Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

that were in the Mansion. And the one that was in the State Dining Room, on the main
floor, we found out it actually controlled the heat in the basement and the second floor.
And the thermostat that was on the second floor in the hall controlled the third floor and
the main floor.
Hughes: That made perfect sense, didn’t it?! I don’t know why you hadn’t figured that out
earlier.
Evans: They fixed the plumbing problems, and upgraded the electricity and all of that.
They found that, actually, when the house was built, it was just the posts on the floor.
There wasn’t a lot of concrete in the basement.
Hughes: So it was like gutting the
White House in the Truman era.
Evans: Yes. They found a lot of
stuff, including some wonderful
little old whiskey bottles that went
to the museum.
Hughes: I love it when stuff like
that turns up. Anything else?
Evans: We found some papers and
things. But we added on two guest
bedrooms and some bathrooms.
Renovation finally gets under way in the Mansion. Washington State Archives
The place needed more bathrooms. I remember very vividly an incident when we first
arrived (in 1965) and opened up the house for weekly tours, which had never happened
before. The retirement homes found out about it. They’re always looking for places to
go and things to do, and we had busloads come to the Mansion. But the first time this
happened a busload arrived and they couldn’t get up the driveway because it curves too
much and it’s too narrow. So they had to park down below somewhere. These were
generally elderly people, and they had come from Seattle. I was always at the front door
to greet people, and they all wanted to go to the bathroom: “Hello, I’m Nancy Evans” and
they all said, “Where is your bathroom?” Well, there was one bathroom off what is now
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