This is What the White House Could Have Looked Like
In the 1790s, George Washington held a competition to design a house for the president, which was won by Irish-born architect James Hoban, who modeled the iconic White House residence on Leinster House in Dublin. Construction took place between 1792 and 1800, and the building became one of the most recognized neoclassical properties in the world. While the Oval Office and Roosevelt Room are obviously the most well-known locations, new renderings have shown how 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue could have actually looked a lot different.
Thanks to HouseFresh, Maryland Center for History and Culture, and technology that did not exist in George Washington’s day, five rejected White House designs have been digitally constructed for the first time—including a losing entry from future president Thomas Jefferson himself.
Realistically computer-generated from plans laid out in never-seen-before archives, here are five visions of the White House that might have been.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State at this time, and closely involved with the administration of the competition. But he was also an architect and enthusiast of classical European design. Experts attribute a losing entry labeled “Abraham Faws” to Jefferson. The ‘real’ Faws submitted his own, amateurish entry, and Jefferson’s anonymous design was later attributed to Faws due to a clerical error. Jefferson would move into the White House as president in 1801, describing the mansion as “big enough for two emperors, one Pope and the Grand Lama.” All the same, he couldn’t help himself but expand on it, adding colonnades and other features to shape the White House as it now looks.
Philip Hart
The competition to design the White House was part of a broader challenge to suggest architecture for Washington’s seat of power. Phillip Hart was an amateur architect who submitted proposals for both the president’s house and the Capitol. The foreshortened top floor and faux-Renaissance style of Hart’s White House lacks the style and sophistication that Washington desired from a building that should, “in size, form, and elegance… look beyond the present day.”
Andrew Mayfield
Andrew Mayfield Carshores was a linguist and former British soldier and teacher. His simple design reflects pre-Revolutionary War architecture, characterized by America’s colonial period of Georgian, English-style buildings. The steeply pitched roofs are bordered by a lead walkway, with a rainwater reservoir in the roof of the main block.
Jacob Small
Jacob Small submitted four entries to the 1792 contest, and his designs were thought to be inspired by two iconic buildings from that time: Mount Vernon, George Washington’s plantation estate house, and the Maryland State House in Annapolis.
James Diamond
James Diamond’s White House is set around a rectangular court. However, he notes on his design that “the open court may be changed to a picture gallery and lighted from the top, which would have a grand effect.”
Diamond’s design incorporates sophisticated design elements like Ionic columns and window frames capped with pediments. But the staircases are positioned inconveniently far from the entrance, and the overall grandness is thought to have been too ornate for George Washington’s tastes.
Tell us: What do you think of the other designs?