White House Ballroom - Design
The White House Ballroom will be substantially separated from the main building of the White House, but at the same time, it’s theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical. The site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits. The East Wing was constructed in 1902 and has been renovated and changed many times, with a second story added in 1942.
The White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said the following: “President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail. The President and the Trump White House are fully committed to working with the appropriate organizations to preserving the special history of the White House while building a beautiful ballroom that can be enjoyed by future Administrations and generations of Americans to come.”
McCrery Architects, a Washington, D.C.–based firm led by Jim McCrery designed the addition. His biography noted his "work experience led McCrery to rethink “his modernist education.”... the philosophical foundations of Post-Modern thought and its implications for architecture led Mr. McCrery to investigate and ultimately commit to Classical Architecture.” McCrery built a strong reputation for projects in and around the city.
The September 2025 design resolved the complexity and confusion of the multi-tier staircase on the Southern exteriorf depicted in the initial design, replacing it with a single grand stair. This may now be a primary entrance to the building, though the abesnce of a plaza at the base of the stair suggests that this design feature remains purely decorative. The awkwardly positioned portico on the Northeast corner of the building, a singular design defect, is retained, though enlarges from six to eight columns. The complicated roof configuration of the initial design, suggesting a separate entrance hall adjacent to the entry colonade, is no longer in evidence, probably submerged in the raised roofline.
The latest mock-ups, obtained in September 2025 by CBS News, showed the ballroom, a Palladian structure, appeared to have an entrance with stairs facing south, toward The Ellipse and the Washington Monument. At the top of the stairs are six Corinthian-style columns.
The corner pavilion and the main ballroom section look like two different buildings, the arched windows are too big, and raising the height of the connecting wing throws off the balance of the whole complex. It’s too big and out of scale with the rest of the White House. Plus it has a lopsided design facing the Treasury Building, and the portico is not centered. The proposed interiors, which were shown in full color renders, drew attention for their use of Corinthian columns, while the main house is adorned with Ionic columns.
Christopher Bonanos, New York’s city editor, wrote "That Trump will build a ballroom — the most on-the-nose embodiment of let-them-eat-cake Versailles extravagance — just as he throws old people off Medicare and kids off food stamps is as big a trolling as has ever been trolled. And you just know it’s going to become the Donald J. Trump Ballroom, whether he puts that name on it or someone applies it in order to suck up to him.... Trump’s urge to make everything bigger than it ought to be is a foreboding sign."
The Architect’s Newspaper (AN) noted "The exterior renderings appear rushed: The two distributed images are not mapped with materials and can be read as “arctic mode”–style outputs using default settings, including a sky that is all too familiar to architects who use softwares like Enscape to create architectural renderings. In one, some of the glass windows are rendered as opaque, not transparent, and the American flag is shown rendered in white, not in its accurate coloration. No drawings have been published that show the placement of the new structure as it relates to the existing White House."
Michael J. Crosbie noted "Renderings from lead designer McCrery Architects show the connection of the ballroom to the White House through a new second-story addition to the East Colonnade, crashing into the exterior wall of the Hoban White House’s East Room. This is a major change and contradicts Trump’s claim that the ballroom addition “won’t interfere with the current building, it will be near it but not touching it.” Suspiciously, no drawings have been released showing the addition’s connection to Hoban’s White House from Pennsylvania Avenue....
Edward Lengel served as chief historian of the White House Historical Association during Trump's first term. He spoke to CNN 22 October 2025: "I think we're going to see more and more surprises down the road, both in terms of the impact on the executive mansion itself. It could go beyond the East Wing. It could affect the executive mansion building itself, the original 1800 building. But I think much more likely what we're going to see is a ballroom that's going to be even more ostentatious to the party space.... Now your attention is going to be drawn to this giant ballroom, which really has one man's name on it. It's going to cast the executive mansion into the shade and turn it much more into a presidential palace. And I just say, as a founding fathers historian, spent most of my life with George Washington, I think all of the founders would have been disgusted by this.
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