The Ballroom That Wasn’t: When Architecture Becomes a Stage for Power
It was never going to be a ballroom. Not in the way we use the word.
Not the kind with layered run-of-show documents or hidden AV wells. Not the kind that flips from luncheon to gala to investor summit without breaking a sweat. This wasn’t about sightlines or service corridors. There was no whisper of airwall logic or rigging plots or chandeliers that dim on cue.
This wasn’t built for movement. It was built to hold still.
Donald Trump’s $200 million addition to the White House—billed as a State Ballroom—will not be a ballroom at all. It will be a stage. A freeze-frame. A room with posture but no pulse.
The man shaping that stillness is James McCrery, a D.C.-based architect with a résumé steeped in classicism and a client list full of saints. His firm, McCrery Architects, is best known for designing churches, civic monuments, and spaces built to commemorate, not convene. He does not do galas. He does not do lighting plots. He does not design for flow.
Which is precisely the point.
McCrery came of age studying under Peter Eisenman but broke with modernism entirely, aligning instead with the return-to-tradition movement that swept Washington’s cultural commissions during the Trump era. He served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. He teaches at Catholic University. He believes buildings should look like they’ve always existed—preferably beneath a Roman sky. His work whispers solemnity. His renderings look like prayer cards.
He does not build for music cues. He builds for myth.
And that’s exactly what this project is. Not an event space, but an exclamation point. Not a ballroom, but a statement. The chandeliers are there to shimmer, not illuminate. The platform at the far end isn’t for speakers—it’s for silhouettes. The symmetry of the space doesn’t accommodate movement; it imposes stillness. It tells you where to stand and how to feel when you’re standing there.
Ballrooms are engines of energy. Anyone who’s ever lived inside one—whether in headset or heels—knows their tempo, their heartbeat. They’re built to inhale and exhale. They’re meant to shift, to accommodate, to surprise. They are not temples. They are tools.
But this? This was never meant to breathe.
Trump didn’t want an architect who understood events. He wanted one who understood aesthetic permanence. Someone who wouldn’t ask about load-in or power drops. Someone who would never whisper about guest comfort or ceiling truss. McCrery is a man who doesn’t need to understand events—because in this case, the event is over. The room is the afterimage.
Some architects design to serve the moment. Others design to shape the myth.
And then there are the few whose work becomes inseparable from the image of the man commissioning it—monumental spaces built not to host people, but to exalt power. These are the buildings that don’t just photograph well; they broadcast authority, demand reverence, and dare you to question what they were really built for.
History has seen this before.
A strongman. A loyal architect. A hall of mirrors built in stone.
Not every ballroom is made for dancing.
Some are made to last longer than the regime.