From “won’t touch the White House” to tearing down the East Wing
Early talk around the project suggested the new ballroom would be added without dramatically altering the existing White House structure.
That didn’t last.
In October, the East Wing was demolished to make way for Trump’s vision, signaling a much more invasive build than originally implied.
According to sources who spoke with the Wall Street Journal, McCrery pushed back on how far the plans were going. He reportedly reminded Trump of a core principle of architecture — a kind of “golden rule”: any new addition should not overwhelm or diminish the original building.
But the project kept growing. What began as a concept for a roughly 500-seat ballroom expanded to plans for 999 guests, then again to a design that could hold around 1,350 people, with enough room to potentially host a presidential inauguration indoors.
The more the space scaled up, the more it risked visually and physically dominating the existing historic structure — exactly what McCrery had cautioned against.
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