Blair House's unusually wide Federal style facade serves as the ceremonial front and entrance to five houses that now comprise the official guest house of the president. Built in 1824 by Dr. Joseph Lovell, the house's most important early historical associations occurred during its occupancy by Montgomery Blair, Abraham Lincoln's postmaster general. Both the facade and interiors have been repeatedly rebuilt or restored in the twentieth century. Many of its interiors were acquired from demolished or denuded Federal period houses from other parts of the country. Some rooms are composed of elements from many different buildings, only a few of which are known. In the 1920s Maj. Gist Blair had the carved wood trim from Alexander Parris's 1801 Joseph Holt Ingraham House in Portland, Maine, installed in the then

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dining room and the small room to the right of the front entry.