[2][3] The ruins of the building were demolished in 2012 under the Martelly administration, and plans to rebuild the palace were announced by then-president Jovenel Moïse in 2017, but it is unclear if or when reconstruction will begin.

[4][5] A reported total of four residences built for the country's rulers, whether the colonial governor general, king, emperor, or president, have occupied the site since the mid to late 18th century.

At one point in the site's tumultuous history, when the chief of state was without an official home due to damage, a 19th-century French-style villa on Avenue Christophe assumed that role.

[8] The earliest structure was the Government Palace (Palais du Gouvernement), which was constructed in the 18th century as the residence of the French governor general of Saint-Domingue.

[14] John Bigelow, an editor at the New York Evening Post, visited the palace in 1850 and described it as "only one story, raised a few feet from the ground, and approached by four or five steps, which extend all around the edifice."

On a richly carved table appeared a beautiful bronze clock, representing the arms of Haiti—namely, a palm-tree surrounded with fascines of pikes and surmounted with the Phrygian cap.

National Geographic called the palace "a rather ugly structure of glistening gray white, with apparently a good deal of corrugated iron about it," though adding that it "contained, however, some fine lofty rooms".

[8] The National Palace most recently occupying the site was designed in 1912 by Georges Baussan (1874–1958), a leading Haitian architect who graduated from the Ecole d'Architecture in Paris and whose commissions included the City Hall of Port-au-Prince and Haiti's Supreme Court Building.

[18][26][27] He was a son of a former Haitian senator and the father of Robert Baussan, an architect who studied under Le Corbusier and later became the country's Undersecretary of State for Tourism.

His entry was awarded the second-place prize but also was selected to be the new National Palace, for financial reasons—the structure proposed by the first-place winner was deemed too costly.

[34] After President Sam's death, the country was occupied by the United States, with U.S. forces taking possession of the palace and U.S. naval engineers overseeing its completion.

President Moïse's personal residence on Pelerin 5 south of Pétion-Ville was used as the de facto presidential palace, but he relocated to another home in the Juventas area.