Episode 3: Architect
Leon Czolgosz, McKinley’s assassin, is strapped into the newly invented electric chair. The sentence is carried out.
Back in Washington DC, the decorum of the McKinley years has vanished. Theodore Roosevelt now occupies the presidency - energetic, commanding, and full of reformist zeal. Amid this new tempo, George B. Cortelyou remains - retained not out of tradition, but because he knows Cortelyou is an asset not to be lost.
Cortelyou, once a steady right hand to McKinley, now finds himself working with a president closer to a peer than a patriarch. Their dynamic is different - Roosevelt, boisterous and larger than life; Cortelyou, refined and composed. Yet, a bond of mutual respect grows between them. A memorable moment has Roosevelt bounding up the grand staircase, chasing his children and nearly colliding with Cortelyou. TR grins, “I’m glad you’re here, Cortelyou.”
As energetic piano music plays, we witness Cortelyou reshaping the Executive Mansion into a modern institution: A formal staff code of conduct is distributed. Desks are cleared daily. Presidential travel is streamlined via a new logistics manual. Press access is regularized, laying the foundation for modern press conferences. Letters are screened, sorted, and responded to with new efficiency. The Secret Service is given the responsibility to officially protect the President. The Executive Mansion is renamed to simply, “White House.”
During it all, Cortelyou develops a closer friendship with the building’s Chief Stewart, a middle-aged Black man who has been at the position for years.
Later, Roosevelt has dinner with national Black leader, Booker T. Washington – which makes history as the first time a sitting President has had a black man to dinner in the White House. Edith Roosevelt and their daughter attend as well. Its a proud moment for The White House’s Black domestic staff as Washington is seated at the table. But, the event unexpectedly ignites fury in the segregated South, and creates an early political challenge for the new Administration.
EXT. PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS – MORNING – SEPTEMBER 1902
A bright summer morning. Roosevelt and Cortelyou sit side-by-side in an open horse-drawn carriage, en route to a countryside event. Not far behind them, a public trolley packed with townspeople urge the motorman to speed up - people want to catch a glimpse of the President. The carriage nears a tight bend where the trolley tracks veer suddenly toward the road’s shoulder.
Cortelyou glances right, his eyes widen, metal screeches.