People's House museum unveils gilded Oval Office replica

Trump’s wider DC makeover includes ballroom, helipad, Rose Garden patio

The People’s House: A White House Experience, an interactive museum run by the White House Historical Association, has unveiled an elaborate overhaul of its full-scale Oval Office replica to match Donald Trump’s second-term aesthetic, The Guardian reported. The museum sits at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, about 150 yards from the White House, and its orientation film is narrated by Martin Sheen, an actor known for The West Wing.

Gone is the understated decor of Joe Biden and his predecessors. In its place are two dozen portraits in heavy carved frames, swirling wall onlays, gleaming brass vases and decorative knickknacks crowding nearly every available surface — a look the New York Times has described as a “gilded rococo nightmare”.

Barack Obama had pictures of two former presidents on the wall; Biden put up a total of seven paintings. Trump has stacked the walls with historical figures including George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin, with Ronald Reagan appearing twice and former first lady Jackie Kennedy the only woman on display. A bust of former president Theodore Roosevelt by James Earle Fraser sits on a bookshelf, flanked by bound volumes of the 26th president’s works. Other books on display include Hawthorne’s Works and Writings of Washington. The room holds two mirrors and a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

The Guardian also reported that Karoline Leavitt, the former White House press secretary, reportedly entered the real Oval Office one day to find Trump in DIY mode, using superglue in an effort to stick gold ornaments to the fireplace.

For many tourists arriving in the nation’s capital, the replica is as close as they will get to the heart of presidential power, especially with the White House currently undergoing extensive demolition and construction work.

Nine-year-old Sydney Wright posed behind a replica Resolute Desk. “I love it,” she said, adding about the gold appliqués, gold leaf and gold trim: “It’s cool.” Her father, Drew Wright, a 36-year-old firefighter from Athens, Georgia, who voted for Trump twice, said he viewed the room’s additions as “paying homage to the people who laid the pathway that we have to raise our children in this great nation”. Asked about the goldening, Wright said: “There’s always going to be critics. There’s always going to be haters. Just because they’re the loudest ones in the room doesn’t mean they’re right. I don’t know what it looked like before but I think it’s a pretty classic look.”

Cheri Lujan Hamilton, 54, the chief clerk of the New Mexico state senate, said she was “kind of in awe”. “I was disappointed we couldn’t get into the White House for a tour so this is the next best thing,” she said. Taking in the gold, Hamilton added: “It’s grand. I like everything that’s grand. I do think all the gold around the doors is maybe a little too much. But I like it on the top.”

Pedro Robles, 50, a police officer from Nashville, Tennessee, called the replica “pretty cool” and disputed the notion that the gilding crosses into bad taste. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think it looks tacky.”

Trump, asked by Time magazine what he would miss most about the White House after he leaves, answered: “This beautiful room that nobody should be allowed to rip down. The Oval Office.”

A team of specialised designers visited Trump’s actual office while he was away to ensure authenticity. The work used 3D scanning in Indianapolis and hand-carved gold frames crafted in California, while teams in Canada and Virginia produced replicas of vases and other tabletop pieces. The replica transition took one week, with more than 25 crew members onsite. Workers used laser levels and temporary adhesive to fix items to the walls, checking their work against renderings of the actual office before nailing many adornments to the walls.

Matthew Costello, chief education officer at the White House Historical Association, said in an email: “As we have seen throughout White House history, each president transitions the Oval Office according to his own tastes. It is our hope that through the evolutions of our Oval Office replica, people will be inspired to learn more about and even see themselves in White House history.”

There is one key difference between the real Oval Office and its replica. The actual workspace relies on gilded gold leaf, while the museum opted for a specialised gold paint solution to protect against chipping or other wear and tear from visitors.

The Guardian reported that the transformation provides a microcosm of Trump’s campaign to remake Washington “in his own image”. Beyond the Oval Office makeover, Trump knocked down the East Wing to build a $400m ballroom, paved over the Rose Garden’s traditional grass lawn to build a white stone patio reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, added a row of presidential portraits that replace Biden with an autopen and constructed a granite helipad on the south lawn. He also initiated a troubled overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, proposed a 250ft triumphal arch near Arlington national cemetery and threatened to tear down the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts if it does not bear his name.

Washington purists and architecture critics have recoiled at what they describe as Trump’s ostentatious tastes, The Guardian reported. Carl Wilkerson, 73, a retired marine from Hereford, Arizona, defended Trump’s presidential style. “We need to have a little bling-bling, man. This is the United States of America. This is the greatest country on the planet, so we need to show it off,” Wilkerson said. Drawing on his time overseas, he argued that foreign palaces “outdid the White House 10 to one” and that the US needed to “step up our game a little bit”. “We are the greatest country on the planet,” he said. “So you need to act like it – and look like it.”