Trump’s big, beautiful, Mar-a-Lago-inspired renovation plans for the White House: ‘Keeps my real estate juices flowing’
When he’s not busy ending wars, deporting illegal aliens, overhauling the federal bureaucracy and drastically reordering world trade, the president has big plans for matters closer to home.
Donald Trump the property developer is busting out of the political straitjacket to bling the Oval Office and reimagine the White House.
From planning a “beautiful, magnificent” new ballroom to paving over the Rose Garden to create a convivial, Mar-a-Lago-style terrace, the 45th and 47th president is determined to make his mark on the White House this time.
“It keeps my real estate juices flowing,” he told a reporter recently.
Last week, after announcing a pause on reciprocal tariffs, Trump took personal interest in rearranging presidential portraits in the grand White House entrance hall.
Because he is serving non-consecutive presidential terms, he gets to display two official portraits in the White House and has been mulling four or five traditional versions in muted tones created by official artists, including one memorable painting in which he looks fierce as he leans on the edge of the Resolute Desk.
But last week he chose a temporary artistic addition to the grand foyer: a colorful painting of himself after last year’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., with his face bloodied and fist raised, capturing the iconic moment that he thinks may have turned the election for him.
The striking painting will stay in the foyer for two or three months, before a more traditional portrait takes its place. It replaced a modernistic portrait of Barack Obama, which was moved across the hall to replace one of George W. Bush. Bush was moved into the stairway that leads up to the private residence, where he now sits alongside his father, a nice touch for the Bush family, who are due to visit the White House for an event in the summer.
Keeping Obama’s portrait in pride of place in the foyer was driven in part because its modern frame matches the new Trump portrait — but also, judging by Trump’s cordial demeanor with Obama at Jimmy Carter’s state funeral in January, he prefers him to the younger Bush, whose presidency he has frequently disparaged as “failed,” citing the $8 trillion spent intervening in the Middle East, which achieved nothing but “death and destruction.”
Trump has also ordered a huge painting of Abraham Lincoln to be moved out of relative obscurity in the stairway into the cross hall to replace a portrait of Bill Clinton, which will find an appropriate new home.
Dept. of interior design
Where the Joe Biden presidential portrait will go when it is completed is not yet clear, but it’s hard to avoid the quip that it belongs in the basement, or that it will have a horizontal format to befit his well-known position reclining on a beach chair.
The most marked change Trump has made to the White House, so far, however, is in the Oval Office, where he keeps adding more golden flourishes, most of which he flies in from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
The gilding of his office began with seven golden urns placed on top of the mantlepiece, replacing ersatz shrubbery left by Biden.
Then he added gold cherubs above the doorways, ornate floral gold leaf appliques to the mantel frieze and walls, gilded Rococo mirrors hanging on the doors and side tables featuring golden eagles at their base. Even the lamps have gold touches, and on the president’s desk is a huge golden trophy from the FIFA World Cup.
He plans next to have gold leaf applied to the cornice moldings, which have been stripped back and painted in preparation.
Already the room looks far more lively and glamorous than it did under Biden.
A chandelier may be next on the decorating schedule, although the center of the ceiling is adorned with a historic plaster molding of an eagle, so it may have to be two chandeliers side by side.
On the curved walls, Trump has quadrupled the number of gilt-framed presidential portraits to 20, from Biden’s five, with Lincoln taking pride of place above the fireplace and Ronald Reagan prominently featured to the right of the Resolute Desk, where visitors will see it first.
Room will be made for a portrait of one of Trump’s favorite predecessors, William McKinley, when a suitable one can be found. The 25th US president, who served from 1897 to 1901, was the original “tariff guy” whom Trump has praised as a “natural businessman [who] made our country very rich through tariffs.”
Trump has also added a historic copy of the Declaration of Independence, which hangs on the wall behind a blue velvet curtain to protect it from the sunshine that floods into the room through French doors.
There is also a big map of the newly named “Gulf of America” standing on an easel behind the president when he sits at his desk.
Those well-known style mavens at “The View” are already screeching about Trump’s opulent tastes.
“He thinks he’s the interior decorator-in-chief now,” sneered Joy Behar, whose Sag Harbor décor runs to rattan mats and boxy white couches.
Her co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, who favors beige and brown in her Bronxville décor, disparaged Trump’s aesthetic as “somewhere between Pablo Escobar and Liberace. He loves the gold tchotchke.”
But Trump couldn’t care less. Despite the cacophony of criticism that greets his every move, he is planning to pave over the grassed area of the Rose Garden, which sits outside his office and where he regularly holds press conferences.
Party leader
The grass, while lush, is always wet, and he is concerned about women’s heels getting snagged, as happened recently to his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.?He will match the white limestone around the border remaining from first lady Melania Trump’s previous elegant redesign, and create a space surrounded by hedges of red tulips and white roses much like the golden terrace at Mar-a-Lago.
He envisages something like a convivial private club for him to entertain members of Congress and other visitors.
He admires the bucolic vista from the veranda off the Oval Office and has taken a keen interest in the groundskeeping work of the National Park Service.
Last week he made the tough decision, which his less bold predecessors had avoided, of cutting down the historic, 200-year-old “Andrew Jackson magnolia” that was half dead and propped up by wires.
“The bad news is that everything must come to an end, and this tree is in terrible condition, a very dangerous safety hazard, at the White House Entrance, no less, and must now be removed,” he announced on Truth Social, before ordering a new sapling that is a direct descendant of the original tree be planted in its place.
Probably the most consequential change Trump plans to the White House is to add a gigantic ballroom. It will be accessed through doors in the East Room, which is currently the biggest room in the house, but which Trump believes is wholly inadequate for large gatherings.
He has often scoffed at Obama and Biden holding state dinners in tents on the South Lawn.
“When a foreign leader comes over … they should not be in a tent,” he has said.
Golden age
He previously offered to build a 160-foot-long ballroom and pay for the $100 million cost himself, but despite approaching “top people” at the Biden administration four or five times, they never responded.
“I am very good at building ballrooms,” he said at a reception in the East Room in February. “I build beautiful ballrooms … like I have at Mar-a-Lago, as beautiful as it can be.”
He added, “I offered to do it to the Biden administration, a very active administration, but I didn’t hear back [so] I’m going to try to make the offer to myself … because we could use a bigger room … I think we’ve outgrown the tent stuff.”
The White House has undergone several renovations since its construction in 1792:
- CASUALTY OF WAR: In August 1814, British troops occupied Washington, DC, and burned the White House down during the War of 1812. James Hoban was called upon to rebuild it based on his original design. In 1817, President James Monroe moved into the rebuilt White House, and it was during his administration that the South Portico was constructed. The North Portico was added in 1829, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson.
- OVAL ADDITION: The Oval Office was built in 1909, though at the time it was located in the middle of the West Wing’s south side. It was moved to the southeast corner of the White House in 1934, overlooking the White House Rose Garden, where it remains to this day.
- WET RENOVATION: An indoor swimming pool (above) was first installed at the White House in 1933, under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who used it for swim therapy to ease symptoms from polio. The basement pool was enjoyed by several presidents and their families, perhaps most notably John F. Kennedy, who was known to take a dip twice a day and even hold races with members of his cabinet. The pool was later covered up and converted to a press room in 1970 under President Richard Nixon.
- ROSE GARDEN: The White House Rose Garden, which is often used to host media appearances by the president, was established in 1913 by Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Ellen Louise Axson Wilson. The iconic garden has undergone numerous transformations over the years, including the addition of a swimming pool at the behest of President Gerald Ford and the installation of a basketball court under Barack Obama.
He has architects drawing up plans that are sympathetic to the White House’s Georgian architecture, which he admires enormously, often calling it the most beautiful building in the world.
The interior likely will take its cue from the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago that spans 20,000 square feet and shimmers with Versailles opulence thanks to glittering chandeliers and $7 million of gold leaf adorning its walls.
“I’ve got more gold in that ballroom than anybody’s ever had in a ballroom before,” he boasted earlier this year.
Unlike with his previous property development plays, this time, there is no zoning authority Trump has to go through to build the new two-story wing that will house the ballroom.
As president, he can build whatever he likes, a power that brings a gleam to his eye.
With his attention on history, Trump the builder wants to leave the American people a revamped White House befitting the country he is making great again.?
