White House White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the President of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. and has been the residence of every U.S. President since John Adams in 1800. The term, "White House", is often used as a metonym for the president and his advisers. The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the neoclassical style. Hoban modelled the building on Leinster House in Dublin, a building which today houses the Oireachtas, the Irish legislature. Construction took place between 1792 and 1800 using Aquia
Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site in 1837. The city blocks where the National Gallery of Art now stands became a fashionable residential area in the 1830s. In the 1860s, the area saw significant deterioration despite continuing improvements to Pennsylvania Avenue itself. Pennsylvania Avenue was lit with coal gas streetlights in 1851. The avenue was one of the few fully lit streets in the entire city of Washington. In July 1862, a horse-drawn trolley line was built along the street between the Capitol and White House. But despite these many improvements, much of the Pennsylvania Avenue Historic Site south of Pennsylvania Avenue had become a disreputable