The White House: Everything You Need to Know About the US Presidents Residence

Table Of Content

• Public Space and the Executive Residence
• The US Supreme Court Building
• History Hit Reveals Winners of Historic Photographer of the Year 2023
• Early history
• White House Down: War of 1812 & Burning of Washington
• A History of the White House: The US President’s Home
• The Eisenhower Executive Office Building
• How to Pick Exterior House Colors

Firstly, architects can learn the importance of adaptability in design from the White House. The original design by James Hoban was basic enough to allow future presidents to make modifications according to their needs. This flexibility in design is a crucial lesson for architects, as it allows for the evolution of a building over time, accommodating changing needs and technologies. Secondly, the White House exemplifies using architectural techniques such as arches and vaulting for aesthetic and functional purposes. These techniques supported heavy masses that would otherwise require bearing walls or pillars. This demonstrates the importance of integrating form and function in architectural design.

Public Space and the Executive Residence

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Some spaces, such as the air conditioning room, the water purification plant, the control room, and the electrical switching room, are two stories high. The basements of the White House were not part of the original structure. The second president to occupy the White House was Thomas Jefferson, who moved in March 1801, with the residence still unfinished. Today, the home of America's president has six floors, seven staircases, 132 rooms, 32 bathrooms, 28 fireplaces, 147 windows, 412 doors and 3 elevators. Yet another disaster struck in 1929 when a fire swept through the West Wing. Then, after World War II, the two main floors of the building were gutted and completely renovated.

The US Supreme Court Building

The Washington Monument evolved into a simple, tapered stone obelisk topped with a pyramid, which was inspired by ancient Egyptian architecture. At the entrance, steps lead to a portico with Ionic columns supporting a triangular pediment. Carvings in the pediment depict Thomas Jefferson with four other men who helped draft the Declaration of Independence. Inside, the memorial room is an open space circled by columns made of Vermont marble.

History Hit Reveals Winners of Historic Photographer of the Year 2023

This idea was ruled out as too costly, so a variety of other plans were considered. Architects George Frederick Bodley and Henry Vaughn lavished the cathedral with pointed arches, flying buttresses, stained-glass windows, and other details borrowed from Medieval Gothic architecture. Among the cathedral's many gargoyles is a playful sculpture of "Star Wars" villain Darth Vader, added after children submitted the idea to a design competition. To build this monument would have cost over a million dollars (more than $21 million today).

Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817. Exterior construction continued with the addition of the semicircular South Portico in 1824 and the North Portico in 1829. Because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901.

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President Bill Clinton briefly revived the New Year's Day open house in his first term. The White House became one of the first wheelchair-accessible government buildings in Washington, D.C. When modifications were made during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair because of his paralytic illness. The wallpaper had hung previously on the walls of another mansion until 1961 when that house was demolished for a grocery store. Just before the demolition, the wallpaper was salvaged and sold to the White House.

The sandstone walls weren't painted white until the White House was reconstructed after the British fires. The White House cornerstone was laid in 1792, but a house in Ireland may have been the model for its design. The mansion in the new U.S. capital was built using drawings by Irish-born James Hoban, who had studied in Dublin.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building

This is the less formal side of the property, where presidents have planted rose gardens, vegetable gardens, and constructed temporary athletic and play equipment. The ground floor of the Executive Mansion is used for events and is “public space.” The second and third floors are the executive residence, where the president lives with their family. In 1927, the attic of the Executive Mansion was expanded and became its third floor. Similar to their Oval Office, presidents have been allowed to renovate parts of the Executive Mansion and executive residence. Many presidents with children have installed playground equipment on the White House grounds and held events and receptions like prom parties and wedding receptions at the mansion.

How to Pick Exterior House Colors

This includes the use of “accessibility roadmaps” to plan and measure accessibility efforts and take actionable steps to remediate non-conformance on time. Fourthly, the White House has made efforts to ensure the physical accessibility of its premises. This includes ensuring that all federal office buildings and workplaces are accessible to employees with disabilities by the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 and related standards.

Lastly, the White House has been an aspirational architectural emblem, with prominent business people, organizations, and foreign dignitaries building mansions modeled after America’s most famous address. Several factory owners and bankers in the 19th century purchased white-columned villas resembling the presidential home to display their prestige and power. 20th-century examples include full-scale replicas of the White House by the religious group Rosicrucians in California and businessperson William Fox in New York. Overseas, the former royal palace in Haiti and presidential compounds in Nigeria, Sudan, and Taiwan reflect the commanding architecture found in the iconic building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the Neoclassical style.[4] Hoban modeled the building on Leinster House in Dublin, a building which today houses the Oireachtas, the Irish legislature. Construction took place between 1792 and 1800, with an exterior of Aquia Creek sandstone painted white.

Businessmen in Philadelphia and New York sought to lure the president by building great residences for him, but George Washington selected a site currently located between Virginia and Maryland on the Potomac River. He believed that the location would be the seed for a great capital city, the equal of Paris or London. In 1842 the visit to the United States of the English novelist Charles Dickens brought an official invitation to the White House. After his calls at the White House door went unanswered, Dickens let himself in and walked through the mansion from room to room on the lower and upper floors. Finally coming upon a room filled with nearly two dozen people, he was shocked and appalled to see many of them spitting on the carpet.

The bow is flanked by five bays, the windows of which, as on the north façade, have alternating segmented and pointed pediments at first-floor level. The bow has a ground-floor double staircase leading to an Ionic colonnaded loggia and the Truman Balcony, built in 1946.[33] The more modern third floor is hidden by a balustraded parapet and plays no part in the composition of the façade. The Neoclassical design of the White House is based primarily on architectural concepts inherited from the Roman architect Vitruvius and the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. Architect Eric Gugler more than doubled the space of what was becoming known as the “West Wing,” added a swimming pool in the west terrace for the polio-stricken president, and moved the Oval Office to the southeast corner. A new east wing was constructed in 1942, its cloakroom transformed into a movie theater.