President Trump has hired a new architecture firm to oversee the design of his new ballroom, the White House said on Thursday, a move that comes after he had multiple disagreements with his original designer.
The president chose Shalom Baranes Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that has designed other government buildings, to oversee the next phase of the project, a White House spokesman, Davis R. Ingle, said in a statement. He added that the firm would join “a team of experts to carry out President Trump’s vision on building what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office.”
“Shalom is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation’s capital for decades, and his experience will be a great asset to the completion of this project,” Mr. Ingle said, referring to the firm’s founding principal, Shalom Baranes.
The selection comes after Mr. Trump had clashed with the original designer, McCrery Architects, as the president has insisted on increasing the size and scope of the ballroom on a short timeline.
James McCrery, who runs McCrery Architects, which is known for its work building Catholic churches, had personally presented the president with plans of a design that would be in keeping with the rest of the White House. But their visions diverged as Mr. Trump’s ambitions for the project grew.
Mr. Trump tore down the East Wing in October after pledging that the White House would not be touched, and is seeking to build a ballroom more than four times as large as the 20,000-square-foot one at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida that inspired it.
And Mr. Trump’s insistence that the ballroom be completed before his term ends in 2029 has resulted in sloppy plans. The various plans released so far, including a rushed model made by a contractor, have included windows that collide into each other and a staircase to nowhere.
A White House official insisted that McCrery Architects was not being replaced, and that Mr. McCrery, who had pulled back from day-to-day involvement in the project in recent weeks, would serve as a “valuable consultant.”
The selection of the new firm was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
Shalom Baranes Associates did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The selection of the firm was a curious one for Mr. Trump. Shalom Baranes has been designing government buildings for several decades, and boasts awards for its commitment to historic preservation.
Earlier this year, Mr. Baranes was among several architects interviewed for an article in the Washington Business Journal about preserving the Brutalist architectural style of several of the capital’s federal buildings — and that Mr. Trump has expressed his dislike for.
“Advocating for the demolition of major structures on the basis of stylistic preferences strikes me as callously irresponsible,” Mr. Baranes said in the business journal article.
Mr. Baranes, also donated to several Democratic campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission filings, including some of Mr. Trump’s most frequent political targets — Representative Nancy Pelosi, and former Presidents Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama.
Kitty Bennett contributed research. Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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