When Donald Trump abruptly demolished the White House’s East Wing last month, he shattered a culture of consultation with experts that has shaped Washington’s architecture for 125 years—since the last time an administration tried to massively enlarge the White House.
Over three cold days in December 1900, members and guests of the American Institute of Architects gathered at the capital’s Arlington Hotel and strategized about how to stop a White House expansion that they deemed an affront to a treasured American icon. Under President William McKinley, the government official who oversaw public buildings in the District of Columbia had proposed to add two huge, ornate wings directly to the sides of the White House. These, the architects believed, would overwhelm the existing building and disfigure its classical simplicity.
The group wasn’t trying only to stop the renovation. It was also trying to elevate the influence of professional expertise over the appearance of major urban landmarks in the nation’s capital and across the c
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