White House vs Notre Dame

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The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States.

It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the home of each U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. The term 'White House' is often used as a metonym for the president and his advisers. The home was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the neoclassical style. Hoban modelled the construction on Leinster House in Dublin, a building which houses the Oireachtas, the Irish legislature. Construction took place between 1792 and 1800 using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the home in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) added reduced colonnades on each wing which concealed stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion had been set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring a lot of the exterior. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially rebuilt Executive Residence in October 1817. Exterior building continued with the inclusion of the semi-circular South portico in 1824 and the North portico in 1829. Because of crowding inside the executive order , President Theodore Roosevelt had work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later in 1909, President William Howard Taft enlarged the West Wing and created the first Oval Office, which was finally moved as the section was expanded.



In the main mansion, the third-floor attic was converted into living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the present hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as a reception area for social occasions; Jefferson's colonnades connected the new wings. East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space. By 1948, the residence's load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to collapse. Under Harry S. Truman, the interior chambers were completely dismantled and a new internal load-bearing steel frame constructed within the walls. Once this work was completed, the interior rooms were rebuilt. The modern-day White House complex involves the Executive Residence, West Wing, East Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building--the former State Department, which now houses offices for the president's staff and the vice president--and Blair House, a guest residence. The Executive Residence is made up of six stories--the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, and Third Floor, as well as a two-story basement. The property is a National Heritage Site owned by the National Park Service and is part of the President's Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of'America's Favorite Architecture'.

Source: Wikipedia

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Notre-Dame de Paris (French: [n?t?? dam d? pa?i] (listen); meaning'Our Lady of Paris'), known simply as Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The cathedral was consecrated to the Virgin Mary and considered to be among the best examples of French Gothic architecture. Its pioneering use of the rib vault and flying buttress, its enormous and vibrant rose windows, in addition to the naturalism and prosperity of its sculptural decoration set it apart from the previous Romanesque style. Major components which make Notre Dame stand out include its large historic organ and its immense church bells.The cathedral's construction began in 1160 under Bishop Maurice de Sully and was mostly complete by 1260, although it was modified frequently in the next centuries. In the 1790s, Notre-Dame suffered desecration during the French Revolution; much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. In the 19th century, the cathedral was the site of the coronation of Napoleon I and the funerals of several Presidents of the French Republic. Popular interest in the cathedral blossomed soon after the publication, in 1831, of Victor Hugo's book Notre-Dame de Paris (better known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). This led to a major restoration project between 1844 and 1864, supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. The Allied liberation of Paris in 1944 was celebrated within Notre-Dame with the singing of the Magnificat. Beginning in 1963, the cathedral's façade was cleaned of centuries of soot and dirt. Another cleaning and restoration project was carried out between 1991 and 2000. The cathedral is one of the most widely recognized symbols of the city of Paris and the French state. As the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Paris, Notre-Dame comprises the cathedra of the Archbishop of Paris (Michel Aupetit). In 1805, Notre-Dame was given the honorary status of a minor basilica. Approximately 12 million people visit Notre-Dame annually, making it the most visited monument in Paris. The cathedral was famous for its Lent sermons, founded by the Dominican Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire in the 1830s. In recent decades, a growing number have been awarded by leading public figures and state-employed professors. The cathedral has been progressively stripped of its original decoration and functions of art. Several notable examples of Gothic, Baroque, and 19th-century sculptures and a group of 17th- and early 18th-century altarpieces remain in the cathedral's collection. Some of the most important relics in Christendom, for example, Crown of Thorns, a sliver of the true cross and a nail from the true cross, are preserved at Notre-Dame. On 11 February 1931, Antonieta Rivas Mercado expired at the altar of Notre-Dame after shooting herself in the heart with a pistol stolen from her lover, Jose Vasconcelos.While undergoing renovation and restoration, the roof of Notre-Dame caught fire on the night of 15 April 2019. Burning for about 15 hours, the cathedral sustained serious damage, including the destruction of the flèche (the wood spirelet over the crossing) and the majority of the lead-covered wooden roof above the stone vaulted ceiling. Contamination of the site and the nearby environment resulted. After the fire, many proposals were made for modernizing the cathedral's design. But on 16 July 2019, the French Parliament passed a law requiring that it be rebuilt exactly as it appeared prior to the fire. Stabilizing the structure against potential collapse is expected to last until the end of 2020, with reconstruction beginning in 2021. The government of France expects the renovation can be completed by Spring 2024, in time for the opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Source: Wikipedia