Here's what the architectural firm behind Trump's ballroom designed before
Plus: This Gen Z candidate made her first campaign ad all about ICE
The Washington, D.C., architectural firm that President Donald Trump tapped to design his White House ballroom is known for its ornamental, classical architecture, but the firm’s work is not generally known, even by design aficionados.
The East Wing is now demolished for an expansive, $300 million new space designed by McCrery Architects, which compared to the detailed, hi-fi portfolios of today’s most prominent architectural firms has a strikingly light online footprint.
The firm’s site shows only contact information for new commission inquiries and a slideshow of work that includes artist renderings of the planned ballroom. There’s no longer a list of its projects, but an archived list reveals a CV that leans ecclesiastical. Its Instagram account is bare. “Committed to Tradition and Excellence,” its bio reads, but there are no posts.
The firm’s portfolio is heavy on churches, and it’s now fast building up public-sector work, all driven by a love of classical American architecture.
“The very best American architecture is classical architecture once made American,” James McCrery, the firm’s founder and principal, said last year during a talk at the conservative Hillsdale College. “Americans love classical architecture because it is our nation’s formative architecture and we love our nation’s formation.”
Catholic churches are the most common building type in the firm’s portfolio. McCrery Architects has designed several houses of worship, including the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville, Tenn.; Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, N.C.; and Our Lady of the Mountains in Highlands, N.C.
The firm’s design for St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, S.C., won the John Russell Pope Award in 2017 for the traditional architecture contest’s Ecclesiastical Design over 3,000 square feet category. In a 2015 reflection about the building, McCrery said the church was “designed to encourage and strengthen all in the Faith . . . [and] intentionally made to be beautiful,” which typifies his and his firm’s approach to design.
This year, McCrery Architects was awarded for the baptismal font at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Gloversville, N.Y.
McCrery Architects designed the University Saint Mary of the Lake Feehan Memorial Library in Mundelein, Ill., and the Saint Thomas Aquinas Chapel at the University of Nebraska’s Saint John Newman Center in Lincoln.
The firm’s government work has grown from designing a statue pedestal and gift shop to making one of the biggest changes to the most famous federal government building in the U.S.
McCrery designed the pedestal for California’s statue of Ronald Reagan for the National Statuary Hall Collection in 2009. Each state can send two statues to the collection at the U.S. Capitol, and McCrery made the Tennessee Rose marble pedestal for artist Chas Fagan’s statue of the late president and former California governor and actor. The pedestal includes concrete pieces from the Berlin Wall.
McCrery’s firm also designed the U.S. Supreme Court’s book and gift shop, and, according to the Catholic University of America, the North Carolina state legislature commissioned the firm to create a master plan for its historic State Capitol Grounds.
The firm’s White House project is now its most visible work, and it’s most controversial.
The sudden demolition to make room for a privately funded addition shocked at least one former White House resident, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation asked the Trump administration and National Park Service to pause until plans can go through the legally required public review processes that it says include consultations, reviews, and public comment.
Trump’s White House makeover parallels his attempts at expanding presidential and state power, and represents an outward, physical manifestation of a wider Trump project to remake the presidency and leave a mark in his second term.
Like using emergency economic powers to impose tariffs or sending National Guard troops into U.S. cities, Trump’s power plays today feel anything but precedented or traditional. Traditional, though, is exactly what the architect who designed his grand ballroom is trained in.
A version of this story was first published in Fast Company.
This is your government’s trade policy on TV ads
In the Trump era, some TV commercials are aired to reach an audience of one.
It’s nothing new that lobbyists and political groups air millions of dollars worth of ads in the Washington, D.C., and West Palm Beach media markets to reach Trump specifically. But Ontario, Canada, learned last week that Trump was watching after he announced he was raising tariffs on Canada by 10% after the province aired an anti-tariff ad with footage of Ronald Reagan during Game 1 of the World Series between Toronto and L.A. on Friday.
The ad uses a segment from a 1987 speech by Reagan warning that “high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” which he says leads to shrinking markets and lost jobs. The ad aired again during Game 2 on Saturday, but Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Monday the province has pulled the ad.
Claiming “mission accomplished,” Ford said, “They’re talking about it in the U.S., and they weren’t talking about it before I put the ad on.” The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute said the ad misrepresents Reagan, but they literally used his words, and the foundation suggested it could take legal action, but presidential remarks are in the public domain, per the Associated Press.
This Gen Z candidate made her first campaign ad all about ICE
Kat Abughazaleh’s new 30-second ad puts ICE at the center of its message.
Kat Abughazaleh is a 26-year-old candidate running in the Democratic primary for an Illinois U.S. House seat being vacated by a retiring member. She announced her campaign on TikTok earlier this year, and now she’s out with the first professionally made campaign video of the race. It’s all about ICE.
“Fight Back, Pushing Forward Against ICE” uses audio of news reports about Abughazaleh being thrown to the ground by federal agents during a Chicago ICE protest in September, along with footage of the incident and Abughazaleh speaking about ICE. In Chicago, where the agency says its arrested nearly 3,000 people since being sent there last month, it’s obviously a potent political issue.
“We have watched as ICE has operated with impunity in Chicago… Trump, ICE, and [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem won’t even follow Geneva conventions,” Abughazaleh says in the ad. “We are at a turning point, so are we going to stand up for the people or are we going to let ICE do as it pleases?”
Have you seen this?
Confederate general statue toppled in 2020 is reinstalled in D.C. Crews placed a bronze statue depicting Gen. Albert Pike in Judiciary Square on Saturday. The Department of the Interior said the restoration complies with President Donald Trump’s directives. [NBC News]
Billboard along busy Alabama highway depicts Trump as infamous French king amid shutdown. The latest display from Birmingham Blue Dot takes aim at Trump’s new White House ballroom as a vanity project during a crisis at home. [AL.com]
The East Wing is history. You’ll be startled to know that the White House wing that once housed the First Lady’s offices is suddenly no more, our army is now being paid privately, and Kim Kardashian is considering retiring from fame. [Whig by Hunter Schwarz]
The review should have been completed BEFORE THE BUILDING WAS DEMOLISHED! A project this large should have been put out for bids. Army Corps of Engineers and maybe the Seabees Engineers should have been involved. He doesn’t own the building and should never have started this??
Doesn't anyone wonder where trump is “buying” all the gold?
There was a time when he and musk made a big fanfare out of wanting to visit Ft. Knox to see if the gold was really there. What if it's not there anymore and it's in his possession?