With its intimate size, green silk-covered walls and early 19th-century American furniture, the Green Room is a favorite White House parlor. The room was referred to as the “Green Drawing Room" as far back as 1825 after a green floor covering was placed there during the Jefferson Administration.
In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy began a program to give a more formal, museum-like character to the public rooms of the White House. The Green Room was one of the notable rooms that Mrs. Kennedy helped redesign. Artwork in the room today includes Henry Ossawa Tanner's Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City, the first work by an African American artist to be added to the permanent White House collection.