A Place to Call Home

This week, 186 years after John Adams was sworn into the job, the U.S. Vice President and his family will at last get an officially designated home of their own. It is Admiral's House, a three-story gabled and turreted white brick Victorian mansion of 33 rooms on Embassy row, 21/2 miles northwest of the White House. But the 82-year-old Admiral's House has proved to be something of a rusty boat since Congress captured it by Executive fiat from the Navy, which had used it since 1928 to quarter the families of the chiefs of naval operations. The last resident, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, declared the house "a fire hazard," worried over the faulty electrical wiring, and complained that the roof and walls leaked. To make the place more livable, Congress has appropriated $485,000 for renovations, including installation of central air conditioning and a new heating system.

Gerald and Betty Ford, who were scheduled to attend last Sunday's first of nine house warming buffet suppers for members of Congress and other luminaries, were supposed to move into the house themselves during Ford's vice presidency. But a funny thing happened on the way from their home in suburban Alexandria, Va. So the new residents are, of course, Nelson and Happy Rockefeller, who will not move in until January, after the new heating-cooling system is installed. Even then, Happy and their sons Nelson Jr., 11, and Mark, 8, will spend much of their time in the family homes in New York and on Washington's Foxhall Road.

They have decked their official home with a handsome set of artworks, including 15 to 20 items from Rocky's personal collection. For the master bedroom they have donated the famous $35,000 "cage" bed designed by Surrealist Max Ernst, which will remain after the family leaves. It has a seven-foot mink coverlet, trap doors for lamps, telephones and stereo controls, as well as accompanying sun and moon medallions at the head and foot, and a lithograph of Ernst's painting The Great Ignoramus. The Rockefellers have also contributed a dozen pieces of furniture, including Korean and Japanese chests, which will remain after the family vacates the house.

In her first attempt at decorating since she married Nelson Rockefeller twelve years ago, Happy Rockefeller has given the house a soothing cast of whites and beiges, enlivened with comfortable furnishings in warm earth tones. Among the buffet guests invited to ogle the digs were Movie Idol Cary Grant, TV Hostess Barbara Walters, Astronaut Alan Shepard and Publisher William Randolph Hearst. Happy Rockefeller will not be standing on ceremony with any of them. "I just want everyone to feel they can have a good time," she says, "and put their feet up and relax." She does contemplate one further addition: a swing on the huge white oak tree beside the house. "I love to swing," she notes ebulliently. "It clears the head."

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