The official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Designed in the neoclassical style using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. Hoban modelled the building on Leinster House in Dublin, a building which today houses the Oireachtas, the Irish legislature. It 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 their advisers.The north front is the principal façade of the White House and consists of three floors and eleven bays. The ground floor is hidden by a raised carriage ramp and parapet, thus the façade appears to be on two floors. The central three bays are behind a prostyle portico (this was a later addition to the house, built circa 1830), serving, thanks to the carriage ramp, as a porte cochere. The windows of the four bays flanking the portico, at first-floor level, have alternating pointed and segmented pediments, while at second-floor level, the pediments are flat. The principal entrance at the center of the portico is surmounted by a lunette fanlight. Above the entrance is a sculpted floral festoon. The roofline is hidden by a balustraded parapet. The mansion's southern façade is a combination of the Palladian and neoclassical styles of architecture. It consists of three floors, all visible. The ground floor is rusticated in the Palladian fashion. At the center of the façade is a neoclassical projected bow of three bays. The bow is flanked by five bays, the windows of which, as on the north façade, have alternating segmented and pointed pediments at first-floor level. The bow has a ground-floor double staircase leading to an Ionic colonnaded loggia (with the Truman Balcony at second-floor level), known as the south portico. The more modern third floor is hidden by a balustraded parapet and plays no part in the composition of the façade.
