White House

The White House is the official home and workplace of the President of the United States. It sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., the country's capital city. The building has been the home of every U.S. president except the first one, George Washington. Washington picked the spot and approved the design, but he left office before it was finished.

Construction started in 1792. An Irish-born architect named James Hoban won a contest to design it. Workers built the house out of pale gray sandstone, then painted it white to protect the stone from rain and cold. The first president to live in it was John Adams, who moved in with his wife Abigail in November 1800. The paint was barely dry, and many rooms were still empty.

The house has not always looked the way it does today. In 1814, during the War of 1812, British soldiers marched into Washington and set the building on fire. Only the outer stone walls were left standing. James Hoban came back and rebuilt it. The house was ready again by 1817.

Inside, the White House is much bigger than it looks from the street. It has 132 rooms spread across six floors, including two below ground. The most famous room is the Oval Office, where the president works at the Resolute Desk. The desk was a gift from Queen Victoria of Britain in 1880, made from the wood of an old Royal Navy ship.

By the late 1940s, the building was falling apart. Floors sagged, walls cracked, and engineers warned President Harry Truman that parts of the house could collapse. From 1948 to 1952, workers took the entire inside apart and rebuilt it around a new steel frame. The outer stone walls stayed in place the whole time.

The White House is also a working office building. About 100 staff members keep it running, including chefs, gardeners, ushers, and electricians. The Secret Service guards it day and night. Tall iron fences surround the grounds, and the airspace above is closed to most aircraft.

It is more than a house and more than an office. The White House is one of the most recognized buildings in the world, a symbol of the United States itself. Its picture appears on the back of the twenty-dollar bill. Free public tours have been offered since the time of Thomas Jefferson, making it one of the only world leaders' homes that ordinary citizens can walk through.