Donald Trump replaced the architect he personally selected for his White House ballroom project following a series of disputes over the building’s scope and safety standards.
The president had originally handpicked architect James McCrery II to lead the ambitious construction effort, which involves the demolition of the entire East Wing of the White House.
McCrery reportedly clashed with Trump over the project’s 90,000-square-foot blueprint, which the architect argued would overshadow the existing 55,000-square-foot White House mansion.
Insiders told The Washington Post that McCrery raised concerns that the proposed scale of the ballroom would violate basic architectural principles, putting him at odds with the president.
A White House official acknowledged the disagreement between Trump and McCrery but declined to elaborate on the nature or depth of the tensions between the two men.
The official characterized the exchanges between Trump and McCrery as “constructive dialogue,” a description that stands in contrast to the accounts offered by multiple insiders familiar with the situation.
Administration officials also acknowledged that the president’s commitment to the ballroom project “has at times veered into micromanagement,” an unusually candid admission from within the White House.
Trump has since brought on architect Shalom Baranes to take over the project, a figure described as someone who has “shaped the architectural identity of our nation’s capital for decades.”
Baranes steps into a project that has already drawn significant attention, given that it involves tearing down a major section of one of the most historically significant buildings in the United States.
The ballroom project represents one of the most dramatic proposed physical transformations of the White House complex in modern American political history.
The dispute between Trump and McCrery adds to a broader pattern of the president intervening directly in decisions that would typically be left to professional experts and technical advisors.
Washington Post reporter Jonathan Edwards has been tracking the developments behind the ballroom project, with reporting that sheds light on the friction inside what the administration had publicly presented as a smooth planning process.
