The White House’s security checkpoint is getting a modern makeover—if Trump’s design team allows it
For more than 20 years, anyone visiting the White House in Washington, D.C., has first stepped inside a trailer. Technically a temporary building, this trailer on the southeastern edge of the White House grounds is where visitors are screened for security. When there’s a big event, which is often, security screening bleeds out of the trailer into temporary tents, much to the chagrin of the U.S. Secret Service.
“This has not been the best situation for those visitors coming to visit the White House. They’re outside. We cannot deploy all the technology we’d like to at all the different times, and it’s very limiting as one security screening lane,” said Andy Stohs, senior adviser for technical operations with the Secret Service.
His comments came during a formal presentation of the recently released conceptual design for an updated security screening facility on the White House grounds. The facility would support security screening for visitor tours and large-scale events, as well as the daily comings and goings of White House staff and contractors. Instead of temporary and pop-up facilities, the Secret Service is proposing a modern, tech-centric building, and it hopes construction can begin later this year.
The big concern for the panel charged with reviewing the plan, though, is whether the building is “classical” enough.
What does the proposed building look like?
The proposal details a largely subterranean, 33,000-square-foot facility designed by global architecture and engineering firm AECOM. It was presented at the March 19 meeting of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the independent federal agency that advises the president and Congress on matters of design and aesthetics affecting Washington, D.C., including new federal buildings.
The subterranean security screening facility would sit adjacent to President Donald Trump’s multimillion-dollar ballroom (under construction), with an entry point a block away at the edge of Sherman Park and the column-lined exit building directly across the street from the expanded White House building. Visitors would enter the facility and quickly move beneath the park for multiple ID checks and an airport-style security screening through equipment and Secret Service personnel. After, they would wind through a corridor, travel up an escalator, and emerge on the surface level within the secured space of the White House grounds.
Renderings of the design presented during the Commission on Fine Arts meeting were met with predictable critiques, tempered with support for the overall project. Commission member Mary Anne Carter, the Trump-appointed chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, focused on the entrance to the facility, which is carved into the edge of Sherman Park and lined with a curving retaining wall of concrete and limestone.
“The entrance, although I love the curve, it doesn’t seem to match the overall appearance of everything else,” Carter said. “It seems odd. That is a lot of concrete. Are you proposing any artwork, any carvings, etchings, public art, anything to maybe make it look less brutal?”
The commission’s vice-chair, James McCrery, focused on the few parts of the proposed building that can be seen at the ground level. One is a modest, 18-foot-tall rectangular building with a sloping roof supported by a perimeter of limestone-clad columns. The other is a below-grade ramp and entrance that visitors would use to go from the street level into the facility. “There’s this thing called the president’s executive order on architecture, and I think you really need to study that,” McCrery said.
He was referring to Trump’s July 2025 executive order “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” which calls for classical and traditional architecture to be the preferred styles for all federal buildings. In McCrery’s view, AECOM’s design does not qualify as sufficiently classical. Perhaps unsurprisingly, other commission members agreed. The commission’s seven-member body is presidentially appointed. In October 2025, Trump made the uncommon move of firing the panel and replacing all members with appointees who have enthusiastically supported his architectural tendencies.
McCrery is a longtime board member of the National Civic Art Society, the group that helped draft the executive order on architecture. He’s also the original architect of the ballroom project that led to the surprise demolition of the East Wing of the White House.
“It’s difficult for me to say stuff like this but I’m obligated to say it. I think that AECOM would be much better served, and this project much better served, if you were to retain, in some way, in some manner, an architect who is very familiar with and committed to the classical language of architecture,” McCrery said during the hearing. “I like the project. I don’t like the design.”
AECOM pledged to revisit the design, and the Commission on Fine Arts expects to review it again at its next meeting on April 16.
Formal approval could come quickly, and many are hoping it does. The project was submitted for review by the Executive Office of the President in cooperation with the U.S. Secret Service and the National Park Service, which oversees Sherman Park. The stars may be aligning for the project to move ahead, partly due to the construction work already underway on the site of the demolished East Wing.
“This isn’t a new idea. We have been looking at this for 20 years trying to find the right solution,” said Stohs. “This is just a good opportunity given that the entirety of the site is under construction.”
Work could start as soon as August, and the project could be complete by July 2028.