Obama has the White House, but where does Vice President Joe Biden live?
| Washington
The other day, a friend asked us an interesting question: Why does Vice President Joe Biden have so many meetings at the US Naval Observatory?
You see it on his schedule all the time: 9:30 a.m. VP Joe Biden to meet Secretary of State Clinton at Naval Observatory; 11 a.m. VP Joe Biden greets National Spelling Bee champions at Naval Observatory; 12 noon VP Joe Biden tips pizza delivery guy at Naval Observatory; and so forth. (Yes, we made that last one up.)
We liked the question because it illuminated the divide between what Washingtonians know as a matter of course and what the rest of the nation doesn鈥檛. Ask pretty much anybody who鈥檚 worked for or around the federal government and they鈥檒l shrug and tell you the answer: because that鈥檚 where he lives.
Technically speaking, he lives at , a Victorian home that serves as the US vice president鈥檚 official residence. The house sits on a high point of the Naval Observatory grounds, a big swath of open land just north of the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. It鈥檚 hard to drive through upper Northwest D.C. without skirting it.
Didn鈥檛 know the veep had a government home? What did you think 鈥� that Biden sleeps on a pull-out sofa in the West Wing and raids Obama鈥檚 fridge when POTUS is busy with Speaker John Boehner?
Vice presidents have had . Congress ordered the move mostly because it was getting very expensive to outfit each new VP鈥檚 private home with security and communications equipment.
The house was already government property. It was built in the late 1800s as the home of the Naval Observatory鈥檚 superintendent. In 1923, the Chief of Naval Operations booted the superintendent to lesser quarters so he could have the house. It鈥檚 quite nice, actually.
A couple of years ago Biden mentioned to a reporter that he鈥檇 been shown a secret bunker in the basement. His spokesman later said he鈥檇 misspoken. Maybe he鈥檇 really seen a secret passage of a different sort 鈥� one that leads to the telescopes the Navy still operates on the grounds.
