In July 1974, a flustered Betty Ford stood behind the gates of the U.S. Naval Observatory, inspecting a new official residence neither she nor Vice President Gerald R. Ford particularly wanted and finding it stripped bare. One official declared the residence “as empty as Tara,” exaggerating the Second Lady into a distressed Scarlett O’Hara following the sacking of the Gone with the Wind heroine’s plantation by Union soldiers. At the very least, the visit – perhaps combined with the thought of decorating 33 rooms without incurring a scandalous expense – left the Second Lady thirsty. “When she asked for a drink of water,” the Washington Post reported, “an embarrassed Navy steward had to tell her that there were no glasses and no paper cups, either.”
The bulky, Queen Anne-style mansion, described by one critic as “more steamboat than luxury liner,” hadn’t always felt so forlorn. In its past life, from 1928 to 1974, Washingtonians had known it as the “Admiral’s House,” the official residence of the chief of naval operations (CNO). A showcase of women’s hidden political influence within the nation’s military elite, it had seen formal dinners and family gatherings, tasteful tea parties and late-night cigars, all presided over by the CNO’s spouse. One of those events feels especially timely, taking place just after the festivities of Franklin Roosevelt’s second inauguration. It was a tea party held in February 1937, following Admiral William D. Leahy’s own oath of office as CNO. Guests found the home alive with lavish decorations and tasteful furnishings, newly brought under the spell of Leahy’s wife Louise as she reintroduced her family to Washington society.
Louise Leahy was forceful, worldly, and ambitious. She was, as historian Phillips O’Brien puts it, a “determined and politically minded hostess who helped drive [her husband] to the top.” When the Leahys were posted to Washington two decades earlier, Louise entertained far above her family’s station, linking William to “movers and shakers” like Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels long before his rank merited it. Her parties became widely known, at least enough to receive coverage in the city’s society pages.

Frivolous though they may appear, such parties mattered. Leahy’s predecessor as CNO, William V. Pratt, had once confessed that, despite the public’s fascination with the formal halls of power, “big affairs are sometimes settled easier over the dinner table than they are in the office.” Verging into a gripe, he continued, “I have no flair for formal entertaining. I hate it.” Nevertheless, he believed entertaining an essential responsibility of the office, one that he too farmed out to his wife. Ultimately, Pratt writes, “our duties were evenly divided, mine in the office, hers in the home.”
At the Leahy family’s inaugural tea, strains of the navy band drifted down from the second floor as Louise and William mingled with notables like Lulie Swanson (the navy secretary’s wife), an assortment of naval officers, and diplomats from far-flung locales like France, the Soviet Union, Japan, and Peru. The Leahys received guests in the home’s drawing room, with blue coverings on sofas and chairs marking the room’s “dominant color note” while “palms and ferns and bouquets of pink roses added to the attractive setting.” Tea was served in the dining room across a red-carpeted hall, with “red damask hangings, a red rug and red carnations” adding warmth, and a lush maidenhair fern forming the table’s centerpiece. Louise wore a black velvet gown with little silver bugles on the sleeves. The party must have been a success. The following week, the Washington Herald declared that Louise “bids fair to being one of the most popular occupants” of the home “in many a long day.”

For the next two years, until the Leahys accepted appointments as Governor and First Lady of Puerto Rico, Louise hosted benefits, attended state dinners, and launched ships, occasionally standing in at events when Lulie Swanson fell ill. She acted as patron for institutions like the Naval Relief Society, Smith College, and the American Red Cross. She dragged William to the opera and the symphony, her charisma and social graces seeming to open doors for a husband the Washington Post once described as seeming solemn, even sinister to those who didn’t know him, and whose “owlish” profile made him appear in photographs “as if we were forever smelling bad fish.”
By the Second World War, William was serving Franklin Roosevelt in a role comparable to today’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Behind the scenes, those tea parties and fancy gowns had been a part of his rise. Was throwing oneself into Washington’s social life sufficient to attain political power? No, but it was essential. And Louise, as her son later recalled, “was an expert at it.”
As for the home’s furniture, what was lost was soon found – though not by Betty Ford. Just a month after her 1974 visit to the Observatory grounds, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency and the Fords found themselves in the White House. But within a few years, the vice presidential residence was vibrant and ready again for entertaining, filled with pieces from the private collection of Margaretta “Happy” Rockefeller and Nelson Rockefeller and then redecorated by Joan Mondale, who borrowed from the nation’s museums to transform it into a “showpiece of contemporary art.” Subsequent vice presidential families have each put their own touches on the residence, and once again made it a home.
Researchers can find much more on the history of the former Admiral’s House in Manuscript Division collections, from the records of the U.S. Naval Observatory and papers of astronomers such as Simon Newcomb, to the many holdings that comprise the Naval Historical Foundation Collection.

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“Washington Post…” Maxine Cheshire, “Gift for the House That Has Nothing,” Washington Post, July 21, 1974, M1.
“one critic…” Gail S. Cleere, The House on Observatory Hill: Home of the Vice President of the United States (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1989), 17.
“widely known…” Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff (New York: Caliber, 2020), 25-26, 44.
“Pratt writes…” William V. Pratt, “Chief of Naval Operations,” 9-10, Box 1, William Veazie Pratt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“Washington Herald…” “The Navy’s First Lady,” Washington Herald, February 14, 1937, Box 15, William Leahy Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Also see “Leahys Hold 1st ‘at Home’ Since Return,” Washington Post, February 7, 1937, Box 15, William Leahy Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“She acted…” O’Brien, Second Most Powerful Man, 126; “Mrs. Leahy Hostess at Benefit Today,” Washington Star, May 12, 1937, Box 15, William Leahy Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; “Tea Given Yesterday for Red Cross Members,” Washington Post, October 2, 1937, Box 15, William Leahy Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; “Smith College Scholarship Benefit,” Washington Star, January 16, 1938, Box 15, William Leahy Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“described…” O’Brien, Second Most Powerful Man, 441.
“later recalled…” Henry H. Adams, Witness to Power: The Life of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1985), 94.
“within a few years…” Cleere, House on Observatory Hill, 43-44.