How long will the White House have a "hole in the ground"?

With an injunction halting the construction of the White House ballroom and the Trump administration appealing, it is unclear how long the East Wing grounds will remain a massive construction site.

The legal limbo of the East Wing Modernization Project – known popularly as the White House ballroom – presents difficult questions for the Trump administration.

Though the agency in charge of building in the capital, the National Capitol Planning Commission (NCPC), formally approved the Shalom Baranes-designed ballroom expansion, an injunction on construction from a federal judge responding to a lawsuit led by the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) leaves the matter of its construction to Congress.

This could take months or even years, depending on the political will in Congress to push forward what has become an unpopular project in an election year.

"Increasingly unlikely" to be built

"It appears increasingly unlikely, given the bipartisan hate for this ballroom design, the President's fast-waning popularity, and the likelihood of power shifts in the mid-term elections, that the giant ballroom he seeks will be built," attorney Greg Werkheiser told Dezeen.

His firm Cultural Heritage Partners is one of three representing a consortium of architecture and preservation agencies suing the administration over the proposed renovations at the Kennedy Center.

"It seems more likely that we will see a much smaller ballroom, or a reconstructed East Wing, or a hole in the ground until he leaves office," Werkheiser continued.

"Maybe he secures a greenlight to at least finish construction of a very large and modernized below-ground bunker."

Trump's administration has appealed the decision, filing an emergency order to continue construction, citing national security concerns. Just days before the court injunction, Trump came out and called the ballroom a "shed" above the bunker, emphasising the security aspect of the project.

Leaving the East Wing as a construction site could allow "harm to the White House, the President and his family, and the President's staff," according to the appeal, calling it "unprecedented".

The specific case is indeed unprecedented. Legal cases where further construction was halted after historical buildings had come down are few and far between, especially in a building as prominent as the White House.

In 2018, the San Francisco Planning Commission told a San Francisco developer to rebuild a replica of the Neutra-designed Largent House, which it claimed had been illegally demolished. The developer appealed and paid a fine, never rebuilding the house.

More recently, the Metro Historic Zoning Commission in Nashville ordered a homeowner to rebuild a protected structure as close to its original as possible.

While the White House is on another level from these smaller, privately held buildings, it is technically exempt from the historic preservation statutes that cover many of the historic buildings in Washington DC.

A bill introduced to Congress by representative Jamie Raskin would include the White House under the National Historic Preservation Act.

However, for the moment, the "limbo" at the White House leaves its status unclear.

Five paths forward

There are now five possible paths forward, according to Werkheiser.

These comprise the approval by Congress of Trump's current plans, the approval of a reduced footprint for the building, a prolonged limbo for the site if there's a legal stalemate, reversal mid-construction with changing congresses, and the order to rebuild the original structure completely.

This last option may seem extreme and even wasteful, given that the East Wing, which was first built more than 100 years ago, was completely torn down.

But one organisation, the East Wing Restoration Project, has just this outcome in mind and was one of the community respondents that testified at one of the NCPC's public input sessions.

It has been lobbying for the project to be extensively scaled down. But if the Trump plans go forward, it would lobby for the new building to be deconstructed in order to reproduce the historic East Wing.

Regardless, the future is unclear – though, in the past, national security prerogatives have been compelling motivations for expediting projects.

For now, the site will remain in operation, with limited maintenance and security-related work being undertaken, but no meaningful construction and no way of knowing how long it will remain just a hole in the ground.

According to Werkhesier, the main issue of the East Wing Modernization was the order, as the statutes around preservation are meant to be activated before a project is demolished, rather than after.

"When you build first and seek permission later, you don't get certainty – you get a range of unstable outcomes, from reconstruction to stalemate," he concluded.

The photography is by Erik Cox Photography via Shutterstock.com.

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