The White Home ballroom, reflecting pool resurfacing, Kennedy Heart renovations and a triumphal arch are among the many many adjustments Trump desires to make in D.C.
Tom Brenner, Rahmat Gul, Mark Schiefelbein, Jon Elswick/AP
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Tom Brenner, Rahmat Gul, Mark Schiefelbein, Jon Elswick/AP
President Trump is trying to make his mark on the White Home and Washington, D.C., and never simply politically.
The longtime actual property developer has both introduced or launched into quite a lot of development and renovation tasks throughout the nation’s capital.
“I’ve two jobs,” Trump mentioned in late 2025, the presidency being simply one in every of them. “I’ve a development job, which is absolutely like rest for me as a result of I’ve been doing it my total life.”
A few of these adjustments are seemingly momentary, like the massive banners of Trump’s face hanging from the Justice Division, Division of Agriculture and different federal buildings. A number of concern the decor and aesthetics of the White Home, just like the paved-over Rose Backyard and gilded Oval Workplace. Others are issues of nomenclature, just like the addition of Trump’s title to the indicators on the Kennedy Heart and U.S. Institute of Peace buildings.
However lots of the efforts in progress might reshape D.C.’s architectural panorama for many years to return.
Neil Flanagan, an architect and public historian in D.C., says whereas Trump had aesthetic ambitions throughout his first time period, his “insistence on making it a lot about his personal fashion and his personal model and carrying this glory of America’s previous is distinct to this time period.” Lots of his initiatives are related to the nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary in July.
“All of them type of declare the glory of America fairly than truly constructing any sort of progress or future for America,” Flanagan says. “In case you’re making an attempt to slash the science price range … on the identical [as you’re] constructing these grand monuments, you are not constructing a inventive America, you are carrying a terrific American previous as a dressing up.”
Flanagan says that in comparison with earlier presidents, Trump is displaying much less “deference to producing an consequence that matched with … earlier plans after which additionally some degree of subjective experience.”
Lots of Trump’s proposals have sparked backlash and authorized challenges, at the same time as federal planning businesses full of administration allies transfer them ahead. Congress might intervene, Flanagan says, however is unlikely to take action so long as each chambers are managed by Republicans.
Scroll or click on on an merchandise beneath to see Trump’s big selection of D.C. tasks.
Reflecting pool | Golf programs | Sculpture backyard | Statues | Arch | Ballroom | Kennedy Heart | Government Workplace Constructing| Lafayette Sq. | Federal structure | Beautification
Reflecting pool
Crews spray a brand new blue coating on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a undertaking the Division of Inside says will probably be accomplished by the top of Could.
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Andrew Leyden/Getty Photos
Trump is resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, coating its grey backside with a shade he described to reporters as “American flag blue.”
The two,030-foot-long reflecting pool has been the backdrop of marches, speeches and inaugurations for a century.
It final underwent a significant renovation from 2010 to 2012, each for structural fixes (to handle many years of leaking and sinking) and aesthetic enhancements (it was deliberately made shallower). However the Division of Inside says the wrong-size pipes have been put in, ensuing within the continued want for costly refills (71 million extra gallons, exceeding $1 million, in 2019 alone).
Trump has been speaking publicly about fixing the pool since at the least November 2025, however ramped up his efforts in April after what he described as complaints in regards to the state of the landmark. He informed reporters that he’s working with one in every of his greatest “pool builders” from his actual property days, who talked him out of a turquoise shade “like within the Bahamas.”
Flanagan says Trump is treating the pool, and the town itself, “prefer it’s his private nation membership.”
“You get some pool guys after which they refinish it in a method that’s extra appropriate to, principally, a swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago,” he provides.
Trump mentioned the undertaking would value lower than $2 million — a fraction of what he mentioned he had been quoted beforehand — and take one to 2 weeks. However the Division of the Inside informed NPR it expects work to be accomplished “by the top of Could.”
Golf programs
Golfers play gap six at East Potomac Golf Course as vehicles unloads particles and soil from the demolition of the White Home’s East Wing in October.
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Tasos Katopodis/Getty Photos
The Trump administration can be combating to take management of the district’s three public golf programs, with a selected deal with the busiest one: East Potomac Golf Hyperlinks in East Potomac Park.
Trump has floated the thought of redoing the programs to convey them as much as championship degree, telling the Wall Road Journal in December that “if we do them, we’ll do it actually fantastically.” That is worrying native golfers, a few of whom sued the administration in February. The Inside Division has informed NPR that Trump is dedicated to preserving the course accessible, and affordability stays a precedence.
All three municipal programs had been managed by the nonprofit Nationwide Hyperlinks Belief. The Division of the Inside terminated the belief’s 50-year lease in December, accusing the nonprofit of failing to meet all of the phrases of its lease, which it denies.
“Our dedication stays unchanged and we are going to proceed to pursue our mission with the help of our neighborhood for so long as we’re allowed,” Nationwide Hyperlinks Belief mentioned on the time. “Whereas the golf programs will stay open for now, sadly our long-term renovation tasks will stop.”
Within the months since, White Home ballroom crews have proceeded to dump filth on the close by century-old East Potomac Park course, piled excessive sufficient that it now obstructs views of the Washington Monument.
Nationwide Hyperlinks Belief mentioned in an announcement that the report “was a whole shock to us,” including that it hadn’t heard from the Division of the Inside or the Nationwide Park Service to that impact. The course gave the impression to be open on Monday morning.
A fundraising brochure from an entity known as the “Nationwide Backyard of American Heroes Basis,” obtained by the Washington Submit and Democracy Ahead over the weekend, says the inspiration will lead “the excellent redevelopment and restoration” of East Potomac, “reimagining it as a world-class public asset.”
Citing that doc and NOTUS’ reporting, the nonprofit authorized group Democracy Ahead filed an emergency request on Sunday for a court docket to dam the administration from closing East Potomac or “enterprise any steps towards implementing the plan aside from routine upkeep, and from dumping any extra fill from the East Wing undertaking inside East Potomac Park.”
NPR has reached out to the Division of the Inside and White Home for extra info, however didn’t hear again in time for publication.
Nationwide Backyard of American Heroes
Trump first introduced his imaginative and prescient of a sculpture backyard throughout a July 2020 journey to South Dakota.
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Alex Brandon/AP
Trump first proposed the thought of a sculpture backyard to “depict traditionally important People” throughout a marketing campaign rally at Mount Rushmore in July 2020, in the course of the peak of the widespread protests towards racial injustice.
These protests ushered within the elimination of Accomplice monuments throughout the nation, one thing Trump pushed again towards from the White Home.
“When the forces of anti-Americanism have sought to burn, tear down, and destroy, patriots have constructed, rebuilt, and lifted up,” learn Trump’s unique government order, which focused a public opening date of July 4, 2026.
Simply two days earlier than leaving workplace in 2021, Trump launched a listing of almost 250 names for inclusion, spanning a variety of politicians, philosophers, musicians, artists, astronauts, film stars, athletes and different historic figures. Amongst them: Kobe Bryant, Andrew Carnegie, Julia Little one, Walt Disney, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Whitney Houston, Ronald Reagan, Paul Revere, and Alex Trebek.
However Trump’s first time period ended with none congressional funding for the backyard, and President Joe Biden rapidly rescinded his orders.
Trump resurrected the undertaking when he returned to workplace, although his January 2025 government order adjustments its deadline from the U.S. semiquincentennial to “as expeditiously as doable.” It isn’t clear when or the place the backyard will probably be erected, although indicators level to the Nationwide Mall. The White Home and Division of the Inside didn’t reply to a request for remark about its standing.
South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden provided Trump a plot of land final March nearby of Mount Rushmore. However Trump informed the New York Occasions earlier this 12 months that he was eyeing a spot in D.C., “proper on the Potomac River … touching the golf course.”
And the Nationwide Backyard of American Heroes Basis doc obtained in early Could says the backyard will probably be situated at West Potomac Park. It connects the golf course renovation and sculpture backyard, calling them a pair of “landmark initiatives that embody its mission to honor America’s 250th anniversary by means of lasting nationwide funding.”
The standing of the statues themselves can be unclear. In April 2025, the Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities introduced a grant program for sculptors totaling $30 million for some 150 recipients.
“Recipients will create lifelike statues in marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass depicting particular historic figures tied to the accomplishments of the US,” the applying reads. It says statues have to be delivered by June 1, 2026, giving artists lower than a 12 months to complete.
Controversial statues
The statue of Accomplice Gen. Albert Pike returned to D.C. in October, after being toppled throughout protests in 2020.
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Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Photos
Trump has already added some new statues to D.C., honoring historic figures with controversial legacies.
A renovated statue of the Accomplice Gen. Albert Pike was reinstalled in D.C.’s Judiciary Sq. in October, years after it was toppled throughout 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. His statue — the one out of doors monument honoring a Accomplice basic in D.C. — debuted in 1901 and has been contentious for years: D.C. Council members have known as for its elimination since 1992.
The Nationwide Park Service had beforehand introduced plans to convey again the statue in keeping with Trump’s 2025 government order on “Restoring Fact and Sanity to American Historical past.” Amongst different issues, it tasked the Division of the Inside with reinstating monuments that it discovered had been improperly eliminated since 2020 and ensuring their descriptions don’t “inappropriately disparage People previous or dwelling.”
Pike, who was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, has been recognized by historians as presumably having been concerned with the event of the Ku Klux Klan within the interval after the Civil Battle. The plaque on the brand new statue does not point out that and even his army historical past, as an alternative calling him an “writer, poet, scholar, soldier, jurist, orator, philanthropist and thinker.”
In March, the Trump administration added a statue of Christopher Columbus to White Home grounds, simply outdoors the Eisenhower Government Workplace Constructing. It is Trump’s newest effort to honor the Fifteenth-century explorer, whose legacy has tarnished because of the colonization, enslavement and violence towards Indigenous individuals related together with his arrival within the Americas.
“On this White Home, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will guarantee he is honored as such for generations to return,” White Home spokesperson Davis Ingle informed NPR on the time. The statue is on mortgage to the White Home by means of the top of Trump’s time period.
The Trump administration positioned a statue of the explorer Christopher Columbus outdoors the Eisenhower Government Workplace Constructing in March.
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Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Photos
In late April, a statue of a person using a horse, which had sat in storage in Delaware for years, appeared close to the White Home in Freedom Plaza.
That man is Caesar Rodney, a Delaware statesman greatest identified for using almost 80 miles in a single day, by means of thunderstorms, from Dover to Philadelphia on July 1, 1776, to forged a tie-breaking vote in favor of signing the Declaration of Independence. He did so regardless of being “gravely unwell with a long-standing cancerous situation affecting his face and jaw that precipitated him power ache,” in keeping with the Nationwide Park Service.
“Rodney’s journey has lengthy stood as a logo of private sacrifice in service to the beliefs of liberty,” it says.
However Rodney’s legacy is sullied by the truth that he enslaved greater than 200 individuals on his household’s plantation (although the Nationwide Park Service mentioned he took “public motion to abolish slave buying and selling” inside Delaware and freed some in his will). That is why his century-old statue was faraway from downtown Wilmington, Del., in 2020.
The Washington Submit reviews his statue will stay on show for as much as six months as a part of the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations. When requested to verify that timeline, a spokesperson for the Division of the Inside informed NPR that “as we method America’s 250th anniversary, the Trump administration has been dedicated to celebrating and acknowledging the complete breadth of our nation’s historical past, together with the story of Caesar Rodney and his pivotal trip in July 1776.”
Triumphal arch
A picture of President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch is offered at a public assembly of the Fee of Nice Arts in mid-April.
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Photos
Trump can be shifting forward with plans for a 250-foot “victory arch” — in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday — immediately throughout the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial (of which it’s greater than double the peak).
Renderings of the white-and-gold construction bear a placing resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, if it have been 100 ft taller and topped with two golden eagles and a winged, topped determine.
Flanagan says the arch could be equal to 19 tales tall, whereas the everyday constructing in D.C. is about 13 tales (federal legislation limits the peak of buildings within the metropolis partially to take care of the prominence of nationwide monuments).
“And if you add the large statue on prime, I feel it is truly very obscure simply how monumental that factor will probably be, and really heavy,” he says.
The Fee of Nice Arts, the federal company full of Trump allies, accredited the plan earlier this month. Development prices and timelines haven’t been publicized. However Flanagan says the enormity of the arch requires “very advanced foundations” that alone will take important time.
The arch has been met with opposition from some corners, together with almost the entire 1,000 public feedback submitted previous to the fee’s vote. The construction, which might be close to the doorway to Arlington Nationwide Cemetery, can be the topic of a lawsuit by a gaggle of Vietnam Battle veterans who argue it disrespects these buried there and requires congressional approval to proceed.
The White Home says the towering arch will “improve the customer expertise” on the cemetery, “serving as a visible reminder of the noble sacrifices borne by so many American heroes all through our 250-year historical past so we are able to take pleasure in our freedoms at present.”
White Home ballroom
President Trump shows a rendering of his proposed White Home ballroom in October 2025.
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Alex Wong/Getty Photos
Trump demolished the whole East Wing of the White Home in October to make method for the ballroom he has dreamt of for over a decade.
The administration says the brand new 90,000-square-foot construction will improve capability for visitors at state dinners and different occasions, to the tune of at the least $300 million. It has mentioned that development will probably be accomplished in 2028, however authorized challenges have confirmed a roadblock up to now.
The undertaking drew ire from structure and historic preservation teams, one in every of which sued the administration to stop development. That sparked an escalating authorized battle, which has seen a federal choose twice order development to cease until approved by Congress.
The choose did make an exception for infrastructure associated to nationwide safety. That is a nod to the mysterious bunker beneath the East Wing that the Trump administration says is getting an improve, one in every of its essential arguments in favor of continuous development.
“The army is constructing a giant advanced underneath the ballroom, which has come out lately due to a silly lawsuit that was filed,” Trump informed reporters in late March, including that the ballroom “basically turns into a shed for what’s being constructed underneath.”
The Nationwide Capitol Planning Fee accredited Trump’s ballroom plans even amidst the authorized battle. As a part of that course of, it solicited suggestions from members of the general public — and received greater than 30,000 written feedback, largely in opposition.
“It is fairly uncommon that the Nationwide [Capitol] Planning Fee receives ten feedback on a undertaking,” Flanagan mentioned. “So to get that quantity and to get them virtually overwhelmingly adverse, I feel, is an indication that on the very least, these items not symbolize People.”
Kennedy Heart renovations
Matt Floca, government director of the John F. Kennedy Heart for the Performing Arts, exhibits an growth joint throughout a media tour on April 22.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
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Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Trump has swiftly and systematically asserted management of the John F. Kennedy Heart for the Performing Arts since taking workplace.
Final February he changed its board members together with his personal allies, who promptly elected him board chair — prompting scores of artists to cancel deliberate performances in protest. Trump has been crucial of the middle, lamenting its bodily disrepair, deriding its programming selections as “woke” and suggesting “possibly we shut up a number of the work that is been achieved … as a result of it was achieved terribly.”
In March, the Kennedy Heart introduced it will shut in July for roughly two years to bear a “complete revitalization undertaking.” It mentioned Trump had secured $257 million from Congress “to handle many years of deferred upkeep.”
A gaggle of eight structure and cultural organizations then sued the middle, hoping to pressure it to adjust to historic preservation legal guidelines and get congressional approval first. (The White Home mentioned in response it seems to be ahead “to final victory on the difficulty”.)
Architectural plans haven’t but been launched. Trump has posted about turning the Kennedy Heart right into a “new and spectacular Leisure Complicated” and “World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Leisure.”
However others concerned have described the renovation as a matter of infrastructure repairs. Kennedy Heart officers led members of Congress and reporters on excursions of the constructing in April to indicate water harm, outdated electrical tools and different points that they are saying justify the extended closure.
Eisenhower Government Workplace Constructing
The gray granite and ornate particulars of the Eisenhower Government Workplace Constructing set it other than the encircling structure.
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Andrew Leyden/Getty Photos
The Eisenhower Government Workplace Constructing (EEOB) is the long-lasting French Second Empire-style constructing subsequent door to the White Home, containing workplace areas for numerous components of the president’s crew.
It was constructed within the 1870s and Eighties to accommodate the rising staffs of the State, Battle, and Navy Departments. Its distinctive mansard roof, cast-iron particulars and granite columns mirrored the optimism of the post-Civil Battle period, and stand out subsequent to its neighboring neoclassical buildings.
That Maine granite has all the time been gray. Structure teams say that was a deliberate design alternative to focus on the stark white of the White Home, which first received its lime-based whitewash in 1798 to guard its sandstone exterior throughout winter.
The Trump administration desires to color the EEOB white, too.
“The colour, design, and massing of the prevailing construction doesn’t align visually with the encircling structure and lacks any symbolic cohesion with the White Home,” the Government Workplace of the President wrote in a proposal to the Nationwide Capital Planning Fee for consideration at its Could 7 assembly.
The Trump administration says the constructing’s exterior has been stained by soot and dirt, and has undergone solely minor repairs, most lately within the early 2000s. Portray the facade, it says, will assist with upkeep as a result of it’s “repeatable.”
“The shortcoming to convey the stone facade again to a baseline coloration has plagued the upkeep of the EEOB previously, and can proceed to plague it if not addressed,” the proposal reads.
Preservation teams disagree — one in every of them, Cultural Heritage Companions, filed a lawsuit in November to attempt to halt the undertaking. Nonetheless, the Trump administration offered its plan to the Fee of Nice Arts in April.
Round that point, the Nationwide Belief for Historic Preservation mentioned in a letter to the Fee of Nice Arts that portray the constructing would irreversibly hurt the landmark — by trapping moisture inside the masonry — and sure require continued reapplication and cleansing, presumably on taxpayers’ dime. It additionally says that, as a Nationwide Historic Landmark, the constructing’s defining traits needs to be protected.
“The historic EEOB has been preserved, un-painted, since its completion in 1888,” it mentioned. “Portray the outside now would obscure the EEOB’s historic look, undermine its character-defining options, and speed up the constructing’s deterioration.”
The Trump administration has mentioned the precise sort of mineral silicate-based masonry paint it hopes to make use of — which Trump has known as “magic paint” — would strengthen the stone and be straightforward to reapply, which dozens of preservation specialists have disputed. Flanagan mentioned that sort of paint, which is absolutely extra of a stain, truly does not stick effectively on granite — “it will simply come off.”
“So that they have to make use of some sort of epoxy or acrylic binder on it and they will need to sand or sandblast … the floor,” he mentioned. “I feel that would actually be a type of devastating cultural hits that this administration might do.”
Lafayette Sq.
Development pictured at Lafayette Sq. close to the White Home on April 4.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
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Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Lafayette Sq., a 7-acre public park immediately north of the White Home, has been fenced off since January. The park is often a heavy-traffic space for vacationers snapping White Home footage, and a well-liked website for native protests — together with the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests after the homicide of George Floyd.
However a lot of the realm is closed off for what the Nationwide Park Service calls “development and turf renovation associated to a significant rehabilitation of Lafayette Park for America’s semiquincentennial.”
The park service says the undertaking is slated to finish on Could 31 and includes putting in irrigation traces, repairing historic fountains, putting in new pumping techniques and fountain vaults, changing timber and turf, changing benches and putting in hardscape (like walkways) in some areas.
Trump informed the New York Occasions earlier this 12 months that he deliberate to switch Lafayette Sq.’s brick walkways with granite, partially due to issues that bricks could possibly be thrown throughout demonstrations. He estimated the undertaking would value about $10 million, which he mentioned would come from his personal pocket.
The park service stresses that the closures are momentary, however vital as a consequence of “issues about safety for development tools and prior vandalism related to public protests lately.”
Federal structure
A view of the U.S. Capitol and buildings lining the Nationwide Mall.
Mohammad Reza Mousavi/Center East Photos/AFP through Getty
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Mohammad Reza Mousavi/Center East Photos/AFP through Getty
Trump has repeatedly signed orders selling neoclassical structure because the official fashion for federal buildings, throughout his first time period and, after Biden revoked them, once more in 2025.
On the very first day of his second time period, Trump issued a memorandum directing the Common Providers Administration to “advance insurance policies that guarantee federal public buildings “respect regional, conventional, and classical architectural heritage with the intention to uplift and beautify public areas and ennoble the US and our system of self-government.”
A number of months later, he signed the “Making Federal Structure Stunning Once more” government order mandating that in D.C., “classical structure shall be the popular and default structure for Federal public buildings absent distinctive components necessitating one other sort of structure.”
It defines classical structure as encompassing the types of neoclassical, Georgian, federal, Greek revival, beaux arts and artwork deco.
That is a shift from the brutalist and modernist designs of the mid-Twentieth century, seen in federal buildings just like the ’70s-era FBI headquarters, which in 2023 topped a survey of ugliest buildings within the U.S. (FBI Director Kash Patel introduced in December that the J. Edgar Hoover constructing will shut completely and the bureau will transfer to a extra trendy facility in D.C.)
Trump’s architectural preferences are evident within the designs his administration has submitted for brand spanking new tasks just like the triumphal arch and White Home ballroom. However how his government order will translate into renovations of current federal buildings stays to be seen.
Flanagan says that such orders can simply be reversed by a future president, as they’ve been already: “The query is, will this discredit classical structure for a era?”
Flanagan says that inside the structure neighborhood, Trump’s actions appear to have “reaffirmed the sense that classical structure is related to right-wing people,” however he believes that on a regular basis People have their very own ideas on D.C.’s aesthetics.
“It is some place that they have been figuring themselves out in eighth grade [when] they got here on a faculty journey, and it struck them and gave them sure ideas about America or the sense … that this was related to one thing,” he provides. “Individuals could have totally different views about what it’s that’s so offensive about Trump’s adjustments.”
D.C. beautification tasks
Nationwide Guard troops clear leaves and particles from McPherson Sq. Park in D.C. in August.
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Andrew Leyden/Getty Photos
A March 2025 government order known as “Making the District of Columbia Protected and Stunning” goals to take action by making a process pressure of federal company officers aimed toward “stopping crime, punishing criminals, preserving order, defending our revered American monuments, and selling beautification and the preservation of our historical past and heritage.”
The order was the idea for Trump’s federal legislation enforcement surge, together with the continuing deployment of Nationwide Guard troops to D.C. Different priorities embrace elevated collaboration with immigration officers, restoring memorials, clearing homeless encampments and cleansing up parks.
Trump’s proposed 2027 fiscal 12 months price range, unveiled this month, features a $10 billion “Presidential Capital Stewardship Program” for beautification and development tasks across the metropolis, led by the Nationwide Park Service.
The federal authorities has already tackled some such tasks, closing components of some inexperienced areas for issues like grass restoration and fountain repairs. Whereas a few of these tasks have been welcomed by residents, some have gotten pushback for making beloved metropolis parks inaccessible for a lot of the spring and summer time.
