Trump
Switches Architects for White House Ballroom Project
The
president had clashed with the original designer and insisted on increasing the
size and scope of the ballroom on a short timeline.
Erica L.
Green
By Erica
L. Green
Reporting
from Washington
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/us/politics/trump-ballroom-white-house-construction.html
Dec. 4,
2025
Updated
9:19 p.m. ET
President
Trump has hired a new architecture firm to oversee the design of his new
ballroom, the White House said on Thursday, a move that comes after he had
multiple disagreements with his original designer.
The
president chose Shalom Baranes Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that
has designed other government buildings, to oversee the next phase of the
project, a White House spokesman, Davis R. Ingle, said in a statement. He added that
the firm would join “a team of experts to carry out President Trump’s vision on building what will be the
greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office.”
“Shalom
is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity
of our nation’s capital for decades, and his experience will be a great asset
to the completion of this project,” Mr. Ingle said, referring to the firm’s
founding principal, Shalom Baranes.
The
selection comes after Mr. Trump had clashed with the original designer, McCrery
Architects, as the president has insisted on increasing the size and scope of
the ballroom on a short timeline.
James
McCrery, who runs McCrery Architects, which is known for its work building
Catholic churches, had personally presented the president with plans of a
design that would be in keeping with the rest of the White House. But their
visions diverged as Mr. Trump’s ambitions for the project grew.
Mr. Trump
tore down the East Wing in October after pledging that the White House would
not be touched, and is seeking to build a ballroom more than four times as
large as the 20,000-square-foot one at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida that
inspired it.
And Mr.
Trump’s insistence that the ballroom be completed before his term ends in 2029
has resulted in sloppy plans. The various plans released so far, including a
rushed model made by a contractor, have included windows that collide into each
other and a staircase to nowhere.
A White
House official insisted that McCrery Architects was not being replaced, and
that Mr. McCrery, who had pulled back from day-to-day involvement in the
project in recent weeks, would serve as a “valuable consultant.”
The
selection of the new firm was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
Shalom
Baranes Associates did not immediately respond to an emailed request for
comment.
The
selection of the firm was a curious one for Mr. Trump. Shalom Baranes has been
designing government buildings for several decades, and boasts awards for its
commitment to historic preservation.
Earlier
this year, Mr. Baranes was among several architects interviewed for an article
in the Washington Business Journal about preserving the Brutalist architectural
style of several of the capital’s federal buildings — and that Mr. Trump has
expressed his dislike for.
“Advocating
for the demolition of major structures on the basis of stylistic preferences
strikes me as callously irresponsible,” Mr. Baranes said in the business
journal article.
Mr.
Baranes also donated to several Democratic campaigns, according to Federal
Election Commission filings, including some of Mr. Trump’s most frequent
political targets — Representative Nancy Pelosi, and former Presidents Joseph
R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama.
Kitty
Bennett contributed research. Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.
Erica L.
Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump
and his administration.
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