1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

The rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. There is such a house in our nation's capital, Washington DC, and this year, as every four years for more than a century and a half, men are contending for its occupancy, the highest honor that can be bestowed

upon an American by his country. The CBS Radio Workshop dedicated to man's imagination, the theater of the mind. Tonight, the biography of that graceful yet indestructible symbol of our nation, the White House. Home of our presidents at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, narrated by CBS News correspondent Alan Jackson.

In the beginning, there was a little more than a swamp by the rivers in, with a few hills rising here and there. But the country was new and swamped and not scared. Besides, it was an ideal location, just far enough in the so-called South to please the southern half of the new nation, and close enough to the North to satisfy that section

as well. So, on one of the low hills bordering to Potomac and Anacostia rivers, our ancestors began to build a new capital. And on the next hill, not much more than a mile away, they built a house of lasting grace to serve as residents for their chief executives, the presidents of the new United

States of America. General Washington, the first president, personally picked the site for the house in which he himself was destined never to live. The first occupant of the house was a stern man whose New England ancestors had weathered many storms in war and in peace.