Trump's White House refurb: Versailles on the Potomac?

Aside from adding a Diet Coke button to his desk, Donald Trump didn't make many changes to the White House in his first term, said Margaret Hartmann in New York Magazine.

But he hasn't held back in his second term. He has festooned the Oval Office with golden ornaments and figurines, and applied gold to all its mouldings – a style one critic dubbed "Regional Car Dealership Rococo". He has torn up the lawn in the Rose Garden and replaced it with a sparkling white stone terrace, and erected two vast flagpoles. Now he has unveiled a plan to add a $200 million ballroom to the East Wing, with work beginning next month.

Lack of a 'decent function space'

It's all deeply un-American, said David Gardner on The Daily Beast. The Founding Fathers "intended the government to be accountable to the people", which is why George Washington rejected French architect Pierre Charles L'Enfant's plan for a Versailles-like presidential residence in favour of a more modest design.

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The White House has undergone numerous changes since it was built in 1792, said The New York Sun, and they've invariably upset people. Thomas Jefferson was accused of extravagance when he added colonnades; when Teddy Roosevelt built the West Wing, in 1902, critics said that he'd destroyed the White House's "historic value".

What every president has failed to build, though, is a decent function space. The White House's current reception room only fits 200 people. Larger events have to be held in a marquee on the lawn. Trump's ballroom will fit 650 and will apparently be funded by "patriot donors" and the president himself. It shouldn't cost taxpayers a cent.

'Gilded schmooze room'

It's true that he's not the first president to put his stamp on the White House, said Henry Grabar on Slate, but his intervention is on a different scale. At 90,000sq ft, the ballroom "will be nearly twice the size of the 55,000sq ft White House itself" (minus its wings).

The most objectionable aspect of his renovations, though, is not their size or gaudiness but their underlying purpose, which is to satisfy Trump's "predilection for dinner-table dealmaking". The paved terrace and ballroom are modelled on spaces at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, where he likes to hold court, mingling with rich guests and donors. As such, they'll be a fitting legacy. We'll not need a presidential library to teach us about his administration when we have this "gilded schmooze room looming over the White House".