And just like that, the East Wing of the White House was gone. Demolition crews moved in last Monday, Oct. 20, thoroughly leveling the East Wing by Friday of that week. Photos circulating on social media depict excavators tearing apart the wing, opening yawning holes in the façade. Razing the East Wing is the preliminary stage of President Trump’s scheme to extensively remodel the White House. On the site of the former East Wing, Trump plans to construct a gargantuan gilded ballroom mimicking the Versailles-esque architectural style of his Mar-a-Lago ballroom. At 90,000 square feet, approximating the size of two football fields, the proposed ballroom will exceed the White House itself in size and ultimately cost an estimated 300 million dollars.`
While the current White House is the product of centuries of remodeling—indeed, the original structure burned to the ground in 1814, and the East Wing was erected under Theodore Roosevelt in 1902—the rapidly progressing construction of the ballroom constitutes the most extensive renovation since the late 1940s. Trump’s current remodeling project is intended to address the inadequate size of the White House’s reception and entertainment spaces, but renovations earlier in his administration possess no such veneer of rhyme or reason. In June, Trump oversaw the installation of several massive flagpoles on the White House’s North and South Lawns, and in July, the President paved over the White House Rose Garden.
The President’s ballroom project has come under fire from a host of critics, including architects and historians, especially considering that the plan has as yet received no federal approval despite its rapid development. Additional concerns have arisen over Trump’s reliance on private donations—issuing from a slew of corporations, including Amazon, Apple and Google—to fund the construction of the ballroom. On Tuesday, in what is now a signature move, Trump fired all six officials comprising the Commission of Fine Arts, a government agency charged with assessing the design of construction projects in Washington, D.C. The president will replace former members with his own picks.
While the demolition of the East Wing precipitated a cacophony of criticisms, one of the most glaring issues with Trump’s renovations is that the President possesses nothing that could be called aesthetic discernment. Trump’s taste veers more towards the glitzy and ostentatious than the stately and dignified; his architectural renovations jeopardize the aesthetic symbolism of the White House but perhaps provide an apt visual metaphor for the current state of American politics.
