The East Wing has a history of change. Nothing existed on the east side of the WH until Teddy Roosevelt had a small, formal entrance way, including a long cloakroom, built there for visitors. The East Wing of today was built in 1942 in large part to cover an underground bunker, and soon TR’s cloak room became a movie theater. Later, some offices were created in the East Wing for correspondence and calligraphy. Roslyn Carter was the first First Lady to have an office there.
Instead of tearing down the ballroom, perhaps we could convert it to a combination of needed office space for some now working in the crowded West Wing and for calligraphers and the like, with some space reserved for dinners and the like – although, much of the effect, the charis, of state dinners and the like (and the like, the like) in the WH proper stems from historic associations. The tall windows in the projected ballroom might complicate the conversion to offices, but not too much. Today’s architects have their tricks. The 15-year-old library at the college where I taught – I was there today – is all windows but manages to have floors that I can only describe as floating, with all kinds of spaces going on, away from the windows. (It does get a little Byzantine.)
Wesleyan U. in CT (my daughter’s alma mater) has a beautiful library designed by Henry Bacon and the famed McKim, Mead, and White. (It overlooks the center of campus which is also the football field. Belichick played here, but don’t go by that. I attended a game about 20 years ago where the LBGT cheerleaders performed heartily at half-time.) You can do interior things with also those beautiful windows. Here’s Wesleyan’s libe:
