Ashley
Ahn
Aug. 3,
2025, 5:59 a.m. ETAug. 3, 2025
Ashley
Ahn
Trump
forges ahead with White House renovation as experts flag concerns.
Experts
on historic preservation are raising concerns over the feasibility of President
Trump’s plans to complete large-scale renovations to the White House by the end
of his term, and whether the project can be done while respecting the historic
nature of the building.
Mr. Trump
unveiled plans on Thursday to construct a $200 million, 90,000-square-foot
state ballroom off the East Wing to be completed “long before” the end of his
term in 2029. The project would be one of the largest renovations to the iconic
building in decades.
Mr. Trump
has been on a winning streak this summer, emerging victorious in a series of
Supreme Court rulings, signing a massive bill to carry out his domestic policy
agenda and winning concessions from some of America’s top trading partners.
Now, by checking off a long-sought item on his list of pet projects, Mr. Trump
is showing that he apparently feels emboldened to continue flexing his
presidential power.
The White
House, the Supreme Court building, the Capitol and all their “related buildings
and grounds” are exempt from the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966,
which requires federal agencies to assess and mitigate adverse effects to
historic properties and seek consultation through a formal review process.
Instead,
the White House has its own committee that provides advice on the “preservation
and the interpretation of the museum character” of the building. The Committee
for the Preservation of the White House — chaired by the director of the
National Park Service — is made up of several federal officials and a number of
members appointed by the president.
Susie
Wiles, the White House chief of staff, said on Thursday in a news release that
the administration was “fully committed to working with the appropriate
organizations to preserving the special history of the White House.”
Still,
the committee’s recommendations are not binding, giving the president
significant leeway to do as he wishes. “In most cases, you’re not going to have
a lot of binding obligations to historic buildings,” said Michael Spencer, a
professor of historic preservation at the University of Mary Washington.
The sheer
scale of the project — a giant ballroom attached to the East Wing — worries
preservationists. “It could do some harm to the property over all,” said
Richard Longstreth, a professor of American studies at George Washington
University. “There aren’t any checks and balances here, unfortunately.”
Mr.
Spencer said his expectations on preservation were “pretty low.”
“We’re
oftentimes viewed as getting in the way of progress, and I would say in this
particular instance, you’ve got a lot of strong personalities and they’re under
no obligation to really follow best practices as preservation puts forth,” he
said.
Jonathan
Jarvis, former director of the National Park Service, which is responsible for
the upkeep of the White House and its grounds, said any additions made to the
White House must follow the architectural design of the building. “You couldn’t
put something on the side of the building that doesn’t match it historically in
terms of its architecture, coloration and style,” he said.
He cast
doubt on the timeline the Trump administration proposed, calling its plans to
finish a project of this scale by the end of Mr. Trump’s term “optimistic.”
“You
don’t see one of those projects go that fast,” he said. “It’ll be a rush to get
it done.”
Mr.
Jarvis, who was the director of the National Park Service from 2009 to 2017,
said construction at the White House is a “complicated process” because it is
“not just normal construction.”
“It’s the
White House — it has to survive a terrorist attack,” he said. He added that
every step of the process would need to be evaluated to ensure that nothing “is
being compromised architecturally or from a security standpoint.”
Stewart
D. McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, said the
White House has gone through numerous changes to its interior and exterior
since the cornerstone was laid in 1792, and many of them faced resistance. He
said many of those changes made the White House what it is today.
“The
South Portico, the North Portico, the East Wing, the West Wing and the Truman
Balcony all raised concerns at the time — but today, we can’t imagine the White
House without these iconic elements,” he said.
It
remains unclear whether the Committee for the Preservation of the White House,
which works in tandem with the White House Historical Association, has provided
recommendations or raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s ballroom. A spokeswoman
for the historical association, Jessica Fredericks, did not respond to
questions about the committee’s position on the project.
In
addition to the director of the National Park Service, the committee is
composed of representatives from the White House, the Smithsonian Institution,
the Commission of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Art and a handful of
presidential appointees.
Mr. Trump
has not nominated a park service director, a position that requires Senate
confirmation, or announced the appointments of individuals to serve on the
committee. The terms of 13 individuals that former President Joseph R. Biden
Jr. appointed to the committee in 2023 expired when Mr. Trump began his second
term, according to a government database. Jessica Bowron, the comptroller of
the National Park Service, is currently serving as its acting director.
The
president tapped McCrery Architects as the lead architect of the project. James
McCrery, the company’s founding principal architect, was appointed by Mr. Trump
in 2019 to serve a four-year term on the Commission of Fine Arts. He called the
ballroom a necessary addition to the White House, where presidents have “faced
challenges hosting major events.”
Mr.
McCrery said he would preserve “the elegance of its classical design and
historical importance” of the White House.
Questions
about who is funding the project are also still largely unanswered. White House
officials said the president and “other patriot donors” would pay for the
renovations but declined to give details.
When
asked on Friday if he would block foreign donations, Mr. Trump said he had not
thought about it: “I’m not looking for that. You have very strong restrictions.
And we go by the restrictions.”
Still,
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who
specializes in government ethics, called the lack of transparency “completely
outrageous.” She questioned whether the donors were seeking “ways to get in
good with Trump.”
“He feels
emboldened,” she said. “He feels like he can do anything.”
Zolan
Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
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