Mussolini Would Have Loved Trump’s Ballroom

Mr. Goldberger is a former architecture critic for The Times and The New Yorker and the author of “Why Architecture Matters.”

President Trump’s attempt to hugely expand the White House is lumbering forward. It suffered the tiniest of setbacks when the National Capital Planning Commission decided to postpone a vote on the project to its next meeting, on April 2. But it is highly unlikely that the commission, which has been stocked with Trump appointees, will not ultimately sign off on this enormous, banal box in a vaguely classical style that, if it goes forward, will overwhelm the White House and block the view between the White House and the Capitol that has been one of Washington’s signature vistas for more than two centuries.

At a public hearing last Thursday, Paul Ingrassia, the acting general counsel for the General........

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