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The White House is the official home and principal workplace of the President of the United States of America. The house is built of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the late Georgian style. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. As the office of the U.S. President, the term "White House" is used as a metonym for a U.S. president's administration. The property is owned by the National Park Service and is part of the President's Park.
The young republic's new capital city was sited on land ceded by two states—Virginia and Maryland—which both transferred ownership of the land to the federal government in response to a compromise with President Washington. The D.C. commissioners were charged by Congress with building the new city under the direction of the President. The architect of the White House was chosen in a competition, which received nine proposals. President Washington traveled to the site of the new federal city on July 16, 1792 to make his judgment. His review is recorded as being brief and he quickly selected the submission of James Hoban, an Irishman living in Charleston, South Carolina. The briefness of Washington's review of the plans may have been due to the majority of the submissions being awkward and naïve. Washington was not entirely pleased with the original Hoban submission. He found it too small, lacking ornament, and not fitting the nation's president. On Washington's recommendation the house was enlarged by thirty percent, a large reception hall, the present East Room, was added. This was likely inspired by the large reception room at Mount Vernon.
The building Hoban designed is verifiably influenced by the first and second floors of Leinster House, a ducal palace in Dublin, Ireland, which is now the seat of the Irish Parliament. Several other Georgian era Irish country houses have been suggested as sources of inspiration for the overall floor plan, details like the bow-fronted south front, and interior details like the former niches in the present Blue Room. These influences though undocumented, are cited in the official White House guide, and in White House Historical Association publications. 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 located in La Bachellerie in the Dordogne region of France and designed by Mathurin Salat. The French house was built 1812–1817, based on an earlier design. The link has been criticised because Hoban did not visit France. Supporters of a connection posit that Thomas Jefferson while visiting the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture (Bordeaux Architectural College) in 1789 viewed Salat's drawings and on his return to the U.S. shared the influence with Washington, Hoban, Monroe, and Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Both Hoban and Latrobe made elevations for the South Portico, and the portico, as built in 1829, is nearly identical to the Hoban watercolor elevation.
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