President Donald Trump has eyed the Treaty Room for his latest makeover project at the White House, according to a new report.
Trump has made it his mission to beautify the White House and the D.C. area as he sees fit. Perhaps most notably, he is working on an estimated $400 million ballroom, to replace the demolished East Wing.
Now, the president is considering renovating the Treaty Room, a historic private study for the president and a meeting room for political figures on the second floor of the White House, into a guest bedroom with an upgraded bathroom, The New York Times reported Thursday.
A White House official has emphasized to The Independent that there are no current plans to change the Treaty Room.
The Treaty Room is where the 1898 peace protocol between the U.S. and Spain and the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union were signed. It is also possibly where President James Monroe wrote the Monroe Doctrine, a pillar of U.S. foreign policy, according to the White House Historical Association.
Trump had asked a select group of people about the potential remodel during a tour on February 6, the NYT reported. Some members of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House and the Commission of Fine Arts were reportedly in attendance.
The president had asked for a “show of hands” vote in favor of transforming the Treaty Room into a bedroom, according to Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts, and several other people familiar with the matter who spoke to the NYT.
“He wants to add a bathroom, improve the room,” Mr. Cook said. While the Treaty Room already has a bathroom, it’s small and dates back to the Truman era, according to the NYT.
Cook noted that the vote was “casual.” But one of the NYT’s unnamed sources said the preservation committee’s executive secretary, John Stanwich, who was said to have left the room during the vote, was concerned about whether Trump would deem it a formal vote.
The Independent has reached out to the Commission of Fine Arts, which directed questions to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. The preservation committee was reached for comment as well.
Trump also talked about “the gold touches that would be on the ceiling” of the East Room during the tour, Cook said.
The White House official told The Independent there are also no plans at the moment to change the East Room.
Aside from his anticipated 90,000 square foot ballroom, expected to seat 650 people, Trump has decorated the Oval Office in all things gold, paved over the Rose Garden to make way for a patio and redesigned the Palm Room and bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom.
Boasting about his ballroom project, Trump said at a Greek Independence Day celebration Thursday, “We’re building one of the most beautiful ballrooms anywhere in the world. And we have beautiful columns, and we have beautiful sculptures.”
The president’s remodeling ambitions have even gone beyond the White House, with a massive “Independence Arch” he wants built near the Arlington National Cemetery. Trump has also said he planned to close the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, which his own name is now attached to symbolically, for two years of renovations.
“President Trump is the Builder-in-Chief with an extraordinary eye for detail and design, and his bold vision will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and be felt by generations to come,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told The Independent. “His successes will continue to give the White House the glory it deserves.”
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