The New York Times (gift link):
Critics warn it still has many issues — its portico is too big,
its stairs lead nowhere, its columns will block views from inside
the ballroom.And that’s just the portico.
This is a really good piece, with animated-as-you-scroll illustrations pointing out specific problems with the design.
Such details affect how people passing by experience these iconic
places, and how each structure fits into a capital city that has
been planned around civic symbols and sightlines since the
1790s. The deliberation is also an expression of democracy,
said Carol Quillen, the president and chief executive of the
National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued the
administration over the ballroom.“Even if we are slow and we make mistakes and we fight, that
process has meaning to us,” Ms. Quillen said. No project belonging
to the public should be the vision of just one man, she said.That is, however, how the ballroom has often been described.
“President Trump is the best builder and developer in the entire
world, and the American people can rest well knowing that this
project is in his hands,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman,
said in a statement. Past administrations and presidents have
wanted a ballroom for more than 150 years, he said, and Mr. Trump
will accomplish it.
The way that these lickspittles talk about Trump exactly the way North Koreans speak of Little Kim, or that anyone in any other cult speaks of the cult leader, is just revolting. Even the Chinese don’t speak of Xi “The Pooh” Jinping like this. No one in China pretends Xi is a genius architect.
