The White Home this week offered its most detailed plans but for the East Wing renovation, shifting one step nearer to fulfilling President Trump’s want for a virtually 90,000-square-foot addition to the chief mansion. The Nationwide Capital Planning Fee will consider these plans at a listening to in early March.
The submission contains new renderings of the neoclassical construction, relative to different buildings near the ballroom and from vantage factors close to the U.S. Capitol, Jefferson Memorial and factors across the White Home campus. The East Wing, which can home a ballroom, workplace area and a two-story colonnade, can be constructed to roughly the identical peak as the prevailing government residence and can be barely taller than the adjoining Treasury constructing.
White Home plans submitted to Nationwide Capital Planning Fee
Drawings provided by the undertaking’s architect Shalom Baranes present boxwood hedges and brick pavers lining the constructing’s east facet.
White Home plans submitted to Nationwide Capital Planning Fee 
In a 9-page letter to the fee, director of White Home administration and administration Josh Fisher mentioned consultants studied the prevailing East Wing construction earlier than concluding demolition was the one approach ahead. Its structural limitations didn’t permit for modifications, Fisher wrote.
“Demolition of the prevailing East Wing construction and reconstruction of a brand new East Wing offered the best answer to many longstanding points affecting the White Home and delivered the perfect long-term danger discount,” Fisher mentioned.
White Home plans submitted to Nationwide Capital Planning Fee 
The East Wing was razed in October. Fisher mentioned heavy gear has been saved at a distance from the White Home mansion to keep away from inadvertent injury, and he mentioned {that a} portion of the constructing was eliminated by hand. Contractors monitored vibrations and cracks to guard the prevailing construction.
White Home plans submitted to Nationwide Capital Planning Fee 
Fisher wrote that the demolition was “methodical….relatively than sudden catastrophic destruction,” despite the fact that the general public was not notified previous to the East Wing’s destruction.
The administration plans to improve park grounds surrounding the White Home and substitute the trailer that at the moment serves as a customer safety checkpoint.
Fisher added a crew has begun structural evaluation of the West Wing colonnade to see if it might help a second story, bringing it into symmetry with the soon-to-built East colonnade. “No determination can be made concerning such a undertaking till these features are absolutely studied and analyzed.”
