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The North Portico of the White House (1800). Architect: James Hoban.
A recent ad campaign suggests that the White House is really based on an unrealized 1792 design by Thomas Jefferson who was in turn heavily influenced by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508 - 1590). See dicoverpalladio.org The ad was in the New York Times Style Magazine, Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 48 promoting "Palladio and his journey: A transatlantic journey" at the Morgan Library and Museum.
I call this digital photo, taken in March 2010:
(Sept. 8, 2010) The Palladio show is in Washington - at the National Building Museum. To paraphrase it:
" ... In the 1792 competition for the design of the President's house, President George Washington and three competition commissioners passed over Jefferson's scheme (anonymously submitted) and selected a more conservative design by the Irish-born architect James Hoban. Hoban's White House proposal was loosely based, externally, on Leinster House, a 1740's Dublin mansion by Richard Cassels, and known to Hoban. But his revised scheme followed the Anglo-Palladian tradition of James Gibbs and resembles an English country house more than a villa by Palladio. ..."
Jefferson's version had a dome ...
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