If you’ve ever wanted to visit the Oval Office, rooms of the State Floor, and all that encompasses the nation’s capitol’s most famous residence without obtaining official clearance, now’s your chance.
The White House Historical Association (WHHA) has created a permanent multimedia experience just a block away from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It’s a more in-depth tour than most people usually get of the “President’s Palace” and it’s totally free.
[Behind the Scenes of 'Renoir: A Luminous Evolution']
The People’s House: A White House Experience is a 33,000-square-foot venue that opened in Fall 2024 and features a variety of replicas and interactive exhibits that go well beyond the president’s office. Visitors can explore a large-scale White House model, the State Floor in 360-degree immersive projection, a full-scale replica of the Oval Office, and recreations of key White House moments. It also includes compelling stories about the presidents and their families.
Overall, visitors can explore more than 20 rooms filled with digital history spanning more than 200 years. That history also includes the wide range of unheralded individuals that have worked there through numerous administrations who you might not know, such as Dale Haney, who has been at the White House since 1972 as grounds superintendent. It’s all part of the WHHA’s mission, founded by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 as a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization to preserve the collections and stories of the Executive Mansion.
The People’s House: A White House Experience is located on the first three floors of the Mills Building, which was renovated at the beginning of the pandemic. Once the walls and miles of CAT-6 wiring were complete, Virginia-based system integrator Design and Production (D&P) set about implementing a bevy of Panasonic Connect displays and projectors—along with critical products from Chief, Draper, Extron, Logitech, Peerless-AV, QSC, Shure, and others—to make the exhibits come to life.
Limited Space, Maximum Effect
The ambitious educational project was completed by D&P in about 22 months, including design and reconstruction of the remodeled space that now houses the multimedia experience. A key challenge was working with the limited physical space to achieve the desired geometry for the visual displays. Panasonic Connect’s short-throw LCD projectors and 3-DLP projectors (including the 18,000-lumen model used in the Immersive Theater) helped overcome these constraints, allowing them to deliver impactful visuals while maximizing space efficiency.
“The vision for this project was to bring the White House to the people,” said Sue Lepp, SVP, technology systems group manager at D&P. “The venue offers a new, immersive way for the public to explore the White House’s history and legacy for free. It doesn’t replace or upgrade an existing project; this is a completely new experience, designed to educate and inspire visitors.”
All the interactive content was designed and produced by Ralph Appelbaum Associates out of New York and Cortina Productions from McLean, VA. Both companies have extensive experience designing and building new multimedia experiences around the world.
According to D&P, each technology choice was tailored to fit the venue’s physical constraints and storytelling needs, creating an engaging and seamless visitor experience. For example, in one section of the space, visitors can hover their hand in front of several large projection walls (supported by Panasonic Connect projectors), and then a window suddenly pops up. Now, they are looking at President Nixon landing on the South Lawn or perhaps a restoration of a famous object with descriptive text. Radar Touch sensors from Kleader accurately sense a visitor’s gesture anywhere on each wall and cue the computer-generated imagery and text.
As another example, as visitors take a seat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office replica—furnished with reproductions of the art, objects, and furniture that adorn the president’s office—a media column in the center of the room transforms as visitors approach, showing historic and contemporary images. The column provides visitors with a portal to significant moments in the Oval Office. “The Oval Office Reflective Totem” uses Panasonic 55-VF2H-VWB4D displays, ensuring the unmovable (existing) building column was useful for displaying content, while making it appear less intrusive.
Setting the Tone
“This venue is one of a kind, offering a deeply personal connection to the White House's history,” said D&P’s Lepp. “Visitors can engage with historical artifacts, reenactments, and interactive displays that celebrate the White House as "The People's House." Whether it’s dancing in the State Dining Room, exploring historical events, or interacting with the Biden family Bible replica, the experience is unparalleled in its depth and accessibility.”
The main supplier of the AV technology was Panasonic Connect, which provided dozens of 4K LED monitors of various sizes as well as long and short throw 4K laser projectors. For example, in the venue’s Immersive Theater, a Panasonic PT-RQ18KU projector with an ET-D75LE95 ultra-short-throw lens delivers stunning visuals while avoiding visitor shadows. For the State Dining Room, Panasonic PT-REQ10 4K projectors equipped with ultra-short-throw lenses create immersive floor-to-ceiling visuals.
[Back to School: Short-Throw Projectors Offer Advantages in the Classroom]
“The 'People’s House' experience is so different from a lot of the museums in the area,” said Cynthia Pawlowski, marketing manager for Panasonic Connect’s visual systems business. “It’s fully immersive, and nowadays with the younger generation, that makes it much more impactful. Panasonic was proud to be a partner in this project, which we expect will remain popular for years to come.”
In addition to the Panasonic equipment, LG transparent OLED displays are used in tandem with rear screen projection for each recreated 1/5 scaled model room of the White House interiors. Each five-sided room is transformed historically by the storytelling presented on the OLED displays.
Both the projected and OLED video are delivered by Dell computers—a total of 18 dual output computers, plus 17 Microsoft Surface Pro Tablets that allow the visitor to engage with sections of the model and its history via interactive touchscreens. These are all tied back via NETGEAR switching to a Dell server to support the interactive experiences.
“These frames included amplifiers, patch bays, switches, and computers or video servers when they were not local to the displays,” Lepp said. “In the majority of cases, we were able to avoid using extenders. With the high quantity of video displays, this was critical to maintaining the overall budget as well.”
Technology Compliments Content
The WHHA is extremely pleased with the results and has been receiving rave reviews of the interactive space. Luke Boorady, managing director of “The People’s House,” said they expect to see 250,000 visitors this year.
“While all of our technology vendors did an exceptional job supplying their respective technologies and getting it all to work together, Panasonic Connect, really stepped up and made our vision a reality,” he said. “This was a Herculean effort to be able to get it all done in 20 months, and to do it in the quality that they did is really, really incredible. Having trusted technology partners allowed us to focus on the storytelling.”
Thanks to an innovative system design, which includes a control room directly tied to his office, Boorady has control over any device in the building without leaving his desk. “If something goes down, the way that D&P implemented it, I can diagnose it from my office and immediately power cycle a monitor, projector, tablet, or whatever I needed to.”
In the end, it’s the subject matter and the highly detailed exhibits that really shine. “I think one of the things that we really focused on from a content perspective is featuring the people who aren't always featured in White House history,” Boorady noted. “Those are the are real people who work at the White House, regardless of who's president or who's first lady. And they care for that building.
"So we’ve done, I think, a really good job of weaving those stories throughout the experience. And that's something that I think people have been taking away, seeing the human aspect of the White House as well. It’s obviously a symbol of American democracy, but it's also a home. It's a workplace. It's a stage. You know, it wears so many different hats.”
