The Grand Staircase is the chief stairway connecting the State Floor and the Second Floor of the White House, the official home of the president of the United States. The stairway is primarily used for a ceremony called the Presidential Entrance March. The present Grand Staircase, the fourth staircase occupying the same general space, was completed in 1952 as a part of the Truman White House reconstruction. The Grand Staircase is entered on the State Floor from the Entrance Hall.

Hoban and Latrobe’s staircases

Though White House architect James Hoban originally located the main ceremonial staircase at the west end of the Cross Hall, he placed a staircase in the present site of the Grand Staircase in both his initial 1793 plan and 1814 reconstruction designs. No section study exists to illustrate either of Hoban’s staircases. Hoban’s original design of the Grand Staircase at the west end of the Cross Hall was altered by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1803 during the administration of Thomas Jefferson. Hoban envisioned the Imperial stair form with a single central stair rising from the east to a landing on the west wall with double runs returning to the east on each side. Latrobe's alteration placed a double run on either side rising from the west to a landing on the east and a single run returning west to the second floor.

McKim's new Grand Staircase

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt engaged architect Charles Follen McKim, of the firm McKim, Mead, and White, to reconfigure and redesign the White House. McKim’s plan removed the Grand Staircase at the West End of the Cross Hall to increase the size of the