As demolition began on the East Wing of the historic White House earlier this week to make way for President Donald Trump’s new ballroom, the National Trust for Historic Preservation have asked the Trump administration to pause construction until the building plans can be reviewed.
A letter was sent on Tuesday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to the National Capital Planning Commission, National Park Service, and Commission of Fine Arts, with concerns about the size of the ballroom.
It reads: “While the National Trust acknowledges the utility of a larger meeting space at the White House, we are deeply concerned that the massing and height of the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself—it is 55,000 square feet—and may also permanently disrupt the carefully balanced classical design of the White House with its two smaller, and lower, East and West Wings.”
Though the National Trust for Historic Preservation is a nonprofit chartered by Congress that oversees America’s historic preservation policy, it does not hold any statutory authority to stop the construction.
The letter goes on to highlight guidelines laid out by Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, stressing “that new additions should not destroy the historic fabric of the property and that the new work should be compatible with existing massing, size, scale, and architectural features.”
As “a National Historic Landmark, a National Park, and a globally recognized symbol of our nation’s ideals”, the letter continues, “We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes, including consultation and review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, and to invite comment from the public.”
The Society of Architectural Historians cited similar concerns in a statement last week, as well as the American Institute of Architects in an August letter, both about the ballroom’s size and overall impact on the White House. Neither have a statutory role in the ballroom’s oversight.
The National Park Service maintains the White House grounds and, in 2014, outlined in 56-page document its intentions to work with presidential administrations, secret service, and other government agencies “to ensure both the preservation and use of one of the most recognized houses in the world.”
ARTnews previously reached out to National Park Service for comment, but the agency has yet to respond.
These massive renovations come ahead of the 250th-anniversary of the founding of the United States and as the second longest government shutdown in US history continues—with the first-longest also occurring under Trump’s first term as president.
A former aide to Donald Trump in his first term, Alyssa Farah Griffin, likened the new construction to the French Revolution, saying on the television show The View, “It feels like Marie Antoinette”, the last queen of France who was known for her lavish lifestyle at the expense of the French public and her indifference to the poor, which ultimately became her undoing.
“Nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own”, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News of the plans on Wednesday. “Presidents for decades in the modern time have quipped about how they wish they had a larger event space here at the White House that can hold hundreds more people than the current East Room and State Dining Rooms can.”
On the official White House website is a “fact sheet” of the building’s renovations and expansions over the last century. Notably, however, the announcement takes aim at how “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies are clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House.” The statement refers to the addition as a “proud presidential legacy.”
CBS News reported that one White House official said construction plans for the new ballroom would be submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission “at the appropriate time,” with another quoted as saying, “The scope and size of the project has always been subject to vary as the process developed.”
