President Trump is facing a chorus of calumny over his plan to build a ballroom at the White House. “This is what DOGE was all about, folks,” gripes Senator Schumer. “Cutting things from you,” and “giving it to the big shots who run the show, Donald Trump at the top of the list.” The Times rolls out “experts on historic preservation” who “are raising concerns” about whether the project would mar the Executive Mansion.
What’s so all-fired terrible, though, about the president making improvements to his official residence? A Times critic, Matt Shaw, scores the new ballroom’s pomp by sniffing that “nobody ever accused President Trump of having a refined aesthetic sensibility.” Yet this criticism strikes at least us as off key, especially since building the $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom would be, like much else at the White House, largely privately funded.
The so-called “experts” consulted by the New York Times fret, though, over the “sheer scale of the project,” which “worries preservationists.” A professor of American studies at George Washington University, Richard Longstreth, fears the “giant ballroom” could “do some harm to the property over all.” Mr. Longsreth worries that “there aren’t any checks and balances here, unfortunately.”
Yet what of the long roster of previous presidential occupants who sought to spruce up the venue? The White House Historical Association points out that the Executive mansion has “undergone numerous transformations since its construction began in 1792.” The changes, “driven by the practical needs, personal tastes, or political motivations of presidents and their families, have often sparked controversy,” and even press scrutiny, the association avers.
Feature, say Jefferson’s efforts to transform the White House to reflect “classical ideals,” according historian Stewart McLaurin. Jefferson “added the east and west colonnades to connect the main residence to service buildings,” Mr. McLaurin says, “inspired by Palladian architecture.” The additions “faced immediate criticism for their cost and perceived extravagance,” he adds, as the National Intelligencer scored Jefferson for ignoring fiscal constraints.
President Andrew Jackson is responsible for another familiar feature of the White House, the North Portico, designed by James Hoban to balance the building’s South Portico. Jackson, too, faced criticism for the cost — via Congressional appropriation — of the addition, which arose “during a period of economic downturn,” Mr. McLaurin points out. Yet few would regret Jackson’s addition, which came to be seen as a “defining feature,” Mr. McLaurin says.
Presidents Arthur and Theodore Roosevelt stirred criticism, too, for involving the nation’s most fashionable designers and architects to revamp the presidential digs. Arthur hired Louis Comfort Tiffany for a pricey redesign, prompting Harper’s Weekly to gripe that he was turning the residence into a “palace,” while the Times decried the expense. TR’s redesign created what we now know as the West Wing, a warren of offices.
Roosevelt’s rearrangement helped to draw a clearer line between the White House’s private residential rooms and the chief executive’s working spaces — in line with America’s growing influence on the world stage. The work was undertaken by architects McKim, Mead, and White, who designed Manhattan’s Penn Station. Yet the Washington Post complained at the time that Roosevelt’s alterations to the White House had “destroyed its historic value.”
President Truman found that “a complete gutting of the interior” of the White House was needed, necessitating millions of dollars in expense that “shocked the public and drew intense scrutiny,” Mr. McLaurin reports. Then again, too, President Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline, charmed Americans when she sought to upgrade the interior design of the residence under the guidance of decorator Dorothy Parish, restoring the building’s historic charm.
The First Lady also shepherded the Rose Garden, used for decades for press conferences and other events but recently revamped as a patio by Mr. Trump. That move, too, has been decried by critics who prefer things to stay the way they were. Yet it would appear to be the prerogative of every president to refit the White House to suit his own taste, leaving a legacy for future generations to either discard, or, as one imagines in the case of a ballroom, appreciate.
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