The White House is getting a new ballroom. A former White House historian reacts. : NPR

SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:

President Trump recently unveiled a plan he’s been thinking about for years. The White House is getting a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. Here’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday.

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KAROLINE LEAVITT: For 150 years, presidents, administrations and White House staff have longed for a large event space on the White House complex that can hold substantially more guests than currently allowed.

MCCAMMON: Construction is set to begin in September and should be complete by the end of Trump’s term. Renderings of the ballroom show an opulent gold leaf design. The White House says Trump and private donors will foot the $200 million bill. Ed Lengel served as the chief historian for the White House Historical Association from 2016 to 2018. We spoke about the planned addition, and we began talking about previous times that the White House was renovated.

ED LENGEL: Most presidents have made some aesthetic changes. There are things like President Nixon putting a bowling alley in the basement of the White House so he could unwind and relax. Teddy Roosevelt changed stairways. But larger changes – and I think the largest change to the White House up to this point was Harry Truman’s gutting the interior after World War II and completely tearing the whole thing out. That’s something that normally goes through a process of working with the National Park Service, working with Congress and making the case for an imperative need that these changes have to be made. If it’s a profound change to the architecture of that building, normally presidents don’t simply just say, well, I’m going to change all of this. They go through a process.

MCCAMMON: Looking at the rendering of this planned ballroom, there are chandeliers and a lot of gold detailing. How does it fit into the aesthetic of the rest of the White House?

LENGEL: Well, I’d get one question out of the way first. Is there a need for entertainment space? And I’d say, yes, there is definitely a need for expanded entertainment space. There are a lot of social functions. They will go into various rooms and the East Room. And I’ve been to some of those functions. I’ve talked with the previous White House curator who’s complained to me about how guests spread out across the whole house. And he mentioned getting eggnog on the wallpaper. It becomes a challenge to do that.

The thing that changes the aesthetic, I think, in a very profound way – and I’ve looked at the renderings of this – it’s a very large building that’s proposed to be built here, over what had been the East Wing, that rivals the size of the presidential mansion itself. My concern is that it really transitions the whole thing into a presidential palace. And I think that that in some ways contradicts the original concept of the White House that the founders intended.

MCCAMMON: You know, President Trump has made other changes to the White House. He installed two 88-foot-tall flag poles on the North and South Lawn. And this summer, crews started tearing out the famous White House Rose Garden and very recently paved over that area. As a historian, what is your reaction to that project?

LENGEL: Well, change is the only constant. There’s always going to be change. I’m not reflexively against change. I know a lot of people mourned the paving of the rose garden. There were some practical reasons. I think they were advanced to justify that saying ladies in high heels had trouble navigating. For some reason that didn’t seem to bother Jackie Kennedy very much but – nor Lady Bird Johnson or others. That’s one of the things that I think takes away from the intimacy and the comfort level and the kind of approachability of the house in general. Jackie Kennedy was so brilliant at her ability to convey this house that, for security reasons, everybody can’t just walk into. But she wanted it to be an approachable, people-centered house that Americans could feel that they could take ownership of.

MCCAMMON: In 50 or a hundred years, how do you think this ballroom addition will be seen by future historians?

LENGEL: Well, future historians will, I think, be grateful that the integrity of the executive mansion itself and that building wasn’t compromised. This isn’t a matter of tearing down half of the building. But they will see, I think that something was lost. They’ll see that a concept dating back to the founding era – and I’m a George Washington historian, so I’m attached to that era – that a message of what the executive branch and what our government is supposed to represent as a democratic symbol in a common community, a democratic community, they’ll see that that’s been lost. I know our president is fond of superlatives, and this is a superlative. There’s never been anything like this before – absolutely not. This dwarfs everything that has ever been done on that property before. So it’s a change that’ll practically be irreversible.

MCCAMMON: That’s Ed Lengel, former chief historian for the White House Historical Association. Thanks so much for your time.

LENGEL: Thank you.

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