The entire East Wing of the White House will be demolished “within days,” according to two Trump administration officials.
The demolition marks a significant expansion of the ballroom construction project from what President Trump said earlier this summer.
“It won’t interfere with the current building,” Trump said on July 31.. “It’ll be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”
The extent of the demolition was first reported by The New York Times.
A White House official told NBC News the “entirety” of the East Wing would eventually be “modernized and rebuilt,” while acknowledging the process is fluid.
“The scope and the size of the ballroom project have always been subject to vary as the process develops,” the official told NBC News.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, sent a letter Tuesday to administration officials, warning that the planned ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself.”
“We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes,” Carol Quillen, National Trust’s CEO, said in a statement.
The White House argues that it hasn’t been required to submit plans for review by the The National Capital Planning Commission because only demolition — and not technically construction — has begun.
The Commission of Fine Arts, National Capital Planning Commission and DC State Historic Preservation Office are the regulatory agencies that would traditionally be involved in greenlighting any major renovations at the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But the White House is ultimately exempt from their binding authority and approval process, the person said, because of what a symbolically unique property 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is.
The Trust for the National Mall oversees the private donations given to support the ballroom project as the nonprofit partner of the National Park Service. The design and construction are being led by the president himself, alongside McCrery Architects.
So far, the president has made significant changes to the Rose Garden, Oval Office, Cabinet Room and Palm Room. He also installed two gigantic flagpoles on the property.
Still, some experts have questioned how transparent the administration has been about the ballroom construction project.
Bryan Clark Green, an architectural historian and former appointee to the National Capital Planning Commission, said in an interview: “From a norms and customs side, administrations have always gone through that [approval] process to get buy-in and to make sure the public sees the process and isn’t surprised by the design. The whole point of the review process is to improve the design.
“So, you had the [Trump] statement over the summer that this will not affect the East Wing at all. But, obviously, it is. A public process would have avoided that kind of shock and surprise.”
Priya Jain, a member of the Society of Architectural Historians, said, “It seems like they [the White House] plans to submit their proposal to the National Capital Planning Commission. However, in regular federal projects, deliberation happens before anything is demolished.”
Construction plans were not submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission in advance but a White House official claims they will be “soon when it is time.”
It’s unclear what that timeframe is. The NCPC is currently affected by the government shutdown.
Construction crews were seen earlier this week ripping down the East Wing facade, prompting criticism from Democrats, historians and even some Republicans.
The White House issued a press release Tuesday, calling the uproar “manufactured outrage” by “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies.”
The critics, the White House said, were “clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House.”
The release called the planned ballroom “a bold, necessary addition that echoes the storied history of improvements and renovations from commanders-in-chief to keep the executive residence as a beacon of American excellence.”
It noted that numerous other presidents have had renovations and construction work done at the site. “FACT: For more than a century, U.S. Presidents have been renovating, expanding, and modernizing the White House to meet the needs of the present day,” it said, pointing to specific examples.
The ballroom project is being funded by private donors. Comcast Corp., the parent company of NBCUniversal, was included on a list of top donors to the project. It is currently unclear how much Comcast and other donors have contributed.