President Donald Trump’s proposed $400 million White House ballroom is too big, ahistorical, and may violate federal law, according to a prominent architect.
“Everything here feels inflated,” David Scott Parker, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, told the Associate Press of the plans, which call for a 22,000-square-foot ballroom. “The net effect of this is to adversely impact what is the most important historic — the most identifiable historic — house in the entire United States. This is permanent, what it will do to the White House.”
Parker added that the plans, which go up for a key vote before the National Capital Planning Commission on Thursday, could shrink the ballroom by nearly half and still match industry standards for the 1,000-person capacity Trump is seeking for the hall. (Parker is a board member at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is suing over the project.)
Beyond those issues, Parker added that the new wing appears to dwarf the original White House, fails in certain areas to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and breaks the clean sight lines along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol that the Founding Fathers intended.
“It's hard to fathom that ... one addition could have so many adverse impacts, symbolically, architecturally and historically,” Parker said. “This literally violates the Founding Fathers' intentions.”
The ballroom will be ADA compliant and is designed to reflect the White House’s larger classical and neoclassical aesthetic, a Trump administration official told The Independent.
Parker isn’t the only one sharing his concerns.
The new complex, whose design was overseen by architect Shalom Baranes, was showered in criticism as part of a public comment period before Thursday’s commission meeting.
“The size and design of the proposed White House Ballroom are hideous,” one commenter wrote. “I object to the decision to ruin the American public’s historical legacy.”
Another, from architect Donna Wax, called the president’s plans for the gilded ballroom a “fascist take on classism.”
More than 98 percent of the more than 10,000 pages of comments were negative, according to a New York Times analysis.
A commission staff report on the plan has recommended lowering the new wing’s height and suggested the design continue to be refined “so that it remains related, but architecturally deferential to, the Executive Mansion.”
Last year, the Trump administration replaced its original lead architect, James McCrery II, reportedly after he and the administration clashed over the president’s desire to keep expanding the size of the new wing.
The frequently negative public reaction to the new design hasn’t stopped the East Wing renovation from moving forward.
Last month, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, another review board filled with Trump allies, approved the project, despite not seeing the final design and similarly being deluged with almost entirely negative public comments.
Last week, a federal judge rejected a preservation group’s request for an injunction to block the project.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed an amended lawsuit over the weekend. It alleged the Trump administration violated multiple federal laws by embarking on the construction project unilaterally last fall without prior approval from the two planning commissions and Congress.
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