- The founders’ views about executive power and its place in a system of separated powers changed over the decade following the American Revolution.
- That change can be captured in many ways, but one overlooked example is the decision to give the president an official residence, build it to certain specifications, and place it at a particular site in the new capital city.
- Not only was the White House the largest home in the US until after the Civil War; its location reinforced its independence from Congress and preeminence in the government’s day-to-day management.
From the essay:
Separated by a good distance, the president’s home and the Capitol were built so they did not directly face each other. Although they were connected by a single grand avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and hence were mutually visible, neither building looked straight down on the other.32 Although the two structures’ exact locations were partly a matter of local topography and partly L’Enfant’s hope to have the city populated throughout as quickly as possible, it also reinforced that the two institutions were essentially separate and ascendant in their own spheres.33
32. L’Enfant saw the distance between the Capitol and the president’s residence as reinforcing a form of “decorum” that should exist between the two branches. Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, letter to George Washington, June 22, 1791, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-08-02-0199.
33. Not surprisingly, as James Young notes, “members of the different branches of government chose to situate themselves close by the respective centers of power they were affiliated with, seeking their primary associations in extra-official life among their fellow branch members.” Young, The Washington Community, 1800–1828, 68.