President Donald Trump is reportedly locked in a bizarre standoff with the architect he personally tapped to design a new White House ballroom—because the president wants it even bigger than the White House itself.
The push to supersize the already massive addition has triggered weeks of friction behind closed doors, according to four people familiar with the conversations who spoke anonymously to the Washington Post.
Only in Trump’s second-term makeover could a 90,000-square-foot ballroom—already larger than the 55,000-square-foot mansion it’s attached to—be considered too small, and architect James McCrery II has urged restraint, the insiders said.
McCrery, who was present when Trump took an impromptu walk on the roof of the White House Briefing Room in August, has reportedly warned that the giant add-on risks violating one of architecture’s simplest rules: don’t let an extension engulf the building it’s supposed to complement. Trump, the sources said, is not convinced.
It comes after White House staff were forced to step in and talk down the president from another potentially dangerous White House addition. He reportedly wanted an extremely heavy chandelier in the Oval Office whose weight caused structural concerns, according to a passage in a new book by Republican strategist Scott Jennings.
Also, reports suggest that a model of the reported annex, which was proudly unveiled to the press last month, is fraught with issues.
These include a staircase leading up from the South Lawn directly into a brick wall, and at least two woefully misaligned windows that appear to open out onto one another, as the Beast previously reported.
A White House official, meanwhile, conceded that Trump and McCrery have butted heads but insisted nothing is amiss, describing the back-and-forth as “constructive dialogue.”
“As with any building, there is a conversation between the principal and the architect,” the official said. “All parties are excited to execute on the president’s vision on what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office.”
The Daily Beast has contacted McCrery and the White House for further comment.
Trump’s fixation on the ballroom is part of a broader, unilateral redesign spree in which he has attempted to remake the executive residence in his own gilt-heavy image. Also on his redesign agenda is a proliferation of heavy gilding, oversized portraits, and swapping out historical pieces for personal iconography.
Administration officials privately acknowledge Trump has personally micromanaged the project, hosting frequent design meetings and keeping a model of the ballroom on display in the Oval Office.
The addition—which would be one of the largest structural changes to the 233-year-old White House—has undergone no public review and is moving forward with scant transparency.
The administration has refused to release basic details, including the building’s planned height. The structure is also expected to house offices previously located in the East Wing, while questions about the fate of the emergency bunker beneath it have been waved off on national-security grounds.
Photos obtained by The Washington Post show a construction zone humming with activity, though fenced off and shielded from public view.
Despite the massive scale, the project has not been submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission—the federal body responsible for reviewing these designs—even though its next agenda does not list the ballroom among upcoming reviews. White House officials insist they will file plans at “the appropriate time.”
McCrery, meanwhile, has faced scrutiny from his colleagues on this point, according to the Architect’s Newspaper. A group of 13 members of the American Institute of Architects fired off a letter to McCrery last week, warning of “some concerns about [his] involvement with the destruction of the East Wing of the White House and the impending design of the New Ballroom to replace the East Wing.”
According to the Architect’s Newspaper, which reviewed the letter, the signatories told McCrery they were giving him a heads-up “as a courtesy… prior to submitting any Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct Complaints to the National AIA.”
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