Trump Begins Demolition of the White House’s East Wing
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Update October 22: Citing a Trump administration official, the New York Times has reported that the entirety of the East Wing will be demolished to make way for the planned White House ballroom, contradicting earlier claims made by Trump that it would not be touched. Despite demolition being underway, the Trump administration has not filed plans for the project with the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees the construction of federal buildings.
While not a neatly metaphorical wrecking ball, another piece of heavy machinery, an excavator, was on the grounds of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday to carry out what appears to be the partial demolition of the White House’s East Wing. The demolition activity at the White House complex, which was first reported by the Washington Post, comes ahead of construction work on Donald Trump’s planned Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom—a “big, beautiful” edifice with a $250 million price tag and capacity of 600 guests. Like the estimated cost, the ballroom’s expected capacity has grown since the project was first announced in late July, hot on the heels of the administration’s paving over of the lawn at the storied Kennedy Rose Garden.
As media reports and video of the demolition work swirled yesterday, Trump confirmed via social media that ground had indeed broken on the ballroom project. “Completely separate from the White House itself, the East Wing is being fully modernized as part of this process, and will be more beautiful than ever when it is complete! For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, state visits, etc.,” he proclaimed.
On October 22, RECORD captured demolition work continuing at the White House’s East Wing. Video © Architectural Record
Trump added that, in lieu of taxpayer dollers, the ballroom is being privately funded by “generous patriots, great American companies, and yours truly.”
Aerial view of East Wing and Colonnade captured in 1992 as part of a National Park Service survey of historic buildings and landscapes. Photo by HABS (Jack Boucher)/National Park Service, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
As envisioned by Trump, the ballroom would serve as a higher-capacity alternative to the East Room, which is the largest space at the White House for receptions, large press conferences, dinners, and the like. Tents temporarily installed on the South Lawn are used for events that exceed the capacity of the East Room.
While the site of the 90,000-square-foot event facility at the White House was always planned to be East Wing–adjacent, it was not entirely clear until now if the existing structure would be razed to make way for Trump’s plus-sized gilded banquet hall. In July, Trump gave reassurances that it would be spared from demolition. “It’ll be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite place. I love it,” he had said.
After footage of a backhoe tearing into the facade of the East Wing began widely circulating, multiple media outlets, including the Post and NBC News, inquired as to how much of the existing building would be demolished and what had changed in the weeks after Trump publicly said it wouldn’t be touched. As of this writing, the administration has not responded to any of these questions. The National Park Service, which manages the White House grounds, has also not offered clarity about the full scope of demolition work.
It’s possible that when Trump said, both in July and late yesterday, that the White House wouldn’t be demolished as part of the ballroom project, he was specifically referring to the Executive Residence, “the main building” which sits at the middle of the White House complex and is directly connected to the East Wing through the East Colonnade. (The footprint of the future ballroom is double that of the Executive Residence.) In recent decades, the two-story structure, which was first erected in 1902 and substantially updated in 1942 during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, had been used to house the offices of the First Lady, a tradition first started by Rosalynn Carter. The East Wing is also the site of a highly trafficked visitor’s entrance and sits over a WWII-era emergency bunker.
Video and images of the East Wing being torn apart have drawn censure from historians and preservationists, lawmakers, and others, with one critic calling the move “utter desecration.” The White House—along with several other landmark structures and their grounds in Washington, D.C.—is exempt from the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and, as such, can skirt formal review processes for major alterations. The effort has also not recieved congressional approval, as major alterations to the White House have in past, such as the expansive, Truman-era renovation of the building. An unnamed White House official told the Post that efforts to preserve historic objects within the East Wing have been “underway for several weeks.”
