The demolition of the East Wing of the White House, paving over Jacqueline Kennedy’s Rose Garden, gilding the Oval Office and the Lincoln Bathroom, constructing a ballroom larger than the White House itself — all of this is part of the renovation work on the U.S. President’s residence that Donald Trump is carrying out without permission from the competent authority. Now it is time for the renovation of the facade of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the structure across from the complex, which Trump will turn into a “white blotch.”
Walking with a Fox News reporter through his gilded Oval Office, Donald Trump waved papers and showed what he would change next within the White House complex, boasting that he builds better than anyone else.
“I’ve built many ballrooms and many buildings, and that’s actually my greatest strength. (…) I build better than anyone else. Nobody can build like I do,” Trump told Fox News reporter Laura Ingraham.
Ingraham asked the U.S. president, who is currently on a spree of construction and aesthetic changes in the White House, whether he plans to change the color of the facade of the Executive Office Building, adding that she had “heard a rumor” about it. Trump then showed the reporter a blueprint, a visual rendering of the building in snow-white color — from the roof to the entry staircase.
“You’re not worried it might look like a big white blotch?” Ingraham asked Trump with a grimace as she looked at the design for the building.
The U.S. president dismissed that possibility. “No, no. It highlights all the details… Look how beautiful this is. And gray is for funerals,” he replied, pointing to the current facade of the well-known building.
Most people think of the White House as one large white residential building located behind a tall fence and a long lawn. However, the presidential residence, in addition to the structure known worldwide, also includes the so-called West and East Wings — though the East Wing no longer exists, since Trump demolished it at the end of October.
Across the small parking lot belonging to the West Wing of the White House is the enormous building known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB). Over the years, the building has had various names, and many Americans remember it as the Old Executive Office Building. Republicans renamed it in 1999 in honor of President Dwight Eisenhower.
It is precisely this building, whose facade is made of gray stone and whose copper roof has turned green with patina over time, that Trump now wants to repaint entirely in white. He told the Fox News reporter that he is “currently collecting bids.”
What has Trump done so far?
Trump’s works in the White House: removal of the East Wing, paving over the Rose Garden, installation of numerous gold decorative elements in the Oval Office, announcement of the construction of a new ballroom, installation of an extremely tall flagpole, reconstruction of the Lincoln Bathroom, removal of parts of Jacqueline Kennedy’s garden, demolition of historic trees, installation of the “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the West Colonnade, and the placement of an “Oval Office” sign on the wall outside the president’s office.
The first thing he did upon returning to the White House was to adorn the Oval Office, built by Franklin Roosevelt in 1934, with an abundance of gold details.
He then paved over Kennedy’s Rose Garden, turning it into a terrace with lavish yellow-and-white umbrellas. The explanation was that the grass bothered women, whose high heels would sink into the ground.
Trump also placed two enormous American flags on the White House lawns, as well as a giant mirror on the colonnade of the West Wing in which he can see himself while leaving the Oval Office.
He covered the Lincoln Bathroom in white marble with black veining. Everything in the bathroom that is not white is — gold. From faucets and drainage and ventilation grilles, to towel hooks and the hanger for the president’s bathrobe, to a golden vase for a white orchid.
Finally, there was the East Wing, which he said in June of this year he would not demolish.
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Source: N1 Foto: Reuters