WASHINGTON — The East Wing of the White House was fully demolished Thursday, a White House official said, as construction pushes forward to build President Donald Trump’s new ballroom.
The project is a significant expansion from what Trump said over the summer.
“It won’t interfere with the current building,” Trump said on July 31. “It’ll be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”
Trump said Wednesday that the project would cost roughly $300 million, paid for by donors, including himself. He has also said it will hold up to 999 people.
It’s the biggest change to the White House exterior since President Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the East Wing — which traditionally houses the office of the first lady — in 1942.
Trump hosted a dinner in the East Room on Wednesday evening to thank the corporations and individuals who contributed. (Comcast Corp., the parent company of NBCUniversal, is one of the donors.)
The list of donors to the new ballroom, provided by the White House, is below. It’s not clear how much each corporation or individual contributed:
Altria Group
Amazon
Apple
Booz Allen Hamilton
Caterpillar
Coinbase
Comcast
Hard Rock International
HP
Lockheed Martin
Meta
Micron Technology
Microsoft
NextEra Energy
Palantir Technologies
Ripple
Reynolds American
T-Mobile
Tether
Union Pacific Railroad
J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul
Adelson Family Foundation
Stefan E. Brodie
Betty Wold Johnson Foundation
Charles and Marissa Cascarilla
Edward and Shari Glazer
Harold Hamm
Benjamin Leon Jr.
The Lutnick Family
The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation
Stephen A. Schwarzman
Konstantin Sokolov
Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher
Paolo Tiramani
Cameron Winklevoss
Tyler Winklevoss
