The
White House is the official residence and principal
workplace of the President of the United
States.
It
is a white painted, neoclassical sandstone mansion
located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW in Washington,
D.C. (38° 53' 51? N 77° 02' 12? W). As the
office of the President of the United States, the
term White House is often used as a metonym for the
President's administration, as in, "Today, the
White House announced a new health care initiative."
The Secret Service codename for it is "Crown."
The property is owned by the National Park Service
and is part of President's Park.
An
image of the White House is on the back of the U.S.
$20 bill. Presidential residences, both temporary
and permanent, in the midwestern or western regions
of the country, have often been called the Western
White House.
The
White House was built after the creation of the District
of Columbia by an Act of Congress in December, 1790.
President George Washington himself helped select
the site, along with city planner Pierre L'Enfant.
The architect was chosen in a competition, which received
nine proposals. James Hoban, an Irishman, was awarded
the honor and construction began with the laying of
the cornerstone on October 13, 1792. The building
he designed was modelled on the first and second floors
of Leinster House, a ducal palace in Dublin, Ireland
that is now the seat of the Irish Parliament. Contrary
to widely published myth, the North portico was not
modelled on a similar portico on another Dublin building,
the Viceregal Lodge (now Áras an Uachtaráin,
residence of the President of Ireland). Its portico
in fact postdates the White House portico's design.
Construction
of the White House was completed on November 1, 1800.
Over an extremely slow 8 years of construction, $232,371.83
was spent. With inflation, this would be approximately
equivalent to $2.4 million today.
The
building was originally referred to as the Presidential
Palace or Presidential Mansion. Dolley Madison called
it the "President's Castle." However,
by 1811, the first evidence of the public calling
it the "White House" emerged, because
of its white-painted stone exterior. The name Executive
Mansion was often used in official context until
President Theodore Roosevelt established the formal
name by having "The White House" engraved
on his stationery in 1901.
The “President's House,” built under George Washington's personal supervision, was the finest residence in the land and possibly the largest. In a nation of wooden houses, it was built of stone and ornamented with understated stone flourishes. It did not fit everyone's concept for the home of the leader of the young democracy. Abigail Adams found it cold; Thomas Jefferson thought it too big and impractical. He added gardens, a cooking stove, and storage.
Whatever one's opinion of the original design, our nation is now inseparably associated with the White House. There, the essential business of the land is conducted every day. There, our history has been made and reflected.
John
Adams became the first president to take residence
in the building on November 1, 1800. In 1814, during
the War of 1812, much of Washington, D.C. was set
alight by British troops, and the White House was
gutted. Only the exterior walls remained, but it was
rebuilt. The walls were repainted white, but it is
important to point out that the White House was always
painted white as early as 1798, and the repainting
from the fire damage did not originate the term "White
House" as a popular urban legend claims it did.
Leinster House in Dublin
The
18th century ducal palace in Dublin served as a model
for the White House.The White House was attacked again
on August 16, 1841 when U.S. President John Tyler
vetoed a bill which called for the establishment of
the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig
Party members rioted outside the White House in what
was (and still is, as of 2005) the most violent demonstration
on White House grounds in U.S. history.
Like
the English and Irish country houses it aped, the
White House was remarkably open to the public until
the early part of the twentieth century. President
Thomas Jefferson held an open house for his second
inaugural in 1805, when many of the people at his
swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol followed him
home, where he greeted them in the Blue Room.
