The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800 when the national capital was moved from Philadelphia. The White House is also a metonym for the Executive Office of the President.
The residence was designed by the Irish-born architect James Hoban in the Neoclassical style. Hoban modeled the building on Leinster House in Dublin, a building which today houses the Oireachtas, the Irish legislature. Constructed between 1792 and 1800, its exterior walls are Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he and his architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe added low colonnades on each wing to conceal what then were stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by British forces in the burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. 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, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1902. Eight years later, in 1909, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office, which was eventually moved and expanded. In the Executive Residence, the third floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as a reception area for social events; Jefferson's colonnades connected the new wings. The East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space. By 1948, the residence's load-bearing walls and wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the interior rooms were completely dismantled and a new internal load-bearing steel frame was constructed inside the walls. On the exterior, the Truman Balcony was added. Once the structural work was completed, the interior rooms were rebuilt. Under Donald Trump, the original East Wing was demolished in 2025 for an under-construction new East Wing including a ballroom.
The present-day White House complex includes the Executive Residence (with six stories: the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, and Third Floor, and a two-story basement), the West Wing, an under-construction East Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which previously served the State Department and other departments (it now houses additional offices for the president's staff and the vice president), and Blair House, a guest residence. The property is maintained by the National Park Service as part of the White House and President's Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of America's Favorite Architecture.
Following his inauguration on April 30, 1789, President George Washington occupied two private houses in New York City, which served as the nation's first executive mansion. He lived at the first, Walter Franklin House, which was owned by Treasury Commissioner Samuel Osgood, at 3 Cherry Street, through late February 1790. The executive mansion moved to the larger quarters at Alexander Macomb House at 39–41 Broadway, where Washington stayed with his wife Martha and a small staff until August 1790. In May 1790, construction began on Government House, a new official residence in Manhattan.
Washington, however, never lived at Government House since the national capital was moved to Philadelphia in 1790, where it remained through 1800. The July 1790 Residence Act designated the capital be permanently located in the new Federal District, and temporarily in Philadelphia for ten years while the permanent capital was built. Philadelphia rented the mansion of Robert Morris, a merchant, at 190 High Street, now 524–30 Market Street, as the President's House, which Washington occupied from November 1790 to March 1797. Since the house was too small to accommodate the 30 people who then made up the presidential family, staff, and servants, Washington had the house enlarged.
President John Adams, who succeeded Washington and served as the nation's second president, occupied the High Street mansion in Philadelphia from March 1797 to May 1800. Philadelphia began construction of a much grander presidential mansion several blocks away in 1792. It was nearly completed by the time of Adams' 1797 inauguration. However, Adams chose not to occupy it, saying he did not have congressional authorization to lease the building. It remained vacant until 1800 when it was sold to the University of Pennsylvania.
On Saturday, November 1, 1800, Adams became the first president to occupy the White House. President's House in Philadelphia was converted into Union Hotel and then used for stores before being demolished in 1832.
The President's House was a major feature of Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's 1791 plan for the newly established federal city of Washington, D.C. After L'Enfant's dismissal in early 1792, Washington and his secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who both had personal interests in architecture, agreed that the design of the President's House and the Capitol would be chosen in a design competition.
Nine proposals were submitted for the new presidential residence with the award going to Irish-American architect James Hoban. Hoban supervised the construction of both the U.S. Capitol and the White House. Hoban was born in Ireland and trained at the Dublin Society of Arts. He emigrated to the U.S. after the American Revolution, first seeking work in Philadelphia and later finding success in South Carolina, where he designed the state capitol in Columbia.
President Washington visited Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1791 on his Southern Tour, and saw the Charleston County Courthouse then under construction, which had been designed by Hoban. Washington is reputed to have met with Hoban during the visit. The following year, Washington summoned the architect to Philadelphia and met with him in June 1792.
On July 16, 1792, the president met with the commissioners of the federal city to make his judgment in the architectural competition. His review is recorded as being brief, and he quickly selected Hoban's submission.
The Neoclassical design of the White House is based primarily on architectural concepts inherited from the Roman architect Vitruvius and the Paduan architect Andrea Palladio. The design of the upper floors also includes elements based on Dublin's Leinster House, which later became the seat of the Irish parliament (Oireachtas). The upper windows with alternate triangular and segmented pediments are inspired by the Irish building. Additionally, several Georgian-era Irish country houses have been suggested as sources of inspiration for the overall floor plan, including the bow-fronted south front and the former niches in the present-day Blue Room.
The first official White House guide, published in 1962, suggested a link between Hoban's design for the South Portico and Château de Rastignac, a neoclassical country house in La Bachellerie in the Dordogne region of France. Construction on the French house was initially started before 1789, interrupted by the French Revolution for 20 years, and then finally built between 1812 and 1817 based on Salat's pre-1789 design.
The conceptual link between the two houses has been criticized because Hoban did not visit France. Supporters of the connection contend that Thomas Jefferson, during his tour of Bordeaux in 1789, viewed Salat's architectural drawings, which were on file at École Spéciale d'Architecture. On his return to the U.S., Jefferson then shared the influence with Washington, Hoban, Monroe, and Benjamin Henry Latrobe.