Sand was thrown in the gears of President Donald Trump’s grand White House ballroom plans on March 31, 2026, when U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ordered a pause on construction.

The president, the judge wrote, was the “steward” of the residence, not its “owner.” In response, the Justice Department filed an emergency motion, asking that construction be allowed to resume due to security risks caused by the project being in a state of limbo.

Presidents of the United States, unlike other world leaders, have not typically sought to impress their own architectural tastes on national monuments.

In this regard, Trump is the exception. His approach to remaking federal architecture has mirrored his approach to university funding and immigration enforcement: move fast, break things.

But Trump’s imposition of his aesthetic preferences doesn’t just threaten to erase chapters in the story of the nation’s federal architecture. It also risks undoing the legacies of presidential wives, influential designers and the egalitarian ideals that many of these buildings embody.

Gaudy grandeur

Since his second term began in January 2025, Trump has paved over the storied White House Rose Garden – established by first lady Ellen Wilson in 1913 and redesigned by renowned horticulturalist Bunny Mellon in 1962 – complaining that ladies’ high-heeled shoes sank into the ground. The art deco bathroom off the Lincoln Bedroom now reflects Trump’s penchant for polished marble. And gold-colored decorative elements have been affixed to the simple woodwork throughout the White House, with some of the ornamentation brought from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate.

Most notably, the East Wing, which housed the offices of the first lady and her staff, was flattened in fall 2025 to make way for a grand ballroom projected to cost some US$400 million. The building, if completed as planned, will dwarf the historic White House.

The ballroom also reflects Trump’s taste for grandiosity and opulence – the same aesthetic that’s reflected in the 250-foot “Independence Arch” that Trump has proposed for Washington.

Trump has repeatedly complained that public buildings in Washington lack grandeur. He was even quoted by Golf Magazine in 2017 as having described the White House as a “real dump,” although he later denied it.

Yet many of the structures he has demolished or has sought to revise embody, in their form and decoration, certain republican ideals, such as government by the people, civic virtue and opposition to concentrated power.

Buildings that embody egalitarianism

Trump has added accents to the White House to mimic the imposing homes of British and European monarchs. But the residence’s original “republican simplicity” – a concept attributed to Thomas Jefferson – actually had a purpose: It signaled the egalitarian outlook of the founders.

In 1792, when Jefferson was George Washington’s secretary of state, he anonymously entered the competition to design a new presidential home. His submission, which didn’t end up winning, was inspired by Renaissance architecture like Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda. Completed around 1570 in northern Italy, the Villa Rotonda features symmetrical facades and harmonious proportions that have been equated with Renaissance humanism and rationalism.

Elsewhere, Jefferson advocated for modeling the young nation’s government architecture on the classical tradition, due to its associations with ancient Greek and Roman democracy. This often meant using classical design principles like restraint, order and geometric harmony, and adapting them by either simplifying the elements or using locally available materials instead of the expensive marble and other stones favored by the ancients.

A repudiation of ‘republican simplicity’

In August 2025, Trump signed an executive order, Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again, directing that this same classical style inform the design of all future federal buildings.

Yet Trump’s own vision for the White House design doesn’t align with this directive. For one, the sheer enormity of the proposed ballroom transgresses the foundational belief in classical restraint.

The columns that support the massive south portico – which in an earlier iteration was reached by a grand staircase that didn’t lead to an entrance – have Corinthian capitals, the most ornate type of decorative top for a column. In contrast, Ionic capitals, which are more restrained, currently grace the columns at the entrance of the White House. One of Trump’s appointees, however, wants to swap these out in favor of Corinthian capitals.

And the temple-style portico on the east façade of the planned ballroom is awkwardly shifted to the far north end, rather than being centered as the classical tradition would dictate.

Glossing over history

This is not to say that classical principles have never run up against contemporary design trends.

In 1888, architect Alfred B. Mullett completed the State, War and Navy Building, now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Mullet had been inspired by Boston’s Old City Hall, which had been completed in 1865 and was itself inspired by the government architecture of the French Second Empire.

Trump has said that he finds the Eisenhower building’s gray granite façade dreary, and that he’d like to paint it white. Yet the material itself is a crucial element, tying the structure to the “Boston Granite Style.”

If the office building is painted white – in a process that would degrade the granite – a visual key to understanding its architectural and political history would be lost.

Architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock argued how forward-looking the building was for its time, and showed how how it mirrored the first skyscrapers erected in New York City: Richard Morris Hunt’s Tribune Building and the Western Union Building designed by Hunt’s pupil George B. Post.

For these reasons, preservationists have sued Trump to try to prevent these alterations.

Design that’s bottom up, not top down

I think it’s also important to note that in the original design and construction of many of the buildings Trump disparages, women played outsized roles.

As I note in my 2025 book, “Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism,” which I co-authored with Mary Anne Hunting, the contributions of women in architecture and design have often been overlooked.

The Trump administration’s projects in and around Washington will only further obscure the women who shaped the federal buildings and landscapes of the capital.

While the Rose Garden reflected the efforts of Bunny Mellon and Jacqueline Kennedy, the East Wing came under the watchful eye of Edith Roosevelt, the wife of President Theodore Roosevelt. Edith worked hand-in-hand with famed classicist architect Charles Follen McKim on its redesign as the primary entrance, in 1902. And had it not been for the public fundraising efforts of Jacqueline Kennedy, the capital may never have had a performing arts venue of national significance, the Kennedy Center for the Arts. In early 2026, the Trump administration announced that the center would close for two years to undergo an estimated US$200 million renovation.

While all buildings are living organisms that are frequently adapted to changing functional requirements, they are also the repositories of national memory.

In 1961, a young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who, as a U.S. senator from New York, would later go on to advocate for historic preservation, penned “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture” on behalf of an ad hoc government committee on office space.

“The development of an official style must be avoided,” he wrote. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government, and not vice versa.”

As Judge Leon made clear in his ballroom ruling, no government officials – not even presidents – “own” federal architecture. The American people do. And it’s up to their representatives in Congress to decide whether to destroy or renovate it, bearing in mind that it’s an inextricable part of the country’s history.

This article was written with the collaboration of Mary Anne Hunting, Ph.D., an independent scholar in New York City.

Kevin D. Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.