President Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing of the White House and decades of history has shocked those who worked there over the past few decades for both Democratic and Republican first ladies.
A number of former staffers spoke to East Wing Magazine about the teardown. They described the destruction as “revolting” and “jarring.”
The first images of the demolition of the East Wing appeared on Monday as the president rips out the building to make way for his massive $300 million ballroom.
The move has caused widespread surprise and outrage over the lack of respect for the property and history after the president previously insisted his plans would not interfere with the White House.
Since the plans were revealed over the summer, the cost of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom has ballooned to $300 million up from $200. Private donations will reportedly fund the construction work after Trump claimed he would pay for it. It is now expected to hold 900 people, up from the 650 in the original plan.
But for former staffers who once worked there around the clock, seeing the bulldozers move in has been a “gut punch.”
“I literally [cried] as I could see my old office window,” Penny Adams, who worked as First Lady Pat Nixon’s radio-television coordinator, told East Wing Magazine in an email. “It was my office from 1969 to 1973.”
Adams explained that East Wing staffers made a last-ditch effort to intervene in the weeks leading up to the demolition.
“In our small, little way, some of us from Mrs. Nixon’s staff have been trying to push back on this devastation,” Adams wrote.
She said she made several calls to the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) after former assistant to the social secretary Debby Sloan wrote the NCPC a letter about the importance of preserving the East Wing.
According to Adams, a commission meeting was expected on September 4, but she was told the commission had not received anything from the White House regarding the ballroom project.
She and another former assistant Susan Dolibois then joined Sloan’s letter-writing campaign to the NCPC to protest “this horrible project.”
“The photos were jarring when I first saw them,” Michael LaRosa, press secretary to former First Lady Jill Biden, told East Wing Magazine by email. “Initially, they felt like a gut punch. It was also a bit eerie and sad to see some of the interior reduced to rubble.”
LaRosa, who served as Mrs. Biden’s press secretary from 2021 to 2022, recalled to East Wing Magazine what an honor it was to work there, calling it “the experience of a lifetime.”
“I was always very aware of how special and unique—on good days and bad days—that working in the East Wing was,” he said.
Anita McBride, who served as former chief of staff to First Lady Laura Bush, said she had been hearing from East Wing alumni all day on Monday.
“Betty Ford had the best quote for how special the East Wing is: ‘If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is the heart,’ McBride wrote in an email to East Wing Magazine. “The walls may be gone, but those East Wing stories must be preserved and shared for future generations.”
Joni Stevens, who worked for Nixon and former First Lady Betty Ford before serving in the White House Military Office, shared that during the George H.W. Bush administration, additional bookcases were added to showcase the office, dating back to George Washington’s inauguration.
The offices of those who worked out of the East Wing were moved to other parts of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for the construction, but it remains unclear where the Office of the First Lady will be located in the future.
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