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Mourning William McKinley

This exhibit explores the power of black cloth as part of public and private displays of bereavement at the White House. Between 1841 and 1963, eight American presidents died while in office. By examining the fabrics used to decorate the White House for their funerals, as well as the mourning fashions of their spouses, one can track displays of grief through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and observe the mourning traditions that were either preserved or discarded to meet the needs of a growing, modernizing nation.

William McKinley
Died on September 14, 1901

For the first time after the death of a sitting president, the White House façade was not decorated with black cloth for William McKinley due to a provision in an 1893 appropriations act that prohibited draping on federal buildings. The bare North Portico columns contrasted starkly with the memory of Lincoln and Garfield’s heavily festooned White House; one reporter complained, “...the existence of a federal statute prohibiting the draping of government buildings brought here and there into the outward show of the people's grief a hiatus which detracted not a little from the otherwise impressive grandeur of the pageant.”

Although the rules restricting a widow’s attire loosened considerably by the turn of the century, it seems First Lady Ida McKinley observed older, stricter mourning etiquette. She remained in mourning clothing until at least 1904, often with her face covered. At a memorial dinner for President McKinley held that year in Canton, Ohio, a journalist reported that “Mrs. McKinley entered the right-hand box and everybody arose…There was a moment of impressive silence, of reverence and respect,” and then, momentarily, “Mrs. McKinley threw back her veil,” and the entire hall erupted in applause as she smiled to the crowd. The reporter concluded, “to me, as to many, that was the great event of the whole evening.”

Gallery

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    William McKinley’s Funeral Procession Leaving the White House

    Date: September 17, 1901
    Creator: Unknown
    Medium: Photograph

    This photograph shows the North Portico with bare columns as the funeral procession carries President McKinley’s body to the Capitol building; the rituals of presidential mourning were changing in the new century.
    William McKinley Presidential Library & Museum

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    William McKinley Lying In State in the East Room

    Date: September 16, 1901
    Creator: Unknown
    Medium: Photograph

    The interiors of the White House lacked funerary decoration as well—the chandeliers and windows show no black drapery, and there were no floral arrangements in the room, save the flowers resting on the casket.
    William McKinley Presidential Library & Museum

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    The Funeral of President McKinley: New York’s Visible Signs of Mourning for the Martyred Leader of the Nation

    Date: September 28, 1901
    Creator: Unknown
    Medium: Photograph

    Harper’s Weekly published several pages of buildings in various American cities ornamented heavily in black cloth, perhaps to criticize the statute forbidding the draping of federal buildings in Washington. The reporter wrote, rather pointedly: “There was and there could be no Federal statute forbidding the display of the panoply of sorrow upon the human Temples of the Soul, the great mass of the citizens themselves, shown in the shaken forms, in the bent heads, in the streaming eyes of the multitude, who...turned out...to pay the last tribute of respect to the man who had labored for so many years among and for them.”
    Hathi Trust, Digitized by the University of Michigan

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    She Finds That Exercise Does Not Improve Her Spirits

    Date: October 18, 1900
    Creator: Charles Dana Gibson
    Medium: Print

    This satirical print from LIFE magazine is one of a series depicting various moments during a widow’s mourning. She walks in a cemetery, wearing an elegant black gown and a long veil bordered with a thick stripe of mourning crape. First Lady Ida McKinley visited her husband’s resting place daily. A friend who accompanied her on one of these trips, wrote: “In all the tragedies of the stage there is no scene more sorrowful or dramatic situation more striking and painful than Mrs. McKinley at the coffin of her husband… “No persuasion can cause the mourner to cease from weeping…bitterly, lamentably, without restraint…”
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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    Dress of First Lady Ida McKinley

    Date: ca. 1890-1899
    Creator: Unknown
    Medium: Silk, lace

    This gown owned by Ida McKinley demonstrates her fashion taste. The first lady’s favorite color was aqua, but she also liked lavender, ivory, and black. She strongly disliked red or yellow for her clothes. She enjoyed sumptuous fabrics—heavy satins, brocaded silk and rich silk failles—and substantial embellishments like embroidery, sequins, beads, faceted artificial jewels and pearls, and glittering cords of twisted metal threads. One of her surviving gowns even featured tiny square mirrors sewn onto the fabric. For her clothes, Mrs. McKinley patronized a Mrs. Dunstan of 6 East 30th Street, and Rock & Torpey of 13 West 29th Street, both of New York City, and a Mme. George of Baltimore and Paris. While none of the surviving gowns by these dressmakers are confirmed to be mourning attire, it is possible that she relied on her existing relationship with them when she needed a new mourning wardrobe.
    William McKinley Presidential Library & Museum

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    “Mourning Styles and Customs”

    Date: 1901
    Creator: The Delineator

    Mourning etiquette loosened considerably near the turn of the century, and mourning dress began to more closely align with the fashion of the day. This 1901 article from The Delineator magazine describes some of those changes. It remarked that “three months of absolute seclusion is now demanded before the widow may attend social functions of any character, the time formerly being one year.” It also noted that heavy crape veils were going out of style in favor of lighter, more transparent fabrics, which rarely obscured the face. When crape veils were worn, women preferred to drape them so the veil cascaded down the back of the head. In 1905, Harper’s Bazaar wrote “the crêpe veil is worn, but more often on a hat than on a bonnet, and with its fullness adjusted in most graceful folds, until the original idea of a veil to hide one’s features from the gaze of too curious or sympathetic friends has apparently been quite lost sight of.” Ida McKinley eschewed these less demanding rules - she continued to wear veils that obscured her face, and she refused social invitations for over a year after the assassination of President McKinley.
    Hathi Trust, Digitized by the University of Michigan

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