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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Trump’s East Wing expansion requires a reimagined White House tour
By Betsy Klein, CNN
Updated:
8:00 AM EDT, Sat August 9, 2025
Source: CNN
President Donald Trump’s long-term vision to expand the White
House’s entertaining capacity is going to have short-term impacts on
Americans seeking to visit the complex now.
A residence, a workplace and a museum, the White House is the only home
of a head of state in the world that is also open to the public most
days. Hundreds of thousands of people enter the People’s House for
free tours each year, gaining firsthand access to the Blue Room, where
President Grover Cleveland Frances Folsom, the Red Room, where first
lady Dolley Madison , and the Diplomatic Reception Room, where
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt held his radio “fireside
chats.”
But that could stop next month when construction on Trump’s
90,000-square-foot ballroom – which will overtake the current
footprint of the East Wing – gets underway. Tour bookings have been
halted temporarily, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, because
construction will directly impact the current tour screening process
and entry point.
With the exception of visiting heads of state, guests arriving at the
White House for receptions, dinners and tours currently enter through
Sherman Park, just behind the US Treasury building, and get screened by
US Secret Service in a temporary visitor center. Multiple previous
efforts over the last two decades to build a permanent structure have
failed to get the necessary funding from Congress or the Department of
Interior to proceed. Once visitors have passed through checkpoints and
security, they enter through the East Wing, which was first constructed
in 1902 and took its current structure during the Franklin D. Roosevelt
administration.
Trump’s ballroom is expected to expand out beyond the site of the
current East Wing, which is home to the Office of the First Lady, the
Military Office, the Visitors Office and the Office of Legislative
Affairs.
A spokesperson for first lady Melania Trump — whose office oversees
tours — downplayed the disruption, saying only new tour bookings have
been paused.
“There have been zero tour cancelations due to the addition of the
State Ballroom. Instead, new tour bookings were paused proactively
while a collaborative group of White House, U.S. Secret Service,
National Park Service, and Executive Residence staff work to determine
the best way to ensure public access to the White House as this project
begins and for the duration of construction,” Nick Clemens said in a
statement to CNN.
“The White House tour route has evolved over presidencies, and we
look forward to near-term updates about the new State Ballroom. The
President and First Lady remain committed to continuing the tradition
of public access to the People’s House in the present and for the
future.”
Officials are currently assessing how to move the screening process and
likely truncate the tour while still capturing the essence of a White
House visit during the construction.
The scope of construction, a source familiar with the situation told
CNN, is “going to be invasive to what is the norm now [for tours].
They’re going to have to put up temporary screening mechanisms.
They’re going to have to reroute the parameter of Secret Service
protection.”
In a reimagined route, the source said, visitors would miss entering by
the first lady’s office, walking through the East Colonnade past the
family theater, and the area known as “Booksellers Hall” where
state dinner guests are received. But there will likely still be access
to the home’s most historic spaces: the State Floor, State Dining
Room, Red Room, Blue Room, Green Room, East Room, Library, Vermeil
Room, and Diplomatic Reception Room.
The adjustments may also impact how many tickets are administered.
“The tours are not going to be canceled,” the source added.
“They’re going to find a solution – but I think they’re going
to probably have to manage the numbers that come in and out now. There
may have to be some changes.”
Construction is expected to get underway in September and is
“expected to be completed long before the end of President Trump’s
term,” according to a statement from the White House that included
renderings of the new structure, which is nearly double the square
footage of the main White House mansion. Trump has said that he, along
with other donors, will privately fund the project, which is currently
projected to cost $200 million.
Officials from the White House, Secret Service, National Park Service,
and Executive Residence staff are working quickly to reassess the tour
flow, another source familiar with the matter said, but changes to
White House tours have taken years to enact in other circumstances.
During the Biden administration, first lady Jill Biden unveiled a
multimillion-dollar upgrade to the tour to make it more accessible and
interactive, including new digital screens in the East Colonnade, a
three-dimensional model of the White House’s architectural
transformations over the years, and tactile “reader rails” with
detailed information about each room on the tour.
Those upgrades took to come to fruition in close coordination with the
East Wing, the National Park Service, which oversees all improvements
to the White House, the White House Historical Association, the White
House curator’s office, and executive residence staff.
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