President Donald Trump plans to affix gold-colored presidential seals to the outside of his White House ballroom, breaking with the restrained aesthetic of the executive mansion, according to renderings that the administration shared publicly Friday.
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The Trump administration included the renderings as part of an emergency request to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow them to keep building the ballroom. The renderings also feature images of lighting sconces, hanging lanterns and yellow marble floors inside.
The Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, a pair of federal agencies that Trump has stocked with his allies, approved the White House’s design for the ballroom earlier this year. But the plans the White House submitted for the ballroom did not include the golden seals or other gilding on its facade.
Asked Friday about the latest ballroom designs, including the golden seals, the White House touted the project.
“President Trump continues to implement long-overdue and necessary renovations to beautify the People’s House as we celebrate our great Nation’s 250th anniversary of independence,” spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.
“Thanks to the Builder-in-Chief, the White House will be properly glorified and remain in excellent condition for generations to come.”
The statement did not respond to questions about why the golden seals were added to the ballroom’s planned design or whether the change would require further federal reviews.
A federal appeals court this month ordered that the administration halt construction on the ballroom by Aug. 21, siding with a historic preservation group that said Trump had exceeded his authority in attempting to build the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition by relying on private donations.
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White House officials on Friday told the Supreme Court that the project is “65% complete” and that it is too late to halt construction.
Trump has been closely involved in the design of the ballroom, which departs in notable ways from the vision that the White House’s original architect, James Hoban, had for the building.
Hoban strove for simplicity in an effort to convey that the White House would be the “People’s House” and not the home of royalty. He did not include gold on the outside of the mansion, a tradition continued when the White House’s East and West Wings were later built.
But Trump has picked a more ornate style of columns for the White House ballroom. Its planned gilded interior also resembles a ballroom that he renovated at his Mar-a-Lago resort and that Trump has said was inspired by the Palace of Versailles in France.
Trump has also added golden adornments to the White House, particularly in the Oval Office, and has approved new embellishments, such as building a 100-foot-wide helipad that would be ringed with the presidential seal.
Trump appointees who serve on the commissions that reviewed and approved the ballroom plans had said it was important for the new ballroom addition to be stylistically consistent with the original White House mansion.
“I really appreciate the uniformity and the consistency between the executive mansion and the neoclassical architectural language that it continues with this latest design,” Paul Ingrassia, a senior official at the General Services Administration, said at the National Capital Planning Commission’s meeting in March.
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