Look what Donald Trump has done to the oval office

For decades, each president has made his own oval office.

John F. Kennedy especially chose a carpet in Harvard Crimson, although he did not live to see his installation. Richard Nixon’s office presented a Navy carpet with golden stars, accentuated by gold curtains. Jimmy Carter surrounded himself with warmer and natural tones. George Hw Bush opted for blue powder as a floor and window treatment.

The presidents have chosen different sofas, different coffee tables, different books for the shelves, different chucheías for the tables and paintings for the walls.

But none has had the aesthetic impact of President Donald Trump.

In his second mandate, Trump has struggled to leave a more lasting mark in the White House by taking advantage of his long career in real estate development. There he paved the grass center of the Garden de Rosas, erected two huge flag posts and revealed plans to build a large dance hall in the east wing to organize events.

However, Trump’s Oval Office has been the most striking transformation site so far.

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The iconic space has been positively soaked in gold: curtains, of course, but also vases, frames, trophies, dishes and large amounts of gold, including bright moldings with curves that ensure that it does not remain blank blank. This style is or Rococó or decisively not Rococo.

An ivy plant that had adorned the fireplace of the Oval office for more than half a century was replaced by lifeless objects. (The Washington Post uncovered The ivy had been relocated to a greenhouse for its custody).

It seems that Trump has set aside the rules in decoration as fast in his second term as he has set aside the rules in the government. Any person familiar with the Trump tower in Manhattan or his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida It will not be surprised To see the total scope of your changes in the oval, given your instinct of Brown the properties that bear their name.

But that is also the reason why their changes rub some people in the wrong way. The White House, the town’s house, is not Trump’s own. The first families can make changes in the residence to feel more comfortable during their stay, but the Oval office is not part of a Trump brand company.

In The words From White Stripes Jack White singer, “he is now a vulgar dressing room, loose gold and striking of professional fighter.”

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When First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy renewed the White House in the early 1960s, she did it with an eye to the nation’s past. She collected furniture from President James Monroe, who had ordered A lot of pieces of France after the White House was destroyed by a fire in 1814. Many of them were sold at an auction in 1860; Kennedy managed to reintroduce several in his original home. It also established the Historical Association of the White House, the non -partisan organization that works to preserve the property and document its history until today.

It was Kennedy who dusted the resolved desk and placed it in the oval office.

Trump picked up the paintings now hanging in the oval of the same White House Archives Kennedy worked to preserve.

But its renovations seem less evocative to the nation’s past than from the great future that Herald says.

And that is not a great sign for American democracy.

To Drago/Bloomberg through Getty Images

“He is turning the town’s house in the people’s palace,” said author Kate Andersen Brower to News themezone. “I mean, it is an imperial presidency.”

Andersen Brower has written several books about the White House and the US presidency that led her to speak with a variety of White House employees, such as curators and housewives, who tend to treat the place as a museum. She said that some previous employees are “horrified” by the changes Trump has made.

“Each president puts his own seal in the Oval office, but this is an extreme version of that,” Andersen Brower said. “The oval office is remakeing, and the rest of the White House, frankly, in its image.”

The professor at the University of Virginia, Barbara A. Perry, co -chapter the presidential oral history program at the Miller Center of the School, told News themezone that Trump’s great use of gold has to do with his “image of power.”

“It is turning people’s house in the people’s palace. I mean, it is an imperial presidency.”

– Kate Andersen Brower, author

Perry He pointed out that Kennedy sought to create a more beautiful White House in part to impress visiting dignitaries who could also have dinner at the Kremlin, the opulent seat of the ideological nemesis of the United States Cold War, the Soviet Union. The first lady was worried about the perception that visitors would have from America touring the White House.

“She wanted to treat them in a beautiful way, but not in a real way. That was not her goal. That was not the goal of President Kennedy,” Perry said.

“It was having a beautiful icon of the United States and representing democracy.”

Trump’s idea of ​​”Impression,” said Perry, is different.

“It’s real,” he said.

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While Kennedy was aimed at inviting the American public to the White House, organizing a televised tour during his time there, Trump’s maximalist approach sends a different message.

“It’s more about keeping people in the long term,” Andersen Brower said.

The White House has faced its share of critics who go out with a moody impression. The building and its various rooms sometimes feel smaller in real life of what appear in photographs and movies.

He has also seen certain changes in the last century that were not instant successes, such as when President Harry Truman added a balcony in the 1950s that, at that time, was controversial.

(Truman also submitted the White House to a very necessary intestinal renewal While impacting to see – Replace unstable wood beams with steel to give the place a new life opportunity).

Allison Robbert through News through Getty Images

When the cameras are present, Trump occasionally promotes the changes he has made so far, calling the White House “a completely different building” under its administration before This month.

He claims There are no taxpayers funds They are being used for gold and chose the best material for him: 24 carat gold.

You may have taken at least one remarkable shortcut. Online detectives have discovered that at least some of their curly moldings coincide with an item for sale In Home Depot for $ 58, made in Taiwan from polyurethane. Other articles on the manufacturer’s website seem similar, although not identical, to the moldings recently installed in the Oval office.

Critics also claim that Trump is simply using paint in golden spray, given the apparently artificial brightness of golden accents. Washington Post Philip Kennicott architecture critic explainedhowever, how high brightness can be the product of the use of water based on oil, instead of oil, Dorado technique. The gold sheet can be polished intensely after. (Kennicott points out that the French prefer a less burned finish, while Russians like brighter).

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The president seems to have studied the issue, dedicating several minutes of a meeting of the July Cabinet. To regret that “they have never found a painting that seems gold” even though they “have tried for years and years”, which requires that you use real things.

For Andersen Brower, they are the permanent changes, such as the dance hall, which concern her more than the gold in the oval office, which she sees as relatively easy to change once the Trump term is made. The staff, he said, has a well -transformed practice of the Oval office at the end of January, between the departure of a president and the arrival of the next president.

“As ridiculous as it seems, people should know that that can be changed very, very fast, and it is always,” he said.

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