The Many Names and Locations of the President's Home

The first of two houses that was occupied by President Washington was called an executive mansion in New York City. The first was the Samuel Osgood House at 3 Cherry Street that Washington lived in from April 1789 to February 1790.

The second home was the Alexander Macomb house on Broadway that Washington lived in from February to August of 1790. 

New York then built the Government House for Washington to have as an official residence, but he never occupied it.

This was because the passage of the Residence Act, a part of the compromise between James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. The Residence Act was passed by congress in 1790, it included mandates such that it must be completed by December 1800 and that it must be along the Potomac River.

While Washington and Jefferson survey and held a contest for the lay out of the Capital, the Temporary Federal City was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The City of Philadelphia rented out the Robert Morris’s City house located at 190 High Street for the Presidential residence from November 1790-March of 1797. 

President John Adams moved into the Morris House, on a street which the name had changed from High Street to Market Street. He lived there from March of 1797 to May 1800, where he moved to the President’s Home located in DC. It took eight years to built the Presidents home and was not fully completed when John Adams and his family moved in. The design of the house was selected by Washington. The contest winner was James Hoban. The new home was also built along Pennsylvania Ave.  

 There were many names for were the President stayed, including the Presidents Palace, Presidential Mansion, and the Presidents House. It was not until 1811 that the official name that it is called today would be used, the White House. Many other stories revolve around how it became known as the White House. When Jefferson moved into the White House in 1801, after saying the house was to large for one man to occupy, he paired up with Benjamin Henry Latrobe to help design the East and West colonnades.