Important renovations have taken place multiple times at the White House since it was rebuilt in 1817 following its burning by British troops in the War of 1812.
That includes the building of an “east terrace” in 1902 (the same year President Theodore Roosevelt built the West Wing), wheelchair ramps and elevators in 1933 (which President Franklin D. Roosevelt needed for his polio-induced paralysis), and the formal two-story East Wing added in 1941–1942, partly to hide the new underground bunker added due to World War II.
First lady Jacqueline Kennedy also led a historical restoration in 1961, furnishing the rooms with museum-quality antiques representing various periods of American history.
Despite these and other historical precedents, the sight of a significant portion of the White House being demolished this week has surprised many. “It won’t interfere with the current building ...,” said Trump in the July 31 announcement of the ballroom’s planned construction. “It will be near it but not touching it. It pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”
The press release by the White House the same day noted that “the site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits.”
And to make way for the construction of the ballroom, the entire East Wing will be demolished by this weekend, about which Trump said, “It was never thought of as being much.”
Trump had complained for years about the more limited 200-person East Room and its protocol of hosting state dinners on the South Lawn, with the help of canvas tenting. In 2010, he even phoned then-President Obama’s top political hand, David Axelrod, suggesting they build a ballroom on the grounds. It was an offer that Obama later wrote “was politely declined.”
This new ballroom was originally projected to cost $200 million and seat 650. In recent months, these figures have been revised upward to $300 million and 900 people. The estimated 90,000-square-foot “State Ballroom” will be significantly larger in square‐footage than the 55,000 square feet of the main residence of the White House.
The colonnade that connected the East Wing to the White House originally dated to President Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, noted associate professor of history at Utah State University, Lawrence Culver. This colonnade is reportedly being removed as part of the demolition.
Public concerns were dismissed by the White House in a statement Monday night as the “latest instance of manufactured outrage, unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies … clutching their pearls over President Donald Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom.”
So, what do American historians say? To provide more context to this demolition, reactions from several historians are included below.
Gregory E. Smoak, University of Utah and Lawrence Culver, Utah State University
Admitting both a personal and professional response, Gregory Smoak, a University of Utah professor who has done extensive work with historic preservation, told the Deseret News: “My personal response is shock. You know, it is a historic building. It’s part of our heritage. It’s the people’s house.”
While acknowledging that the East Wing, constructed 80 years ago, was “not as old as the rest of the house,” Smoak emphasized that it was still an important part of American history — especially as the headquarters of the first ladies since Eleanor Roosevelt.
The wing featured the red carpet evident at photos of most state dinners, and was a place where Jackie Kennedy had a family movie theater installed.
Utah State historian Lawrence Culver noted that the importance of the East Wing expanded as the role first lady became “more prominent, and as more first ladies have entered the White House not primarily solely as spouses, but as public figures with careers and roles of their own.”
Smoak added that most people who have visited the White House in person encountered that East Wing, since that’s where public tours started.
“As someone who’s engaged in public history,” he said, “I’m dismayed at the decision to act so quickly and to ignore precedent, if not federal law.”
Smoak acknowledged the move was technically legal since the White House was among the buildings exempted from the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act and its stipulated review process for any construction on a structure that is eligible for the National Register.
Even though that wasn’t required by law, Smoak said he was saddened that a precedent of more formal review set by previous presidents wasn’t followed — something “respectful of the American people” that would have involved public comment.
Instead, “they’re rushing forward very rapidly,” reflecting more of a real estate developer mindset who “doesn’t want to wait.” Culver called this “the first time a significant portion of the building has been demolished without the oversight and involvement of other agencies.”
Lindsay M. Chervinsky, George Washington Presidential Library
One reason presidents have loved the White House, said Lindsay M. Chervinsky, a presidential historian and the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library, “is that it has such incredible history in its walls.” Occupants appreciate that “they are standing in the space of Lincoln and FDR and Theodore Roosevelt.”
“It is a shock,” she admitted to Jake Tapper on CNN, “to see a space that has seen so many incredible visitors go through it and seen so much history in its walls torn down.”
Chervinsky highlighted a time of significant renovation during Harry Truman’s administration. His family had to vacate the building for four years starting in 1948, since the interior was in a state of such disrepair that their family piano was nearly falling through the ceiling of the second floor.
At this time, the White House had to be gutted and rebuilt with a new steel frame due to structural failure. “Yet they were super careful to preserve every element of history they could, even taking apart a bulldozer and reinstalling it inside the building so they didn’t have to tear down the walls.”
Betty Ford referred to the East Wing as “the heart of the White House,” Chervinsky noted, because it’s where visitors came through. “If you went there for a holiday party, that was where you would see the first Christmas decorations. And so it meant so much to so many people that space was where most people had accessibility.”
Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University
The fact this “very public demolition of the East Wing” has become so political, said Matthew Mason, historian professor at Brigham Young University is because this renovation is “different in scale.”
Mason described how “not particularly well-mannered crowds” descended on the White House to celebrate after Andrew Jackson’s victory, leading to such damage that the president had to seek funding from Congress to replace a lot of the furniture and housewares that had been damaged and destroyed.
But a more significant lesson, Mason said, may be in what happened to Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren, who pursued a vigorous renovation strategy at the White House that made the drapery and furniture “more elegant by European standards.”
Since that took place while the country was in the midst of an economic depression, he said, this move “backfired on him politically.”
Alexis Coe, presidential historian
“The last time we’ve seen such a dramatic change to the White House was when the British burned it down in 1814,” claimed presidential historian Alexis Coe on CNN. “We haven’t really seen anything like this in a very, very long time.”
“Serious work would happen” in the East Wing, Coe elaborated to The 19th News, “on issues that were significant to the American population.”
That included the aforementioned expansion of the role of the first lady by Eleanor Roosevelt, who held nearly 350 press conferences at the White House. People have also chosen to protest at the East Wing to get the attention of the first lady, including appealing to Lady Bird Johnson about civil rights in the 1960s.
“The East Wing was never designed for spectacle,” Coe added. “It serves governance, not grandeur. So it seems to be that it’s veering away from its purpose, which is supposed to be accessibility, not access.”
“It’s the working heart of the White House. It was built for public service, and so it’s being stripped to its bones for something that doesn’t totally make sense.”
“Serious work is not going to happen there anymore,” Coe suggested, going on to emphasize that in this already chaotic moment, “it’s also very hard as an American to see an image of the White House being ripped apart.”
Douglas Brinkley, Rice University
“Deeply depressing” is how Douglas Brinkley, U.S. presidential historian and professor of history at Rice University, felt about the demolition, which he described to Anderson Cooper as “ripping down the entire East Wing of our national shrine.”
“It’s gone, it’s decimated … to me, it’s deeply sad,“ he said. ”It’s like, you know, cutting down an entire grove of the last redwood trees, or, you know, destroying parts of Yellowstone or something.”
Brinkley said elsewhere this was “almost like slashing a Rembrandt painting, or defacing a Michelangelo’s sculpture.”
“The White House stands for the United States, and the people were cut out” of this review process he said, for a ballroom turning out to be “larger than the White House itself.”
While significant renovation at the White House is clearly not unprecedented, Brinkley agreed with other historians that the extent of this demolition was. “It doesn’t feel like a historic renovation. It feels like a wrecking ball to build a larger and larger ballroom,” he said.
Brinkley added on CBS, “It’s sort of sad for professional historians like myself to see those gaping and horrible images of our people’s house, the White House ... being renovated in such a haphazard way.”
While prior renovations were largely because of “disrepair,” Brinkley described a sense that this renovation seems to be more about Trump’s love of gilded magnificence, such as Trump Tower and Mar-a-lago. “You’re seeing a kind of, you know, Trump’s gold vision coming to root in the White House.”
“It’s not his home,” Brinkley underscored. “It belongs to the American people … he is simply sitting there as a custodian.”
“It seems to me the dialogue with the American people was missing, and it seems to not have been properly vetted.”
Edward Lengel, White House Historical Association
Edward Lengel, former chief historian of the White House Historical Association, expressed concern on CNN that “what we’re going to see is a ballroom that’s going to be even more ostentatious, and it’s going to turn the Executive Mansion into an annex to the party space.”
“If you look at the Executive Mansion now,” he went on to explain, “you see 225 years of history even further back to the influence of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the architect James Hoban.”
“Now, your attention is going to be drawn to this giant ballroom, which really has one man’s name on it,” he said, sharing his opinion that this will “cast the Executive Mansion into the shade and turn it much more into a presidential palace.”
“As a Founding Fathers historian who spent most of my life with George Washington,” he went on to say, “I think all of the founders would have been disgusted by this (creating) much more of a presidential palace.”
“The administration’s talking point that this is just like any other change is absolutely disingenuous,” Lengel added. “And it’s a misdirection because they’re suggesting anybody who criticizes this is just a stick in the mud — ‘they don’t want change.’”
“This addition turns the White House and the Executive Mansion into something that it is not” — going on to emphasize its history as “the people’s house.”
“It is no longer in tune with what the founders intended, and it’s no longer in tune with the history of our country,” he said. “It sends the wrong message.”