The East Wing, the entrance to the White House for millions of Americans on official tours, the site of offices for every first lady for nearly a half century and the home of calligraphers who prepared thousands of invitations for White House state dinners, disappeared into a pile of rubble on Thursday. It had stood for 123 years.
Built in 1902 during the Theodore Roosevelt administration as an entryway for guests arriving in carriages, and rebuilt in the 1940s during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, the East Wing met its end under orders from President Trump. He dismissed it this week as “a very small building” that was in the way of his planned 90,000-square-foot, $300 million ballroom.
A New York Times analysis of satellite imagery showed that the demolition included the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and the East Colonnade, which connected the East Wing to the White House and included the president’s theater.
The East Wing’s destruction prompted outrage from preservationists and Democrats, and mourning from those who once worked there.
“There was never a day I didn’t catch my breath walking into the East Wing,” said Laura Schwartz, the White House director of events in the Clinton administration. “That’s what makes the loss to me so painful. It’s not just a building. It’s the living history.”
“It was such a breath of fresh air from the West Wing,” said Stephanie Grisham, a White House press secretary and chief of staff to Melania Trump, the first lady, during Mr. Trump’s first term. “I hate to see that kind of history literally being demolished in front of our eyes.’‘
Jeremy Bernard, who served four years as social secretary under President Barack Obama, recalled the East Wing as the all-important first impression of the White House for guests. Since almost everyone invited — including titans of industry, movie stars and Nobel Prize winners — had to first snake through long outdoor lines of Secret Service checks, often in cold or heat, he said he had tried to make sure that the East Wing “really popped out” with decorations and live music.
“Everyone felt welcomed after going through the horror of security,” he said.
Not everyone was nostalgic. Gahl Hodges Burt, who was social secretary for three years under President Ronald Reagan, said that tearing down the East Wing to make space for the ballroom was an unfortunate necessity, and that change was overdue. Since the State Dining Room holds only 140 seated guests and the East Room has space for 200 at most, recent administrations have taken to erecting enormous tents on the South Lawn for ever larger state dinners.
“Putting up a tent does nothing but make people upset that they’ve come to a state dinner but they never get inside the White House,” Ms. Burt said. “The only bathroom facilities for a tent are porta-potties. Setting up a kitchen out there is hugely expensive. When the tent is up, the helicopter can’t land. And the grass dies.” (Ms. Burt was referring to the presidential helicopter, Marine One.)
Ms. Burt, a board member of the White House Historical Association, added that larger spaces for East Wing offices are “very much needed.” The White House has said that office space is included in Mr. Trump’s plans for the ballroom.
Despite those who found the East Wing deficient, it did cast a spell. “I’m sentimental about it as a place where I spent so much blood, sweat and tears,” said Michael LaRosa, the press secretary to Jill Biden, who as first lady worked in her East Wing office most days.
Mr. LaRosa, who agreed with Ms. Burt that a ballroom was needed to replace the behemoth tents — “the French have the Élysée Palace and here we are having a lawn party” — said he had fond memories of Dr. Biden bringing Willow, the family cat, to her office.
They closed the French doors, he said, to keep Willow from roaming the White House. “The calligraphers made this nice sign: ‘Please keep doors shut, Willow on the prowl,’” he said.
“At the end of the day sometimes we would just have a glass of wine — me, Anthony and Jill — and just talk, and not take everything so seriously,” Mr. LaRosa said, referring to Anthony Bernal, a senior adviser to Dr. Biden at the time.
In its 123 years of history, two modern East Wing incidents stand out.
In 2009, in what passed as a scandal at the time, a pair of uninvited guests and aspiring television reality stars, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, slipped past multiple layers of security outside the East Wing and made it into the first state dinner of the Obama administration. There, they were able to literally rub shoulders with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Secret Service agents propelled Vice President Dick Cheney out of his chair in his West Wing office and rushed him to a tunnel leading to a bunker below the East Wing, officially called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, which had been built as a shelter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II. Mr. Cheney entered the tunnel at 9:37 a.m., the moment that American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
The East Wing never had the political importance or cachet of the West Wing, which houses the Oval Office. But it became prominent, and controversial, in its rebuilding during World War II, when Republicans denounced the cost as wasteful. Constructed as a two-story wing in the same neoclassical style as the White House, it covered up Roosevelt’s new underground shelter.
“The secretive nature of the construction, tied to military purposes, further fueled suspicions,” Stewart McLaurin, the president of the White House Historical Association, wrote on the group’s website. “However, the East Wing’s utility in supporting the modern presidency eventually quieted critics.’’
Until Thursday, the ground floor of the East Wing housed the White House visitors’ office and the Office of Legislative Affairs, while the second floor was home to the White House Military Office and the offices of the first lady, her staff and the calligraphers.
Presidents watched the Super Bowl and showed movies before their release in the theater in the colonnade, which was used as a coat check for big events. During holiday parties, a band would often play Christmas carols just outside the East Wing entrance as guests arrived.
The personality of the East Wing was always calmer and less intense than that of the testosterone-filled West Wing, although as first lady, Hillary Clinton kept an office there and seldom used her one in the East Wing. She expressed outrage on Monday about Mr. Trump’s tear down, writing on X: “It’s not his house” but “your house,” and “he’s destroying it.” As of midday Thursday, the post had 28 million views.
Melania Trump visited the East Wing so infrequently during her husband’s first term that her empty office there was converted into a gift-wrapping room.
It is unclear how many times she has been there in the second term, or if she had any input into her husband’s grand plans.
Elisabeth Bumiller writes about the people, politics and culture of the nation’s capital, and how decisions made there affect lives across the country and the world.
The post A Pile of Rubble: After 123 Years, the East Wing Is Gone appeared first on New York Times.
