State, Thomas Jefferson, who both had personal interests in architecture, agreed that the design of the White House and the Capitol would be chosen in a design competition. Nine proposals were submitted for the new presidential residence, with the award going to Irish-American architect James Hoban. Hoban ultimately supervised the construction of both the US Capitol and the White House. Hoban was born in Ireland and trained at the Dublin Society of Arts. He emigrated to the US after the revolution, first seeking work in Philadelphia and later finding success in South Carolina, where he designed the state capitol in Columbia. President Washington visited Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1791 on his "Southern Tour", and saw the under-construction Charleston County Courthouse designed by Hoban. He is reputed to have met with Hoban then. The following year, he summoned the architect to Philadelphia and met with him in June 1792. On July 16, 1792, the president met with the commissioners of the federal city to make his judgment in the architectural competition. His review is recorded as being brief, and he quickly selected Hoban's submission. Design influences The Neoclassical design of the White House is based primarily on ideas inherited from the Roman architect Vitruvius and the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. The design of the upper floors also includes elements based on Dublin's Leinster House, which later became the seat of the Irish parliament (Oireachtas). The upper windows with alternate triangular and segmented pediments, for example, are directly inspired by the Irish building. Additionally, several Georgian-era Irish country houses have been suggested as sources of inspiration for the overall floor plan, including the bow-fronted south front and the former niches in the present-day Blue Room. The first official White House guide, published in 1962, suggested a link between Hoban's design for the South Portico and Château de Rastignac, a neoclassical country house located in La Bachellerie in the Dordogne region of France and designed by Mathurin Salat. Construction on the French house was initially started before 1789, interrupted by the French Revolution for twenty years, and then finally built between 1812 and 1817 (based on Salat's pre-1789 design). The theoretical link between the two houses has been criticized because Hoban did not visit France. Supporters of the connection posit that Thomas Jefferson, during his tour of Bordeaux in 1789, viewed Salat's architectural drawings (which were on-file at the college) at the