The White House Complex is the designation of the three principal structures of the White House and the adjoining outdoor ceremonial areas, which, along with the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, serve as the seat of the executive branch of United States government. The structural components include the Executive Residence, where the First Family resides; the West Wing, the location of the Oval Office, Cabinet Room, and Roosevelt Room; and the East Wing, which houses the offices of the First Lady and the White House Social Secretary, and also provides public access to the State Rooms of the Executive Residence for tours and social events.
The adjoining outdoor spaces are used for ceremonial and social events. They include the Rose Garden, Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, North Lawn, and South Lawn.
The central executive residence, the original building of the complex, was built 1792–1800. The east and west porticos were designed by Thomas Jefferson and built in 1803. In 1859 the East Colonnade was dismantled. The East Wing and West Wing were constructed in 1902, and a modified version of the east colonnades was constructed in 1902 on the same foundations as Jefferson's 1803 original.
The White House Chief Usher is the head of household staff and operations.
Famous quotes containing the words white, house and/or complex:
“There was something refreshingly and wildly musical to my ears in the very name of the white man’s canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix and Canadian Voyageurs. The batteau is a sort of mongrel between the canoe and the boat, a fur-trader’s boat.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe.... A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)