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canetoad

(19,952 posts)
Fri Dec 5, 2025, 02:40 AM Friday

Trump hires new White House ballroom architect

President Donald Trump has replaced the architect he handpicked to design his White House ballroom, according to three people familiar with the project, ending the involvement of a boutique firm whose selection raised questions from the start about whether it had the capacity to complete the massive, high-profile endeavor.

For more than three months, James McCrery II and his namesake architecture firm led the effort to design Trump’s $300 million ballroom building — until late October, when he stopped working on the project, one of the people said. It is unclear whether McCrery stepped back voluntarily, but the men parted on good terms and remain so, according to one of the people familiar with the project, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

Trump and McCrery had clashed over the president’s desire to keep increasing the size of the building, but it was McCrery’s firm’s small workforce and inability to hit deadlines that became the decisive factor in him leaving, one of the people said.

Trump has chosen architect Shalom Baranes, who’s been designing and renovating government buildings in Washington for decades, to pick up the mantle, according to two of the people. Baranes’s firm has handled a number of large Washington projects dating back decades, including projects involving the main Treasury building near the White House, the Federal Reserve and the headquarters of the General Services Administration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/12/04/trump-ballroom-architect-east-wing/
or
https://archive.md/W4pdV

6 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Trump hires new White House ballroom architect (Original Post) canetoad Friday OP
That eyesore will stain any portfolio C_U_L8R Friday #1
WTF? malaise Friday #2
Cry Me a River DET Friday #3
But McCrery also managed to smear his company with shit, so bonus! hatrack Friday #4
McCrery wouldn't violate the one cardinal rule... Kid Berwyn Friday #5
The new architect, Shalom Baranes, is an immigrant Tanuki Friday #6

C_U_L8R

(48,664 posts)
1. That eyesore will stain any portfolio
Fri Dec 5, 2025, 05:22 AM
Friday

Plus the world’s worst client.
Must be a lucrative retainer.

DET

(2,336 posts)
3. Cry Me a River
Fri Dec 5, 2025, 05:44 AM
Friday

‘…it was McCrery’s firm’s small workforce and inability to hit deadlines that became the decisive factor in him leaving, one of the people said.’ Bullshit. The architect said this monstrosity is ridiculous and an offense to our nation’s capitol and it can’t be done within your absurb timeframe. So some other poor sucker will get stiffed instead. That firm dodged a bullet.

hatrack

(64,079 posts)
4. But McCrery also managed to smear his company with shit, so bonus!
Fri Dec 5, 2025, 06:28 AM
Friday

Who on earth would hire him now, since he's shown his willingness to go along with The Littlest President's bloated vanity project?

Kid Berwyn

(22,507 posts)
5. McCrery wouldn't violate the one cardinal rule...
Fri Dec 5, 2025, 09:27 AM
Friday

…no, not making an addition bigger than the original building, but publicly correcting Der Führer.

A home fall, unexpected car accident or death by window treatment often solve similar problems .

Tanuki

(16,230 posts)
6. The new architect, Shalom Baranes, is an immigrant
Fri Dec 5, 2025, 09:46 AM
Friday

who came to the U.S. as a child refugee.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/23/i-came-here-as-a-refugee-and-then-i-rebuilt-the-pentagon-after-911/


"I came here as a refugee. And then I renovated the Pentagon.
My work would be impossible without my fellow immigrants.
....
When World War II ended, my parents fled a repressive regime in Libya — just after the state of Israel was founded, as Libyan Arabs turned on Jews in their own neighborhoods. It was not until 1957 that they were finally able to acquire visas to enter the United States. Along the way, they lived in Tunisia and Italy — where my older sister and I were born — and within months of arriving in New York Harbor, they had their third child. My father was a tailor with a partial grade-school education, and it was only through the support of HIAS, a refugee agency that today continues its resettlement mission, that my parents were able to set foot in this country. To this day, I remember the excitement of my father’s first glance at the Statue of Liberty as our ship sailed into the harbor. I was only 6 at the time and still mourning the loss of the red two-wheeled bike we had to leave behind.

I know what you’re thinking. That immigrant story has been repeated millions of times, maybe even by your family: A poor and mostly uneducated family flees a hostile foreign country, the parents struggle to provide the best education they can, the children succeed to make their parents proud. And it is, in fact, a common story, told countless times in homes and offices all across the United States in conversations about the Trump administration’s executive orders on immigration and refugees. The anti-immigrant sentiment I feel today is nothing new to me. When my Jewish parents arrived in the United States just a few years after fleeing persecution in an Arab regime, it was as difficult for them to be accepted here as it is for Muslims now. But my parents went on to create a new home for me and my siblings, and the privileged life I’ve been allowed to live here has instilled in me a deep sense of gratitude and an obligation to give back to this great nation in the best way I can.
...
Today, as I watch the news and see families struggling to leave their countries and escape tyranny, I wonder who among them will make it to our shores and become part of the next generation of researchers, teachers, inventors, real estate developers and, yes, architects. My hope is that the Trump administration will take actions to ensure that the travel ban is indeed temporary, so that good,
hard-working individuals fleeing tyranny can find a new home as I did — and that each of them will be given the same opportunity to help build this great nation that I had."....(more)

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