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The White HouseThe White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States. It is a white building located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW in Washington, D.C. As the office of the President, the term White House is often used symbolically to refer to the President's administration, as in, "Today, the White House announced a major new health care initiative."
HistoryThe 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 Irish-American, 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. Befitting the times, the building was originally referred to as the Presidential Palace or Presidential Mansion. First Lady Dolley Madison called it the "President's Castle" although starting in 1818 became known the to public as the "White House." 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. 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 the city burned, and the White House was gutted. Only the exterior walls remained, but it was rebuilt. The walls were painted white to cover the smoke damage. 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 2004) the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history. The White House was remarkably open to the public until the early party 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. Those open houses sometimes became rowdy: in 1829, President Andrew Jackson had to leave for a hotel when roughly 20,000 citizens celebrated his inauguration inside the White House. His aides ultimately had to lure the mob outside with washtubs filled with orange juice and whiskey. Even so, the practice continued until 1885, when newly-elected Grover Cleveland arranged for a presidential review of the troops from a grandstand in front of the White House instead of the traditional open house. Jefferson also permitted public tours of his home, which have continued ever since, except during wartime, and began the tradition of annual receptions on New Year’s Day and on the Fourth of July. Those receptions ended in the early 1930s. The White House remained open in other ways as well; President Abraham Lincoln complained that he was constantly beleaguered by job-seekers waiting to ask him for political appointments or other favors as he began the business day. Lincoln put up with the annoyance rather than risk alienating some associate or friend of a powerful politician or opinion-maker. Very few people realize the size of the White House, since much of it is below ground or otherwise minimized by landscaping. In fact, the White House has:
It is one of the few government buildings in Washington that is wheelchair-accessible, modifications having been made during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was confined to a wheelchair as a result of polio. In the mid 1940s, the building was found to be structurally unsound and in imminent danger of collapse. President Harry Truman was moved out to Blair House, while the White House was gutted; its interior was dismantled with the house left as a shell. It was then rebuilt using concrete and metal beams in place of its original wooden joints. Some modifications were made; the presidential residence on the top floors was extended, while a new balcony was added to the circular portico. Though the structural integrity of the building had been corrected in the 1940s, the interior, as a result of decades of poor maintenance and then the process of removal and reinstatement, had been allowed to deteriorate. Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of President John F. Kennedy (1961-63) remodelled the interior of many rooms to return them to their nineteenth century look, often using high quality furniture that had been put in storage in the basements and forgotten about. Later remodelling was undertaken by Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "White House" and from http://www.white-on.com also see: The White House: An Illustrated History [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
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