The Case of the Disappearing, Reappearing White House Ballroom Stairs

Plans for the White House ballroom that the Trump administration filed with the Supreme Court last week revealed previously unseen details. They include a golden seal over the building’s main entrance and miniature lion heads perched atop Corinthian columns on the porticos.

But more curiously, the drawings appear to show that the administration has also reverted to earlier plans for the building’s design, restoring a grand staircase on the addition’s south side that was derided by architects as a frivolous adornment that led to no entryway.

The plans filed with the court, part of the administration’s emergency bid to continue construction, differ from the ones approved by the National Capital Planning Commission on April 2 — and from what was last seen by the public.

President Trump also told reporters in March that the staircase had been removed from the design. And the executive director of the planning commission had noted that eliminating the staircase was an “improvement” that preserved the visual and symbolic primacy of the Executive Residence facade next door.

The White House did not respond to questions about whether it had inadvertently filed outdated plans with the Supreme Court, or if it had changed what it is actually constructing. The solicitor general’s office also did not respond to questions.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Friday temporarily allowed construction of the ballroom to continue, giving the full Supreme Court more time to consider whether the project can proceed. The order came after an appeals court ruled this month that the president does not have the authority to pursue a “m***ive” construction project on White House grounds without consent from Congress.

Floor plans for the project included in the court doblockents are identical to ones shown to the public in February, before the staircase was removed in the lead-up to the final approval by the planning commission. The plans in the doblockent, however, are dated Aug. 12, suggesting that the staircase has returned in more recent designs.

Any substantial changes still underway, even as the administration says in court that construction is 65 percent complete, would add to the haphazard and rushed nature of the project. The ballroom sprinted through reviews by two federal panels this year and byp***ed steps that major federal projects in Washington typically go through, including a public design competition.

Along the way, it has been difficult for the public to keep up with the president’s exact building plans. Detailed drawings of the final ballroom plans were never publicly released. And in court, the administration has largely shifted its description of the project from a ballroom meant to entertain world leaders, as the president initially described it, to a “national security complex” that happens to have a ballroom on top.

“If this is indeed the new plan for the White House ballroom, it would clearly be a material change from what was previously approved” by the planning commission, said Brent Leggs, the president and chief executive of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in a statement. The trust, a congressionally chartered nonprofit group, brought the lawsuit against the ballroom now before the Supreme Court.

Mr. Leggs said the plans would have to go back to the planning commission “for review, public comment, and eventual approval by the commission — and, as our lawsuit has ***erted from the start — authorized by Congress.”

In the initial unveiling of the design, the grand staircase on the building’s south portico became a symbol among architects and preservationists of the project’s incongruities. They criticized the ballroom as gaudy and out of scale with the White House grounds.

The staircase appears to lead to the ballroom, but there are no doors entering the building at the top of the stairs, and they end at a terrace that is still about 12 feet below the ballroom floor. Any dignitaries walking up the stairs would then have to walk around the west side of the building and up another set of stairs to reach the ballroom interior.

Renderings have also shown the staircase leading down directly onto the lawn rather than onto a walkway.

The project’s architect, Shalom Baranes, acknowledged in a planning commission meeting in March that the inclusion of the staircase had been “an aesthetic decision.” (Mr. Baranes declined to comment on Friday on any subsequent changes to the plans.) The main entrance to the building is around the corner on its northeast side, facing the Treasury Department.

In late March, President Trump appeared stung by criticism of the building’s design, and of the staircase in particular. Aboard Air Force One, he abruptly unveiled new illustrations announcing that the plans had been revised and the stairs removed, just days before the ballroom was scheduled to be considered for a final vote by the planning commission.

“We got rid of — a long, quite a while ago — the stairs that were on the south side, and it’s become really beautiful,” the president said, displaying new renderings of the ballroom.

Those revised plans are the ones the planning commission approved, with a new switchback staircase on the building’s west side.

A spokesman for the planning commission said it had held no discussions with the administration about further changes since the panel approved the design in April. “That approval ended N.C.P.C.’s role with the project,” the spokesman, Stephen Staudigl, said of the planning commission in an email.

In previous years, substantial late changes to the design of a public building or monument in the capital would have prompted the project to return to at least one of two design commissions. The Commission of Fine Arts, which approved the ballroom earlier this year, would have typically weighed in on an aesthetic decision like mounting large gold seals on the exterior of a government building.

But that commission, like the planning commission, has been filled with appointees who are the president’s allies. Whether any ballroom changes would return to the fine arts commission for further review would be subject to discussion with the president, said Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the commission’s chair. He added that he does not comment publicly on his private conversations with the president.

“We meet with the president routinely on all matters that have to do with design; he’s very focused on it, and he enjoys it,” Mr. Cook said. “I’m hopeful we’ll continue to do that until he leaves the White House.”

Renderings included in the court filings also show the ballroom interior awash in gold details. From the inside, it would look remarkably similar to the ballroom at the president’s private retreat at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Ann E. Marimow contributed reporting.