The White House

The word “iconic” has been so overused as to be nearly meaningless. Its application to buildings should be quite rare as there are actually only a handful deserving of the term. The “White House” is certainly one of them.

In the new United States, a 1792 competition for the president’s house brought an anonymous design from Thomas Jefferson based on Andrea Palladio’s 1566 “Villa Rotonda” in Vicenza. But an Irish architect, James Hoban, won with a Neoclassical/Palladian building based generally on Ireland’s country houses and specifically, Dublin’s grandest mansion of 1745.

The “fix” may have been in, however, as George Washington, himself, was the ultimate judge and had met the impressive Hoban at a social event in Charleston, South Carolina, the year before.

But to eliminate the huge cost of a bigger building as well as avoid the negative “optics” of a gargantuan dwelling for the head of a republic, the house’s size was reduced.

In addition to its grand Classical roots, Hoban had designed it as a self-contained, more simplified pavilion. And some historians have noticed that this simplification of its Leinster House model produced a better and more cohesive building than the house in Dublin.

Construction

For what would be about $63 million today, the construction of arguably the most famous house in the world began its eight-year gestation. On the grounds itself was built a brothel for the Irish workers. Eventually placed outside the site, it was allowed to stay there after Hoban defended the madame, Betsy, to the commissioners.

Each end of the building had a “Serlian” (Palladian) three-part window in the center of the 1st floor and a semicircular, “fanlight” window with Georgian frame and mullions above that on the 2nd.

Interior

Inside, the somewhat “Baroque” arrangement of bulbous, stacked oval center saloons flanked by squared cubes has remained a constant through the centuries. Though the names and uses of the surrounding rooms have changed, other than the elongation of the State Dining Room in 1902, the familiar floorplan has stayed the same throughout.

Linked by the “Cross Hall,” the principal floor rooms both large and not-so-large have become a virtual museum of French and English décor and the PR backdrop of national announcements, press conferences, and targets of eager public hand-shakers.

Foundations

However, neither Aquia nor Seneca stone had been used as foundations for the interior walls. It relied instead on perishable brick footings stacked over shrinking clay within the sandstone exterior walls. This method (as well as Hoban’s use of timber for its rebuilding after the house’s 1814 destruction during the War of 1812) would be a time bomb set to go off over a century later that almost led to a near-collapse of the entire mansion.

Optical Tricks

When the house was finished in 1800, it was one of the largest buildings in the United States. The principal floor had over eighteen-foot-high ceilings to combat the Southern heat of Washington, D.C., but Hoban also achieved scale tricks with the design that belied its true size.

Though its main North Front had been reduced to a look of two stories instead of three (the ground floor is hidden on the North Front and the attic floor is behind a balustrade), the windows are bigger than European examples.

Its original 1798 lime “whitewash,” used for sealing the porous sandstone (and apparently to cover the discrepancy of stone coloring) was merely a fortuitous happenstance for history. Along with the later painting of its smoke damaged walls in 1817, the white color became an iconic look and descriptive term for what was formally named the “White House” in 1902.

That he thought nothing of employing the free labor of slaves for his own home, it’s probable that slave labor also constructed those wings.

Size

Even with Jefferson’s wings and the house’s enormity when compared to American buildings of the time, the American Executive Mansion was smaller than European equivalents built for royalty then. However, the demise of aristocratic rule has reversed the equation in democratic nations.

Today, when adding up the space of the private quarters of the second and now third floors, the movie theater in the East Wing, the bowling alley under the North Portico, and the other rooms of the ground floor they use, the actual square-footage for the president’s family is bigger than that for most other world leaders.

And at 132 rooms and 55,000 square feet, the entire White House has become the large “President’s Palace” it would have been in 1790.

Burning

Ironically, the British soldiers inside the house throwing flaming spears in 1814 would have passed velvet-draped windows and English Regency furnishings just like the palaces of Great Britain.

Though its exterior sandstone walls were the only remaining element after the fire, the house’s rebuilding by the original architect (unfortunately substituting timber for brick) became a symbol of the young republic’s resilience.

Roosevelt Remodeling

Though the building had been informally called the “White House” ever since its whitewashing in 1798, it was formally named that historic term in October 1901. Roosevelt’s large family and the house’s cluttered, Victorian look collided with both the new century and his administration’s self-image.

But with the removal of the main staircase at the west end of the Cross Hall, a secondary stairway east of the Entrance Hall had to be transformed into the principal stair to the family’s quarters on the second floor. That floor, with the addition of the West Wing, was entirely devoted to the family’s use with bedrooms and sitting rooms replacing the offices on the east end.

Later Administrations

Woodrow Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Wilson, designed the earliest version of the Rose Garden (with George Burnap) off the West Wing. But his second wife, Edith Wilson, despised the giant animal heads in the State Dining Room and had them removed but otherwise maintained its baronial look.

In 1943, because Eleanor Roosevelt was such a formidable and accomplished First Lady busy with proxy presidential duties, the administration expanded the rudimentary party entrance of 1902 into a true office structure created by Winslow for her use at the end of the East Colonnade.

Truman Renovation

Harry Truman added the balcony to the South Portico in 1947-48 for $1.6 million designed by the aging William Delano but that was just the start of the building’s modernization. It was then that the true condition of the sinking interior was discovered.

Much needed restrooms for men off the Library and women off the Vermeil room on the ground floor finally turned the mansion into a suitable place for parties and receptions. 19th century guests knew to slip behind strategically placed screens shielding open toilet bowls or forgo all liquid refreshment at the “White House.”

Kennedy Restoration

Though each administration had redecorated the house from subtle to maximum results, and some had even completely rebuilt the building, possibly no administration has had more long-term effect than First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy did in her husband’s.

Perhaps the White House’s simple, white design is the key to its iconic status. Buckingham Palace, though only one of the sovereign’s residences, is definitely symbolic of the monarchy but it is probably too big. And the Grand Kremlin Palace, in addition to its role as a ceremonial space only, is too complicated and has too grandiose an interior. But the simpler White House has an important distinction in that the U.S. President primarily lives there.