After end the end of the American Revolution, it was decided to create a new capital for the federal government. Accordingly, a new federal territory was created on the land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, which included the pre-existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria, and was named by George Washington as the District of Columbia, a feminine from of Columbus, in honour of Christopher Columbus.

Founded in 1791 and located on Potomac River, the capital city was named after George Washington, the first President and a Founding father of the United States. It is one of the only cities in the world that was designed before it was built.

Designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban and located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, White House, the official office and residence of the president of the United States, is perhaps one of the most famous and easily recognizable buildings in the world, like the magnificent Opera House in Sydney. Cornerstone of the Georgian Mansion, constructed in the Palladian style, was laid on 13 October 1792, while temporary huts were built on the north side of the building to accommodate the labourers and the local enslaved people, joined by the skilled stonemasons from Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1793.

Although the building was incomplete, the entire federal government was relocated from Philadelphia to Washington in 1800, and John Adams, the second president of the country, moved into a cold, damp, and still unfinished presidential mansion on the 1st day of November 1800.

However, the first lady, Abigail Adams, was disappointed with the inadequate state of the residence as none of the apartments was finished, and she had to use the great unfinished audience room as a drying room for hanging up the clothes as it would be indicative of bad taste to hang the president’s laundry outside, on the open lawn. Nevertheless, most of the outside structures were finished when Thomas Jefferson, the third president, moved into the White House in 1801. But construction continued in interior, which still lacked ample staircases and suffered from a persistently leaky roof. During his tenure, Jefferson took initiative to elegantly furnish the White House in the style of Louis XVI of France, known in America as the Federal style, and opened the house to public visitation each morning, a tradition which is still followed.

During the war of 1812 against England over violations of US maritime rights, the British set fire to the President’s House in 1814 when President James Madison was forced to leave the building with his family, and moved to nearby Octagon House, owned by a Virginia plantation owner, which later served as headquarters for the American Institute of Architects.

President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed building in October 1817, and the elliptical South Portico was constructed during his tenure, in 1824. The colonnaded North Portico was added later, in 1829 by Andrew Jackson.

Although the sandstone walls were painted white during the reconstruction of the building after the British fires, the name White House became official only in 1901, when President Theodore Roosevelt officially adopted it. He began a major renovation of the White House in 1902, when the west wing was constructed and the president’s offices were relocated from the second floor to the newly constructed west wing. While his successor, President William Howard Taft had the Oval Office constructed within an enlarged west wing, the east wing was constructed by the next president, Franklin Roosevelt in 1942, and the East and West wings were connected to the main building by the east and west terraces.

The main building was discovered to be structurally unsound in 1948, during the presidency of Harry Truman. Consequently, the entire interior was carefully rebuilt during the next four years, when a second-floor balcony was also added on the south portico. Major alterations of the building were again undertaken in the 1960s, when Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of President John F Kennedy, collected items of aesthetic beauty and historic value for the decoration of the rooms to make the White House a centre of national culture. To .awaken the public interest about its beauty and heritage, she also arranged to conduct a televised tour of the mansion in 1962.

Today, the White House building complex has a total of 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, 28 fireplaces, 8 staircases, and 3 elevators. The main building contains the presidential family’s living quarters and several reception rooms, all decorated in styles of the 18th and 19th centuries. While the west terrace contains the press briefing room, the east terrace houses a movie theatre. The presidential office, known as the Oval Office, is located in the west wing, along with the cabinet and press rooms, and the east wing contains other offices.

The White House is the home and the office of the President of the United States and his family, as well as a unit of the National Capital Parks system, accredited as a museum in 1988. The White House is a symbol of American democracy. It belongs to the public, and not to the president who stays there, only as long as the people allow him to stay.