h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The one in Washington that is. Can anybody help me with this?

Gedge

Here's my blind conjecture:

1) In designing DC, the city's designers were looking to the architecture of ancient Rome... you can see it in the columns and domes decorating all the major buildings and monuments. All of those buildings are white, because Roman structures were generally coated with a white plaster or paint or something that made them white. The White House is a white house, but so is the Capitol Building, the Treasury, the Supreme Court, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, ...

2) White is the color of honesty and openness. Odd that, considering the current resident.

The architecture was actually just a symptom of a larger desire to associate the nation with the democratic principles of ancient Greece and Rome.

One need only look at the inclusion of a Senate - a Roman concept.

There are countless other examples, but since I don't live in America none spring immediately to mind.

Don't forget the Egyptian aspirations, the Washington monument, a dead ringer for Cleopatra's needle. If I recall there's a pyramid on the greenback, and not forgetting a little ole town called Memphis, but this is getting away from DC a bit.