Design Review: What’s Wrong with Expanding the White House on a Whim

I had no intention of diving into the controversy over Trump’s anointing Classicism and other traditional styles as the official architectural expression of federal buildings. With so much else that is criminal, vengeful, authoritarian, and just plain cringy about Trump and his minions, the appearance of a few more columns and pediments on whatever buildings the federal government will get around to putting up has not struck me as essential to crusade against.

But now Trump has embarked on the most significant alteration to the White House since its original completion early in the 19th century. He proposes to add a 90,000 square foot addition to replace the East Wing which was conceived by Thomas Jefferson but largely completed in 1902 for Teddy Roosevelt.

It’s easy to get up in arms about this. Does the White House really need a ballroom seating 900? The rendering shows an array of tables and cheap convention-hotel gilded chairs so vast that diners may pine for the relative intimacy of rubber chicken in a hotel conference center.

In truth, the White House could probably use a strategic plan that looked dispassionately at what should and should not be jammed into the building while maintaining and restoring its historic grace and flow.

But Trump prefers the big self-aggrandizing gesture, and would like to leave his mark permanently on the most important residence in America. That alone should be a dealbreaker, but may not be.

If the ballroom juggernaut cannot be stopped, an argument can be made that compatible classicism is the right way to go. But the design of the addition highlights the peril of classicism (or any other ism) as the Federal government’s house style.

The big winner here is the National Civic Arts Society, which has relentlessly lobbied for classicism and other traditional forms as the only appropriate architectural expression for the Federal government. It had joined the campaign for a World War I memorial with an invited competition that attracted dozens of garish exercises in empty traditionalism, both amateurish and wildly expensive. A modest commemoration that few readers have likely heard about was installed four years ago within a small 1981 park near the White House that had been designed by the well-regarded landscape architect M. Paul Friedburg. He had provided a loose enclosure for a statue of General John Pershing, who led World War I’s American Expeditionary Force.

Friedburg’s inviting but neglected sunken garden of shade trees and picnic tables was replaced by a rigidly symmetrical plaza, designed by architect Joseph Weishaar, with a reflecting pool, and 58-foot-long cast bronze frieze by Sabin Howard (a self-described “classicist sculptor”) of 38 figures histrionically depicting “A Hero’s Journey.” I find people today don’t relate to such narrative monuments, which command respect but are emotionally distanced and don’t invite engagement—a conspicuous failure since World War I has much to teach us in this similarly hubristic and saber-rattling age.

The Society crusaded against the Eisenhower Memorial by Frank Gehry, who had been chosen in an open public process, again assembling an attention-grabbing “counter proposal” competition. The winner was Daniel Cook who drew a lurid triumphal arch—a singularly grating gesture that could only remind people of the Nazi preference for grandiose forms from Roman antiquity. Likenesses of poor Eisenhower were treated as decorative elements squeezed between pilasters.

Nothing about this or other entries speaks to Eisenhower’s achievements, leadership, or fundamental humility.(Gehry’s singular lyrical expressiveness got predictably ground up in the noisy jockeying by interest groups, politics, and planners’ orthodoxies. Yet it is respectful and some evocative life survived—rare enough in today’s deeply divided capital.)

Some political conservatives deem modernist architecture to be a socialist plot, which is crediting architecture with much more political power than it has ever wielded. It ignores America’s home-grown modern architecture, invented by Frank Lloyd Wright and others, that is expressed most influentially in skyscrapers, emblems of capitalism and advanced technology.

Nevertheless, citing America’s alleged preference for historical forms and the predominance of classical architecture in monumental Washington, Trump’s executive order “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” was born, largely drafted by the NCAS. It is not about beauty but a demand to make classical and traditional architecture America’s official architecture. Yet NCAS represents no swooning by the public for domes, arches, and rows of corinthian columns. The “Society” comprises its President, Justin Shubow (a former journalist), one staff member, and an all male, all white board of directors who are mainly corporate executives. There are no artists and just one architect, John McCrery.

Give the relentless Shubow credit. He, largely alone, seems to have gotten the administration to buy into his vision, perhaps as a way to “own the libs.” (Trump’s own taste in casinos and hotels runs to bland glass boxes.) Yet no cabal of liberals tells architects what to do; they pugnaciously adhere to their own individual esthetics and are overwhelmingly apolitical to avoid offending potential clients. The American Institute of Architects (AIA), which represents about 100,000 professionals, for that reason objects to the designation of any single style for government architecture; there’s also no precedent for it.

Wither the White House?

When speaking of the iconic home of the American president, an addition done in a compatible manner is completely reasonable. But there are pressing questions, mainly whether this sea of flimsy gilt chairs merits this beefy addition.

The design presented by the administration in a few renderings is self-consciously grand, with the exterior in a Neoclassical revival style that takes its stylistic cues from the massive columned and pedimented Treasury Department (1836-1869) adjacent, instead of the rather humbler sobriety of the “Irish Georgian” White House itself, completed at the turn of the 19th century by James Hoban. (His dour pile was later gussied up by the addition of the familiar half-round South Porch and the deep columned and pedimented North Porch.)

The ballroom design is said to be a reproduction of Mar a Lago’s dining venue, which was reported to be inspired by the marble, gilded and mirrored Versailles—not exactly the right look for a nation governed by the people, for the people. Architectural historian Barry Bergdoll likened it to another over-the-top reception space—the Tsarist St. George Hall in the Kremlin Palace.

Constructing the ballroom entails the obliteration of the squat East Wing (and a bunker beneath it), which was added by Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 (as was its counterpoint, the West Wing) by the eminent architect McKim Mead and White. The firm also renovated connecting arcades designed by Thomas Jefferson to house servants and clerks that were built low so as not to compete with the house itself. The wings continue to be almost invisible from the all-important north and south sides, screened by dense planting. This is a good thing since both have been embarrassingly bowdlerized, and resemble roadside motels long past their sell-by date. (If an addition can be justified the East Wing would not be missed.)

The new addition violates the visual primacy of the house, however, because it rises as high as Hoban’s building and commands a chunk of the parklike gardens to the south that have long been deemed inviolable. It adds a tall additional floor to the arcade, which would prevent the original house from visually standing alone. The wing would no longer be visually subsidiary to the original house, but compete with it.

The extension into the park suggests that a corresponding replacement for the West Wing could be added to maintain the symmetry of the entire composition. That would turn the “house” into a tripartite composition redolent of the grand, formal-gardened palaces of European aristocracy, and perhaps reflect in architecture the power in the executive that Trump has claimed for himself with acquiescence by Congress and the Supreme Court.

As shown in renderings the design assembles elements from the Beaux Arts parts bin—the mighty pediment at the east entry, monumental arched windows punched out of otherwise blank expanses. Such classical architectural wallpaper is not lacking in Washington.

We should not be surprised that the design is by John McCrery, the house architect of the Civic Art Society. A designer of Catholic Churches, he is conspicuously unqualified to take on a project of such intricacy and entailing extraordinary technical demands. Evidence of his capacity to do this project is largely unavailable, though. His website is little more than a single page.

There is no evidence that the administration considered any other architects just as we don’t know who paid for the design which no doubt cost millions and is said to be ready for construction. AECOM, an engineering and architectural megafirm that is neither a leader nor innovator but is adept at working the levers of the federal bureaucracy, is backing McCrery up.

The AIA is unhappy and asking for a do-over, this time considering firm qualifications in terms of experience, technical capacity, experience with preserving landmark historic buildings, and imagination to inventively reconcile the many complexities unrevealed by McGrery’s computer-generated images of what appears to be the Greige House.

As usual Trump attempts to run roughshod over the gauntlet of rules that apply, including submittal to the National Capital Planning Commission, which is charged with protecting the historical integrity of Washington’s “monumental core” (as it’s preciously called) from inappropriate or frivolous change, since dozens of interest groups clamor for any slice of prestigious Mall real estate they can get.

What style should DC be?

The use of historical architectural styles may evoke a comforting past, but it does not speak to who Americans are and what they aspire to.

The Vietnam War Memorial speaks powerfully to people today even though few contemporary visitors served in the conflict. Maya Lin had the insight and imagination to invite Americans divided by the war to unite around the sacrifice of those who believed they were doing good (they were deceived) and gave their lives to it. It is why the 58,000 names inscribed in polished granite are so prominent and so tragic.

By contrast, the 2004 World War II Memorial, an elegant double helix of 56 classical pillars designed by Friedrich St. Florian, lacks emotive power because it is meaninglessly organized by U.S. state and territory. The war’s significance fails to come alive—the vast effort it took, the enormous losses it entailed, the existential necessity of ending Nazism, and the tense Cold War that ensued.

James Ingo Freed (of the firm Pei Cobb Freed) tempered his modernist instincts at the Holocaust Memorial Museum by devising a limestone exterior that suggests its difficult purpose without competing with the traditional buildings on either side. Freed deployed riveted-steel elements within that were derived from the industrial engineering of death camps. They foreshadow the tragic events the museum explains, and they resonate with viewers, whether consciously or subconsciously.

One could continue this argument tit for tat as there is plenty of both failed classicism and failed modernism on the mall. The problems aren’t just stylistic (though the advocates for classicism talk about nothing but style), too many are heedless of expression well suited to the building’s purpose, that enhances experience, and deepens meaning.

After some over-the-top-flops, The General Services Administration inaugurated its Design Excellence program in 1994 to actively seek out architects who were curious, insightful, and talented at form-making—whatever esthetic they worked in. The designs were peer reviewed by people dedicated to achieving the best quality for money, so that a single official or judge did not rule on esthetics nor blow the budget on goodies he or she wanted. It was inevitably imperfect but the track record is pretty good even as the program has eroded through political indifference over the years.

There may be better ways to build for the government but the alternatives should not include executive whim and special-interest capture as the way to create architecture for all Americans.