staff kindly stocked with his favorite snack, jellybeans. The stay was otherwise unremarkable until the Washington Post gossip page reported a rumor months later that Carter had the Blair House bugged in order to eavesdrop on his successor. Carter denied the story and threatened to sue the Post for libel, and the paper retracted the story and apologized.

When Reagan died in 2004, former first lady Nancy Reagan stayed there for the state funeral.

George H.W. Bush (3 nights)

As vice president, George H.W. Bush already had a home not far from the White House — the vice president's residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington. But he followed tradition and spent three nights at the Blair House before his inauguration, bringing his entire extended family with him. That's five children, their spouses, and 10 grandchildren.

With its 14 bedrooms, the Blair House accommodated them all.

“Blair House was fairly formal,” George W. Bush told The Washington Post at the time. “Until we moved in.”

Bill Clinton (9 nights)

Clinton spent most of his transition at the Hay-Adams,  a historic hotel across Lafayette Park from the White House, moving into Blair House for four uneventful nights just before his inauguration. Clinton cast the decision to stay at a hotel as a cost-saving move, because the Hay-Adams cost $1,175 a night as opposed to $15,000 a night for the Blair House. (Bush administration officials said at the time that Blair House was more secure, and that the savings would be offset by Secret Service costs.)

But the Clintons were forced to spend another five nights there in 1994 as workers overhauled the White House ventilation system. That stay was serendipitous: On the last night of the Clinton family's Blair House exile, an airplane pilot invaded White House air space and crashed his small plane on the White House south lawn, just two stories below the presidential bedroom.

George W. Bush (6 nights)

Not counting the time he spent there with his father, the second president Bush spent five nights during his transition at the Blair House.

He returned for one night in August 2014 to speak to an African Leaders Summit in Washington.

Barack Obama (5 nights)

The Obama family spent most of his transition in the Hay-Adams, because the Bush White House had already booked the Blair House for a visit by Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

But Obama's presidency will best remember Blair House for the February 2010 health care summit held there, in which Obama met with congressional leaders to hammer out the details of what became known as the Affordable Care Act.

Donald Trump (1 night)

Trump has spent less time at the Blair House than any of his predecessors since Ford, opting to conduct most of his transition out of Trump Tower in New York and spending only one night at Blair House.

But the house is conveniently located not just near the White House, but also another place associated with incoming presidents — St. John's Episcopal Church, where most presidents since Roosevelt have gone to pray the morning of their inauguration, is just a block away. Trump will do the same Friday morning.

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