{"id":4700,"date":"2026-03-21T11:37:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T11:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=4700"},"modified":"2026-03-21T11:37:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T11:37:52","slug":"trumps-ballroom-architect-is-skilled-at-shrugging-off-outrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=4700","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Ballroom Architect Is Skilled at Shrugging Off Outrage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">He is successful, rich and approaching the end of a long career. So fellow architects and colleagues wonder why Shalom Baranes \u2014 who renovated the Pentagon, modernized the Treasury Department and over 50 years changed much of the face of Washington \u2014 signed on to the headache of President Trump\u2019s White House ballroom.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">The $400 million, 90,000-square-foot-project has appalled preservationists, drawn tens of thousands of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/us\/politics\/trump-ballroom-comments.html\" title=\"\">overwhelmingly critical comments<\/a> from across the country and prompted a lawsuit trying to shut it down. It has also earned Mr. Baranes the ire of other architects, 29 of whom said in an angry letter that the project would reduce the White House, a little more than half the size of the addition, to the \u201ctail wagging the dog.\u201d They urged him to decline the job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cI don\u2019t understand why he would put himself in such a hot seat right now,\u201d, said David M. Schwarz, a prominent Washington architect who has known Mr. Baranes since their days at the Yale School of Architecture.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cI am totally baffled why he would take this on,\u201d said Nancy MacWood, a longtime Washington preservationist and civic leader who for decades has watched Mr. Baranes massage city review boards and make the case for his work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Baranes, 75, is under a nondisclosure agreement with the White House and declined to discuss his motivations and specifics about the project. But in an interview last week, his first since signing on to the ballroom, and in subsequent conversations, Mr. Baranes did say that three fourths of his previous projects have ignited controversy, particularly in residential neighborhoods. He described his life story \u2014 he is the son of a tailor who found once-unimaginable opportunities in America \u2014 and expressed discomfort with the Trump administration\u2019s immigration policies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cWhat\u2019s happening now is heartbreaking,\u201d Mr. Baranes said. \u201cI do hope there\u2019s a realization at some point that this country depends on immigration. We have to normalize our policies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Baranes also said that he did not take on the ballroom project, as some architects have speculated, because his architectural firm is in trouble.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cNo, we\u2019re not laying people off right now,&#8221; he said affably during an 1\u00bd-hour interview in his nine-bedroom, $8 million Federal style home in Georgetown, where two large Frank Stella prints and a smaller Salvador Dal\u00ed print hung in the living room. Half the space was dominated by a Roche Bobois modular sofa covered in wake-me-up fuchsia, grape, floral and striped fabrics from the Italian fashion house Missoni.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Baranes said his firm currently employs 60 people, up from the 16 during a 1989-1990 downturn but down from a high of 175 when he was simultaneously working on six buildings in the 10-acre CityCenterDC downtown and repairing the Pentagon after the damage in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">He declined to comment on how much he is being paid for the project, which Mr. Trump has said will be financed by private contributions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">He also refused to address the outcry about the ballroom, including Mr. Trump\u2019s abrupt tear-down of the East Wing. But he shrugged off neighborhood outrage about some of his previous work. \u201cThere are a lot of complaints, oh my God,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery project I\u2019ve ever done in Georgetown, somebody gets up there and says, \u2018This is the biggest building that will ever have been built in Georgetown.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">In many ways Mr. Baranes is an odd choice, both personally and stylistically, for the president. He arrived in the United States as a 6-year-old Libyan refugee with parents fleeing the anti-Jewish riots in Tripoli after World War II. Decades later he criticized, gently, Mr. Trump\u2019s first-term travel ban.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cMy 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,\u201d Mr. Baranes wrote in The Washington Post in March 2017. His hopes are far from realized: The second Trump administration has expanded the travel ban, ended virtually all visas for Libyans and paused admission for the vast majority of refugees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Professionally, Mr. Baranes is known for his modern additions to Washington\u2019s historic buildings, not for the traditional style of the White House ballroom. \u201cDesigning classical architecture would not necessarily speak to his bread and butter,\u201d said Rebecca Miller, the executive director of the DC Preservation League, a nonprofit group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">But in other ways Mr. Baranes is a natural fit for this mercurial president. Known for his ability to work well with real estate developers, who often push to make office buildings bigger and therefore more profitable, Mr. Baranes so far appears to be getting along with the former developer in the White House, who is deeply immersed in the project. Mr. Baranes meets regularly with Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cIf I had to pick who would do this job, it would be Shalom,&#8221; said Richard Nash Gould, a New York architect and avid Trump supporter who has known Mr. Baranes since Yale and spoke to him recently about the ballroom. \u201cHe\u2019s happy, he\u2019s bullet proof and he\u2019s really smart.\u201d To Mr. Gould, it is no mystery why Mr. Baranes signed on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t he?&#8221; he said. \u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly interesting job.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Colleagues say Mr. Baranes took on the project because he thought he could make it better after a previous architect, James McCrery, disagreed with Mr. Trump over its scale. To that end, Mr. Baranes told the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in January that while the ballroom can seat a whopping 1,000 guests, it is not the most immense design the president considered. Mr. Baranes\u2019 latest plans have also removed a large pediment from above the ballroom\u2019s portico.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cHe\u2019s done certain things that I actually think are good moves,&#8221; said Priya Jain, an associate professor of architecture at Texas A&amp;M University and chairwoman of the Heritage Conservation Committee of the Society of Architectural Historians.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Still, the ballroom remains enormous and the tweaks have done little to silence opponents. Paul Goldberger, a former architecture critic for The New York Times and The New Yorker and the author of \u201cWhy Architecture Matters,\u201d called the ballroom \u201ca huge, dumb box\u201d in a Times op-ed article last week. He added that it was \u201cnominally designed\u201d by Mr. Baranes \u201cbut for all intents and purposes designed by Mr. Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Goldberger, who also knows Mr. Baranes from Yale, added that he is well suited to the task because of his abilities with developers and is able to \u201cproduce work of whatever type in whatever style his clients want.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Baranes took offense. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of below the belt,&#8221; he said. \u201cAll my work is very contemporary.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">But the White House project is not contemporary at all. \u201cI can\u2019t comment on that,\u201d Mr. Baranes said, mindful of his NDA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-8\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-1njxe4c eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-12bbdf70\">An Immigrant\u2019s Story<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">The 6-year-old Mr. Baranes would likely not be admitted into the United States under the Trump administration restrictions of today. Back in the 1950s, his arrival by ship in New York Harbor was the start of an immigrant\u2019s classic American success story.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">His parents were Orthodox Sephardic Jews who left Libya in 1948 with a plan to eventually get to the new nation of Israel. They went first to Tunisia, then Rome, where Mr. Baranes and a sister were born, and where the elder Baranes, who had made fine men\u2019s clothing in Tripoli, looked at photographs of Israeli men in cotton work shirts and khaki shorts in the newspapers of the time and realized, his son said, \u201cthere isn\u2019t a single person in Israel wearing a suit.\u201d He could make a better living in America.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">In 1957 the refugee organization then known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society secured the family visas to the United States and found a job as a tailor for the elder Mr. Baranes in Rochester, N.Y., a center of the men\u2019s clothing industry in the United States at the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">The young Mr. Baranes, who had arrived speaking only Italian, eventually went to a Rochester vocational school that taught plumbing and car mechanics and where he struggled until a teacher told his parents he was smart enough for Phillips Exeter Academy, the elite boarding school. Admitted in 1966 on a full scholarship, he was overwhelmed by the other students and intense academics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-9\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cIt was really lonely,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">He went on to undergraduate studies at Yale, where he was inspired by the architecture historian Vincent Scully, and then to the architecture school itself. In 1976 he was passing through Washington with his new master\u2019s degree and serendipitously got a job at a Georgetown firm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Five years later he struck out on his own \u2014 he at first drew designs for a few CVS pharmacies and Roy Rogers restaurants \u2014 but got a break in 1982 when he was commissioned to add two floors to the top of a historic Beaux-Arts confection, the Southern Building at 15th and H Streets downtown. It was the work of Daniel Burnham, an early 20th-century giant from Chicago who had designed New York\u2019s Flatiron Building and Washington\u2019s Union Station.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-10\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">In 1978, the District of Columbia had passed one of the country\u2019s toughest historic preservation laws, a challenge for the 31-year-old Mr. Baranes, who had to get approval for the new floors from two review boards. He managed to convince them that architectural drawings he unearthed in Chicago indicated that Mr. Burnham had left open the possibility that two floors could be added on. Mr. Baranes brought them in right at a downtown Washington height limit (to maintain unobstructed views of the city\u2019s monuments) of 130 feet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Other developers with historic properties took notice. \u201cThey all have these buildings that are below the height limit,\u201d Mr. Baranes said, and \u201cthis kid over here knows how to build additions.\u201d He went on to add floors to dozens of other historic properties by making the argument, he said, that \u201cit was the natural evolution of how cities grow, and you don\u2019t treat buildings as museum pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-11\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Baranes declined to say how he came to the attention of the White House, but it is hard these days to miss his work in Washington. In his half century in business, he has designed a large modern glass addition to the General Services Administration, modernized the Interior Department, renovated the headquarters of the American Red Cross adjacent to the White House and added a pavilion to MedStar Georgetown Hospital, among hundreds of other commercial and government projects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-12\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-1njxe4c eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-41f50c37\">A Legacy<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">The White House ballroom is set to get the go-ahead by a panel packed with Trump allies on April 2. But on Tuesday an exasperated federal judge indicated he might stop the construction already underway until the White House gets approval from Congress.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">During a hearing in a lawsuit brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington, a President George W. Bush appointee, called one of the White House arguments in favor of the ballroom a \u201cbrazen\u201d interpretation of the law. He noted that Mr. Trump is a \u201csteward\u201d of the White House, not its owner, and said he could rule by the end of the month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Baranes is in the meantime moving ahead with his plans, well aware that despite the giant body of his work in Washington, the Trump ballroom will be his legacy, and what many fellow architects say will not be in a good way. He remains outwardly cheerful.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cWashington,\u201d he said, looking out a floor-to-ceiling window to his swimming pool, \u201chas been a great place to practice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/21\/us\/politics\/trump-ballroom-architect.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He is successful, rich and approaching the end of a long career. So fellow architects and colleagues wonder why Shalom Baranes \u2014 who renovated the Pentagon, modernized the Treasury Department and over 50 years changed much of the face of Washington \u2014 signed on to the headache of President Trump\u2019s White House ballroom. The $400 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}