For a showman spurned by America’s elites, Trump’s buildings have become symbols both of his status and status anxiety
Much like his trademark catchphrases, “The Art of the Deal”, “You’re fired” and “Make America Great Again”, architecture has always been synonymous with Donald Trump‘s brand. For a narcissistic showman, spurned by America’s elites, his eponymous buildings have become symbols both of his status and his status anxiety.
Trump Tower, which opened in 1983, is a skyscraper of multiple entendre. The million-dollar fountain in the atrium, fashioned from peach rose and pink Breccia Pernice marble tiles, spoke of his belief that ostentatious wealth equates with power.
The doormen dressed as palace guards, wearing scarlet tunics and white pith helmets in the summer and black bearskin hats in the winter, betrayed even then his monarchical inclinations. The jackhammering of Art Deco sculptures that had ornamented the previous building on Fifth Avenue, demolished to make way for the skyscraper, spoke of the civic vandalism and disdain for tradition.
Why stop there? The shipping of $75,000 worth of palm trees from Florida for the foyer, which were then chainsawed because Trump did not like the look, spoke of his contempt for the environment. A federal investigation found that the tower’s concrete frame was most likely constructed using materials supplied by mob-run firms.
Meanwhile, the fact the Trump organisation boasted the tower rose 68 storeys above Fifth Avenue, while it was technically only 58 storeys tall, revealed his tenuous relationship with the truth. And the tycoon’s name rendered in bronze capital letters above the door illustrated his self-love and self-belief. Here, in the most literal sense, it was writ large.
From conception to completion, there was something desperately needy about such an opulent building.
Trump, born in the unfashionable outer boroughs and derided by Manhattan’s elites as a “bridge and tunnel guy”, yearned to be taken seriously by the powerbrokers of New York City: Wall Street bankers sceptical about lending him money; Ivy League-educated scribes at the New York Times and New Yorker who regarded him as a vulgar buffoon. Not only was this a vanity project, then, but also a validation project.
The problem with Trump Tower, however, was that it looked like the 1980s had thrown up all over it, and its gaudiness merely heightened elite disdain, though it could be argued that Trump has had the last laugh. He even launched his insurgent presidential campaign in 2015 by descending its golden escalator.
Even so, Trump yearns for hometown approbation. In the 2024 election, all but one voting precinct in Manhattan voted for Kamala Harris, his Democrat opponent.
As a result, the new White House ballroom, rather than being instantly iconic, has become instantly metaphoric.
Much like the blaze of gold in the Oval Office, part Versailles part Liberace, it reeks of his love for the authoritarian aesthetic. During his first term as president, Trump decreed that all new federal buildings should be designed in the neo-classical style, a “dictator chic” favoured by the likes of Mussolini and the Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceausescu.
During his second term, Trump has gone further, by remodelling the White House in his own image. This has meant turning the Rose Garden into a paved patio, adding a gold-lettered sign outside the Oval Office in a font a nail parlour in Boca Raton, Florida, might use and lining the West Colonnade with gold-framed portraits of his predecessors (with Joe Biden represented by his autopen signature).
Trump has also shared his vision for a triumphal arch close to the Lincoln Memorial, which would commemorate next summer’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Inevitably, it has been dubbed the “Arc de Trump”.
The President’s willingness to bulldoze the existing East Wing, a building of refinement and restraint, demonstrates his readiness to hurl a wrecking ball at tradition, conventions and regulations.
As The New York Times reported last month, Trump has informed contractors working on the ballroom they are not bound by zoning or code requirements (although the firms themselves are apparently insisting on following normal building codes).
Trump has also made clear that nobody will impede his grand designs. Rather like installing Maga loyalists at the Justice Department and Pentagon, he has appointed close allies to bodies such as the National Capital Planning Commission that ordinarily oversee these kinds of sensitive projects.
As the building takes gargantuan shape, it provides yet more evidence of Trump’s truth-twisting. When he first unveiled the project, he promised it would not touch the existing structure. Then the wrecking crews moved in and reduced the East Wing to a heap of rubble. And in true Trumpian fashion, it is becoming an ever more bigly project. The original scheme called for a ballroom that could accommodate 500 guests. Now the figure is said to be closer to 1,350.
Renderings suggest the new addition will completely alter the aesthetic balance of the three different sections of the White House: the West Wing, which houses the Oval Office; the Executive Mansion, which houses his residence; and the old East Wing, which used to house the offices of the First Lady.
Again, the architecture doubles as allegory. This is a President, after all, who has sought to dramatically alter the equilibrium of the three branches of the US government, by maximising the power of the presidency and riding roughshod over Congress and, in some cases, the courts.
The funding of the $300m building raises ethical concerns. Trump promised that taxpayers will not foot the bill. Instead, donors from the tech, crypto and defence sectors – including Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin – are coughing up the cash. It all looks like a craven attempt to curry favour with the President by proffering commercial largesse.
To its credit, banking giant JPMorgan Chase has said it will not be donating. Its influential CEO, Jamie Dimon, told CNN, “we have to be very careful how anything is perceived — and also how the next DOJ [Department of Justice] is going to deal with it”.
Trump is not the first president to carry out alterations to the White House. Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing. Richard Nixon built a bowling alley, while Barack Obama adapted the tennis court so it could also be used for basketball. But the scale of Trump’s ballroom construction, which looks like it will have double the footprint of the old East Wing, is unprecedented.
It all brings to mind Obama’s speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011, when he roasted Trump by displaying a mock-up of what 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue might look like if ever he took up residence.
The Executive Mansion featured four new storeys. The words “White House” were scrawled in purple neon lettering. The facade looked like Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
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In Washington DC, two buildings loom large in the Trump melodrama. The US Capitol, which was trashed by his supporters on 6 January, 2021, and a White House that he seemingly wants to transform into a monument to himself.
