Trump replaces head architect after clashing over ‘big, beautiful’ White House ballroom

It’s been less than two months since President The President began his demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make room for his “big, beautiful White House Ballroom,” and the President is already parting ways with the original architect behind the project.

On December 4, a White House spokesperson confirmed to The Washington Post that the original ballroom architect, McCrery Architects, has been traded in favor of the firm Shalom Baranes Associates. The swap comes after multiple reports that The President and Jim McCrery, CEO of McCrery Architects, clashed repeatedly over the size and scope of the new ballroom. 

The construction of a giant ballroom is only one part of The President’s plan to remake the White House in his image. Over the past several months, he’s updated the building’s interiors with his own Rococo-inspired aesthetics, overhauled the Oval Office into a gold-laden spectacle, and turned the Rose Garden patio into a Mar-a-Lago lookalike.

Still, his plans to tear down the White House’s East Wing to build a $250 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom—a process that’s already underway—is by far his most extreme renovation. And now, it seems he’s opting for a new architect who’s more willing to bend to his personal vision for the project. 

Here’s everything you need to know about the shake-up, in a handy timeline:

July 31

Late this summer, the The President administration officially announced its plans to construct a White House ballroom. At the time, the administration named McCrery Architects as the team heading up the project. 

McCrery himself has been a vocal supporter of President The President’s push to make classical architecture a federal standard, once stating, “Americans love classical architecture because it is our nation’s formative architecture and we love our nation’s formation.” His firm is most known for designing Catholic churches and academic buildings.

October 20

In October, the The President administration began tearing down major sections of the East Wing to make way for the massive ballroom. The move came despite both The President and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s earlier assurances that the project would not interfere with the existing structure. 

November 26

The Washington Post was the first to report tensions between McCrery and The President. According to the publication, four people close to the project reported that McCrery repeatedly advised The President to bring down the proposed size of the ballroom, pointing out that a 90,000-square-foot addition would overshadow the original White House.

In a later report from The New York Times, further details about the disagreement emerged. Several sources told the publication that The President’s plans for the ballroom’s size have grown dramatically since the plan was first proposed. In addition, The President reportedly told people working on the ballroom that they did not need to follow permitting, zoning, or code requirements, and encouraged contractors to work quickly to meet the tight timetable of completion before 2029.

It appears that McCrery may have always been doomed to exit the project at some point. One source told The Post that the small size of his workforce made it difficult to meet such intense deadlines. On top of that, McCrery Architects’ relative inexperience with a project of such massive scale and inherent public scrutiny likely set the stage for problems down the line.

December 4

The President’s split with McCrery Architects was officially confirmed to The Washington Post via a statement from White House spokesperson Davis Ingle, who named Shalom Baranes as the next in line to head up the project. Per The Post, McCrery will remain tied to the effort on a consulting basis.

Baranes, who runs the firm Shalom Baranes Associates, is most known for leading a $1 billion renovation of the Pentagon back in 2001, though his firm has worked on other large-scale projects throughout D.C. Unlike McCrery, he’s embraced a neo-traditionalist style. Back in 2017, he subtly spoke out against The President’s immigration ban in an op-ed for The Washington Post, wherein he described himself as a “refugee” and argued that his own success would be impossible without his fellow immigrants. 

“My hope is that the The President administration will take actions to ensure that the travel ban is indeed temporary, so that good, hard-working individuals fleeing tyranny can find a new home as I did—and that each of them will be given the same opportunity to help build this great nation that I had,” Baranes wrote at the time.

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