FACTBOX-Trump undertakes sweeping makeover of White House and Washington

WASHINGTON —President Donald Trump is pursuing an ambitious remaking of Washington, from a $400 million White House ballroom to a 250-foot arch and a renovated Kennedy Center.

Trump's sweeping redesign efforts would be arguably the most dramatic by a U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt championed a structural overhaul of the National Mall in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, Harry Truman gutted and rebuilt the White House.

Here are some of Trump's passion projects, which have drawn sharp criticism from Americans concerned about pocketbook issues and the preservation of historic landmarks.

White House Ballroom

Trump has said his planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom will be "the greatest of its kind ever built," matching the White House in height and scale.

The president initially said he and wealthy donors would pay for the estimated $400 million project, but Trump is now locked in a fight with Congress over a request for $1 billion in Secret Service money tied to security features he says will make the structure bomb-proof.

Standing in front of the noisy construction site on Tuesday for an impromptu tour in sweltering heat, Trump said the building will extend six stories underground and will include four-inch-thick windows and a drone base on the roof "to protect all of Washington."

"This is really for other presidents. This is not for me," Trump said, predicting the project would be finished when he has about six months left in office.

The project, which he says will seat 1,000 guests, has faced public backlash. Preservationists and opponents assert that Trump exceeded his authority when he demolished the historic East Wing, which housed the offices of the first lady and the White House movie theater, to make room for the structure.

In April, an appeals court allowed the Trump administration to continue construction of the ballroom and set a June hearing to review a Washington judge’s order to halt the project.

After a shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in April, Trump said security concerns provided more justification for the ballroom, which he has said will include missile-resistant columns, drone-proof roofing and a military bunker.

Garden of American Heroes

Trump has talked about establishing a National Garden of American Heroes since his first term and now seems to be getting his wish. He announced on social media on May 15 that the project will be developed at West Potomac Park along the Potomac River to mark ​the 250th anniversary of ​U.S. independence this summer.

Trump said the park would ‌feature ⁠statues of the country's founding fathers, military warriors, religious leaders, civil rights champions, athletes, ​artists ​and ⁠entertainers.

Kennedy Center

Congress authorized the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to honor the Democratic president who was assassinated in 1963. That name went unchallenged for decades - until a Trump-appointed board voted last year to rename it the Trump–Kennedy Center.

The storied cultural center saw a flurry of show cancellations and slumping ticket sales after Trump's takeover.

In February, Trump announced that the property will close for two years beginning July 4 for a major overhaul. Trump insists the structure needs a retool, citing problems with the plumbing and crumbling masonry.

He has said he does not plan to tear down the Kennedy Center but instead will renovate it, a claim that critics note he also made about the East Wing before it was destroyed. He estimated the renovations will cost $200 million, paid with tax dollars.

Reflecting Pool

Trump announced in early May that he was remodeling Washington's historic Reflecting Pool, the site near the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

Trump said the pool was in bad shape, and he got involved to get it cleaned, restored and repaired at what he said was a fraction of an earlier costly estimate. He said the pool was being resurfaced with "American flag blue" materials.

Pleased with his efforts, the president recently released a social media post featuring an AI-generated image of a shirtless Trump and other cabinet officials floating in the pool.

"It's going to be reflecting again," he said on Tuesday.

Independence Arch

Across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial lies a nondescript highway roundabout upon which Trump wants to build what he calls the Independence Arch - an arch reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, except much bigger.

The height of the arch, with eagle statues and a Lady Liberty-type figure on top, has been estimated at 250 feet. That is higher than the Lincoln Memorial and not far off the size of the U.S. Capitol, which at 288 feet can be seen across much of Washington.

By contrast, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is 164 feet high.

Trump told reporters in January that he wanted a large arch because "we're the biggest, most powerful nation."

Whether the arch will actually be built with a 250-foot height remains unclear, as there is a possibility it could interfere with the flight path of southbound planes on the final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport a few miles away.

The Oval Office

Trump embarked on his first major redecoration project at the White House when he moved back into the Oval Office in January 2025.

He transformed the storied room with gold accents and statuettes, portraits of famous Americans pulled from storage - including some who are not easily identifiable - and a copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging on the wall behind a black sheet.

Busts of Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin are now situated on tables near his desk. The level of bric-a-brac can give the room a cluttered, old library feel compared to the styles of previous presidents, but Trump is pleased with it and likes to give tours to visitors.

The Rose Garden and White House Grounds

Outside the Oval Office, Trump replaced the Rose Garden's iconic grass lawn with a white stone patio and umbrella-covered tables to give it a patio style much like Trump has at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. He said the stone was needed because women wearing high heels would sink into the soil.

Trump also added statues of U.S. independence heroes Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin in the Rose Garden, along with an artwork called "Freedom’s Charge."

Trump recently ripped out the Tennessee flagstone walkway that lined the West Wing colonnade adjacent to the Rose Garden for 60 years and replaced it with a black granite surface.

Along the colonnade wall, he placed portraits of America's 47 presidents, with a plaque beneath each inscribed with Trump's view of that person.

Bitter at his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Trump replaced Biden’s portrait with an image of an autopen, a device he and other Republicans have criticized Biden for using for signing documents despite it being a fairly standard practice for recent presidents.

Elsewhere on the White House grounds, Trump has placed large flagpoles on both the North and South Lawns. —Reuters