THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 16, 1996 TAG: 9609150312
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 107 lines
I WAS HAVING TEA at the White House. Well, almost.
The White House was about 50 feet away, glowing with the brilliance of an oyster shell in the flood of sunshine streaming through the skylights of a newly renovated Military Circle Mall.
The shrunken miniature - weighing 10 tons - sat on a table 952 feet square. I sat with its creator drinking tea in a glass-fronted room directly across from it. The room is a temporary museum that includes the gowns of a few first ladies.
At my left stood a likeness of John F. Kennedy. A mannequin resembling Franklin D. Roosevelt was seated at the table with us, erect and jaunty in his wheelchair.
The table where we sat gazing at John Zweifel's re-creation of the White House in miniature was set with plates and glasses normally used for state dinners at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. - right down to the presidential seal embroidered on the linen napkins.
Zweifel spent 34 years creating his masterpiece, an incredible like
ness of the presidential residence that is 60 feet by 20 feet. The scale is 1 inch to 1 foot. It is authentic down to the most minute detail.
Made of a wood body over a steel frame, covered by a Formica skin, the model offers a cutaway look of the White House.
In the 132 rooms, clocks tick, phones ring, chandeliers and lamps light up. Flames flicker in the fireplace, and smoke rises from the east wing chimney. The replica contains more than 1,000 hand-carved pieces of furniture, most using the same wood used to fashion the original. Drapes and bedspreads are duplicated down to the last tassel.
Reducing the scale meant creating a few headaches, Zweifel conceded. For instance, there are 30 styles of miniature lightbulbs, including screw-in bulbs.
``Most of them are size of a grain of rice,'' he said. ``And changing a difficult one can take up to five hours.''
Even the carpets reproduce the originals stitch for stitch and the miniature TVs actually work.
The creator - who lives in Orlando, Fla., - had been in Norfolk for four days, working night and day, to prepare his triumph of miniaturization for the Saturday opening.
``We try to keep it as accurate and as up-to-date as possible,'' he said, as we walked around the corner of the structure's west wing, passing a miniature wooden guard who sat in a security hut, swiveling his head from side to side.
Zweifel stood beside the Oval Office pointing to the tiny mahogany desk.
``Rex Scouten, the White House curator, informs me when there are changes,'' he said. ``I couldn't keep up otherwise. For instance, I have a wee, wooden book to go on the corner of the desk for this exhibit. It's David McCullough's biography of Harry Truman.
``Clinton had already read the book but is now re-reading it, Scouten tells me.''
Zweifel has worked so long and hard on the project, researching so much history associated with the furnishings, that he's qualified to teach a course on the White House.
Outside the Lincoln bedroom, he lectured: ``Lincoln used the bedroom as his office, even though he had an official office at the other end of the house. That table you see was one of the most difficult pieces of furniture we had to carve. (The 2 1/2-inch-tall table required 60 hours). The Lincoln bed was used as an embalming site for Lincoln. And Grover Cleveland's daughter was born in it.''
Uniquely talented, Zweifel has been carving since the age of 4. By the age of 14 he had carved a 12,000-piece ``Greatest Little Show on Earth.'' He took that miniature circus on the road. After attending the Art Institute of Chicago, he visited the White House for the first time in 1956.
He dreamed of re-creating it in miniature so that the millions who could not visit it could enjoy and appreciate it.
``I wanted to do it as a gift to the American people,'' he said.
The fulfillment of his dream is a study in perseverance. To do the project he had to know the dimensions of objects and the footage of rooms. In short, to measure everything and photograph it.
Kennedy was interested but was assassinated before he gave the permission Zweifel required. Zweifel's requests to measure and photograph were turned down repeatedly thereafter.
``They wouldn't even tell me the dimensions of a piano that I requested,'' he noted. ``The project would have failed without the cooperation of President Gerald Ford,'' he said. ``He agreed to let me do it. He went away on vacation and told his staff to let me go anywhere I liked.''
Since Ford, every president has sung Zweifel's praise and he has visited the White House many times. Ronald Reagan wrote: ``Even the acorns I fed to the squirrels have been reproduced in front of the Oval Office!'' Ford later wrote the introduction to Zweifel's book ``The White House in Miniature,'' published in 1994 by W.W. Norton & Co.
Most of the miniature White House was done by Zweifel and members of his family - but not all. For example, carver Robert C. Robinson spent five or six weeks a year for five years to help make the 2,250 miniature books in the White House library.
The entire project is estimated to have consumed more than 500,000 man hours.
After touring the 50 states, where it was seen by 42 million Americans, the replica was exhibited in 1992 and 1993 at the Smithsonian Institution and Kennedy and Reagan libraries.
And now it is the centerpiece of the renovated Military Circle Mall. An odd place for a miniature masterpiece that has been displayed in museums here and abroad.
``Not at all,'' Zweifel said. ``Today's malls are what used to be town commons. The White House belongs to the people. And this is where the people go.''
Guess he's right, huh? Anyway, it's free. And worth the trip. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Vicki Cronis/The Virginian-Pilot
John Zweifel's 60-foot replica of the White House contains more than
1,000 pieces of furniture. by CNB