The Ballroom Says It All

She starts out talking about how after WWII there was a ton of renovation being done and a lot of buildings were being torn down in the Capitol. We’d had more than a decade of depression and war and people wanted to rebuild. But as she says, they were risking erasing the “specific intent” of the Capitol buildings and memorials: “to transfer the philosophical principles of the American Revolution into the physical cityscape that would represent the American seat of governance.” She speaks about Jacqueline Kennedy’s project to renovate the White House as an answer to that. It was a huge deal with a massive audience that tuned into her television special which brought the country into the White House to see it and understand the history that was being preserved. That’s the opposite of what’s happening now: She sought to turn the presidential residence into a living museum through open collaboration with the public. Now, over 60 years since the Kennedys left the White House, the president is undertaking an architectural and aesthetic overhaul of not just the White House, but