White House


The 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,
"The White House announced today a major new health care initiative."

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 Irish-American, was awarded the honor and construction began with
the laying of the cornerstone in October, 1792. The building he designed was
modelled on the first and second floors (or in American English second and
third floors) of Leinster House, a ducal palace in Dublin in 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". 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 in
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 US 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 2003) the most violent demonstration on
White House grounds in US history.

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:

   * 132 rooms
   * 35 bathrooms
   * 6 stories
   * 412 doors
   * 147 windows
   * 28 fireplaces
   * 8 staircases
   * 3 elevators
   * 5 full-time chefs
   * 5,000 visitors a day
   * a tennis court
   * a bowling lane
   * a movie theater
   * a jogging track
   * a swimming pool

It is one of the few government buildings in Washington that is
wheelchair-accessible, modifications 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 maintence 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.

The West Wing

In the early twentieth century, as the number of political staff working for
the President of the United States grew and presidents ceased to use the
presidential office located in the Capitol, two new wings were added, at
either side of the main White House. Both however were concealed by being
built at a lower level than the main house. The West Wing houses the
President's office and offices of his political staff.

It was built originally for President Theodore Roosevelt, and contained a
new cabinet room, with a small square office next door that served as the
President's office. Before the building of the West Wing, presidential staff
worked on the second floor. President William Howard Taft had the interior
remodelled. Central to the remodelling (literally!) was a new presidential
office in the dead centre of the building, which given its shape was
nicknamed the 'Oval Office'.

Hoban modelled the White House on its top two floors, both internally and
externally. An unpainted 'White House' would have an almost identical
facade, except for the White House's extended portico.
On December 24, 1929 (Christmas Eve), the West Wing was destroyed by fire.
When in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt became president, he had the third and
final major re-organisation take place, with a new Oval Office being
constructed; he disliked the original central location because it lacked
windows, as a result being entirely reliant on skylights. The new office's
location also allowed presidents greater privacy, they being able to slip
back and forth between the main White House and the West Wing without being
in full view of the West Wing staff, a problem with the two earlier offices.
Roosevelt also constructed a swimming pool, to enable him to exercise. In
1969, to accommodate the growing number of reporters accredited to the White
House and based also in the West Wing, President Richard Nixon had the by
now unused pool covered over. The swimming pool is now the location of the
Press Centre, where the President's spokesperson gives daily briefings.
Nixon also renamed the room which, prior to the rebuilding after the 1929
fire had been the first Oval Office as the Roosevelt Room, in honour of the
two presidents Roosevelt; Theodore who first built the West Wing, and
Franklin, who built the current Oval Office.

As presidential staff numbers climbed substantially in the latter half of
the twentieth century, the West Wing generally came to be seen as too small
for its modern governmental functions, some members of staff are located in
the Old Executive Building that formerly housed the Departments of Defence
and State, a short distance away. When asked whether The West Wing, an early
twenty-first century television drama set in the building, accurately
captured the working environment, some former White House staffers observed
that it made the real West Wing look bigger and less crowded than the
reality!

The East Wing

The East Wing, which contains additional office space, was added to the
White House in 1942 . Among its uses, the East Wing has intermittently
housed the offices and staff of the First Lady. Rosalynn Carter, in 1977,
was the first to place her personal office in the East Wing and to formally
call it the "Office of the First Lady".