"The proposed White House ballroom is wholly incompatible with the site"

Opposition to Donald Trump's White House expansion plans has focused on the building itself but the implications for the grounds are just as egregious, writes Charles A Birnbaum.

The debate about the proposed White House ballroom has prompted questions about stewardship of the nation's most important cultural patrimony. But it also illustrates how landscape architecture has been ignored, and how principled regulatory processes have been twisted into a performative auto-da-fé.

On October 15, 2025, as reported in The New York Times, president Donald Trump told a group of supporters: "We started with a much smaller building, and then I realized, we have the land".

Laws and guidelines regarding the grounds are being flouted and ignored

The "land" to which the president refers is the White House Grounds, a site that ranks among the nation's most historically significant designed landscapes. It is also listed both in the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark (NHL).

However, laws and guidelines regarding the grounds are being flouted and ignored, and regulatory agencies are being stacked with loyalists who have demonstrated little interest, if any, in understanding the significance of the cherished and beloved landmark they're affecting.

For more than a century, one of the greatest influences on the White House Grounds has been the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr (son of the designer of US Capitol Grounds and New York City's Central Park). He was the key contributing author to the 1916 Organic Act, which created the National Park Service (NPS), the federal agency that oversees the grounds.

In the act, Olmsted wrote the so-called "non-impairment" standard, where the NPS must "conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein, and… leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." The Organic Act is the foundation upon which nearly all NPS management decisions are based.

In addition, since 1935, the stewardship and preservation of the iconic White House Grounds has been guided by the "Report to the President of the United States on the Improvements and Policy of Maintenance for the Executive Mansion Grounds". This, too, was prepared by Olmsted Jr.

The report's opening paragraph is both contextualizing and cautionary: "The White House Grounds... are characterized by many long-established landscape qualities of great dignity and appropriateness. It is of the utmost importance to perpetuate these qualities; and, in so far as they are affected by changes which are necessary or desirable for other reasons, to strengthen and perfect them instead of obscuring or weakening them."

Landscape provides the essential overarching structure for the building

Olmsted noted that good management necessitates "a thorough study of the landscape history of the grounds," and, as observed in the 2020 historical study The Olmsteds and The National Park Service, he specifically cited "the need for planning in advance of building expansion".

Neither seems to be a priority at present.

There is one more important level of context. Since NPS is part of the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Secretary of the Interior is responsible for establishing professional standards and providing advice on the preservation of cultural resources listed in the National Register of Historic Places; that includes the White House Grounds.

Those standards can be found in the Secretary of the Interior's "Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes". They were created following an important policy shift at DOI from a "building" focus to one that was more holistic at a "property" scale. Yet, these guidelines have been largely ignored.

Importantly, the primary concern in addressing a historically significant cultural landscape is not solely its materiality, which is the focus when dealing with historic building architecture. It is first and foremost the property's visual and spatial organization and relationships.

At the property scale, the landscape not only serves as the stage, but it also provides the essential overarching structure for the building contained therein, like the placement of walls or windows of a structure.

Current discussions about the ballroom project are almost exclusively architecture- and artifact-focused

As the author of the above-mentioned "guidelines" during my 15-year tenure as coordinator of the Historic Landscape Initiative at NPS from 1992 to 2007, it is my observation that the proposed ballroom, in its current iteration, is wholly incompatible with the site, and fundamentally violative of the Organic Act of 1916 and the Olmsted Plan of 1935, which have guided decision-making for decades.

Unfortunately, current discussions about the ballroom project are almost exclusively architecture- and artifact-focused.

Some members of Congress have raised policy and procedural concerns. In an October 24 2025 letter, representative Mike Turner, founder and co-chair of the Congressional Historic Preservation Caucus, asked "what efforts were undertaken by the... White House to identify, document and preserve historically significant artifacts, fixtures, or architectural components in the East Wing prior to demolition?"

And an October 30 2025 letter signed by 60 members cites the White House Preservation Act of 1961, which "requires the preservation of any 'historic' or 'artistic' property, including furniture, fixtures, and decorative objects, for the American public".

Neither the letters nor the White House Preservation Act address the significant NHL-designated landscape, its historic visual and spatial attributes, "witness trees", et cetera.

The two reviewing agencies, the US Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) are now stacked with loyalists. They are largely bereft of the knowledge, expertise, and leadership needed to make consequential and informed decisions about the White House Grounds.

This administration has shown that it will do as it pleases

The CFA unanimously approved the project on 19 February, despite receiving a record number of public comments (some 2,000), more than 99 per cent of which were opposed, and the NCPC is expected to follow suit on 5 March, despite polling that shows the public objects to the project by a margin of two to one and tens of thousands of comments.

Fortunately, the congressionally chartered National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private non-profit, filed suit on 12 December 2025 to halt construction. On 26 February, judge Richard Leon ruled against the trust on procedural grounds, but he noted that if the trust "is inclined to amend its complaint", which the trust has announced plans to do, "the court will expeditiously consider it and, if viable, address the merits of the novel and weighty issues presented".

Even if the court rules in the trust's favor, further appeals are expected. What will happen in the interim? This administration has shown that it will do as it pleases – the law and public opinion be damned.

Charles A Birnbaum is the founding president and CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Washington, DC-based education and advocacy non-profit which awards the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.

The photo is courtesy of the US National Archives.

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