ResidentialARC HOUSE: At Home with Power: The Houses of Donald Trump

From a Tudor house in Queens to a penthouse above Manhattan and the rooms of the White House, Donald Trump’s homes offer a way to read the architecture of status. What happens when a house becomes part of a public identity?

Sharp daylight view of Mar a Lago’s tower, carved façade, tiled roofs and palm trees — Mar a Lago, January 2023. Photograph: Jud McCranie / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original photograph.

A front door can be a surprisingly public thing. Long before we enter a house, its architecture tells us how to approach it. A path draws us towards a porch. Columns make us pause. A tower asks us to look up. These are practical arrangements, but they also establish a relationship between the person arriving and the person inside.

Donald Trump’s homes make that relationship unusually visible. His public identity is bound up with buildings, and his residences invite questions that go beyond price or the amount of gold in a room. How does a house announce arrival? Where does privacy end and performance begin? Can someone acquire the appearance of an established history by acquiring the house that contains it?

Following five pivotal residences, from two childhood houses in Queens to Trump Tower, Mar a Lago and the White House, reveals several different ways architecture can represent power. This is a reading of the buildings and their public image. The everyday domestic life behind their doors remains largely outside the photograph.

Queens: the architecture of belonging

The story begins at Wareham Place in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Trump’s first childhood home was a Tudor Revival house, with brick below, pale stucco above, dark decorative timbers and a steeply pitched roof. The family subsequently moved to a larger house on nearby Midland Parkway, also built by his father, Fred Trump. The two addresses belong to the same neighbourhood, but they present rather different versions of domestic success.

Brick, stucco and decorative timber façade of Trump’s early childhood home at Wareham Place in Queens — The Wareham Place childhood house, photographed in February 2019. Jasebasketball / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original photograph.

At Wareham Place, the chimney rises through the main gable and the entrance sits beneath a low roof. Its scale is recognisably domestic. You can imagine standing at the door, waiting to be let in. The Tudor references give the comparatively young suburban house the appearance of an older tradition: an English idea of home transported to New York.

That is one of the pleasures, and ambiguities, of revival architecture. A new house can arrive wearing the visual signs of age. Materials and rooflines suggest continuity before the occupants have established any history there themselves. The same device appears in countless suburbs, including our own.

The later Midland Parkway house makes a more formal claim. Its red brick and prominent white columned portico use the language of a Colonial Revival mansion. The shift is from the picturesque outline of a cottage tradition towards a ceremonial entrance. As the neighbourhood’s architectural history shows, the childhood setting was already affluent. Queens was a starting point within prosperity, rather than a simple visual shorthand for humble beginnings.

Here, power is expressed through belonging: the substantial family house, the established street, the reassuring historical style. The entrance suggests that its occupants have a place in an existing social order.

Trump Tower: a home above the city

In Manhattan, the relationship changes. Trump Tower opened in 1983, and the triplex apartment near its summit became Trump’s best known private address. The move from a suburban plot to an elevated apartment changes the meaning of the ground beneath the house. Instead of garden and street, there is a city seen from above.

Upward view of the dark glass and stepped façade of Trump Tower in Manhattan — Trump Tower, Manhattan, July 2011. Supercarwaar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Original photograph. Exterior view of the building containing the penthouse.

The penthouse combines two familiar expressions of status. Height belongs to the modern city, where a view becomes a scarce possession. Ornamental interiors draw on a much older vocabulary of palaces and grand reception rooms. The apartment brings those languages together: contemporary real estate outside, historical grandeur inside.

There is an important design distinction here. Angelo Donghia designed the original apartment, documented in the early 1980s. Those rooms should not be treated as interchangeable with every later photograph of the residence. Architectural Digest’s archival account records an earlier combination of pale colours, reflective surfaces and luxurious furnishings. Thomas de Monchaux’s discussion of Donghia is useful for understanding that original work on its own terms.

Trump and Shinzo Abe in the richly ornamented Trump Tower apartment, showing the painted ceiling, gilded columns and city windows — Inside the Trump Tower residence, 23 September 2018, during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The room places gilded ornament and a painted ceiling against the Manhattan skyline. Photograph: Shealah Craighead / The White House, public domain US Government work. Source and rights information. This later interior is distinct from Donghia’s original design.

What interests me is the idea of the penthouse as a setting for being seen. In an ordinary living room, the window might frame a tree or a neighbour’s roof. Here, the city itself becomes the backdrop. A photograph of the occupant can also become a photograph of the height they have reached.

There is a connection to the television homes we recognise by heart. A room can establish a character before anyone speaks. In a highly photographed private residence, the furniture, view and architectural detail become part of that introduction.

Mar a Lago: acquiring a history

Mar a Lago introduces another kind of arrival. Trump bought the Palm Beach estate in 1985. Its architecture, however, belongs to an earlier story: the house was built between 1923 and 1927 for Marjorie Merriweather Post, with architect Marion Sims Wyeth and designer Joseph Urban among its principal creators. The Historic American Buildings Survey documents that history in considerable detail.

The distinction matters. Mar a Lago was already an elaborate statement of wealth and social life before Trump acquired it. He bought an existing architectural world, with its own materials, rooms and associations.

Historic black and white photograph of Mar a Lago’s richly decorated living room with chandeliers, carved ceiling and grouped seating — Mar a Lago’s living room in April 1967, before Trump’s ownership. Jack E. Boucher, Historic American Buildings Survey / Library of Congress, HABS FL-195, photograph 21. Archive and rights information; no known restrictions on this US Government photograph. This is a historic interior, rather than a record of its present furnishings.

In Boucher’s 1967 photograph, seating groups occupy a room whose ceiling and walls command as much attention as the furniture. The space accommodates conversation, yet its decoration also turns the act of receiving visitors into an event. A visitor is given somewhere to sit and a great deal to look at.

Historic photograph of the ornate entrance to the owner’s suite from Mar a Lago’s cloister, with steps and carved stonework — The entrance to the owner’s suite from Mar a Lago’s cloister, April 1967, before Trump’s ownership. Jack E. Boucher, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FL-195-75. Public domain US Government work. Restored archival photograph and rights information.

The estate’s transformation adds a further layer. According to the club’s history, it became a private members’ club in 1995. In 2019, Trump announced Palm Beach as his permanent residence, replacing New York, as Reuters reported at the time. The property therefore requires more careful description than simply “his house”: it combines a residence with a private club.

Architecturally, that overlap is revealing. Most homes organise a boundary between household and visitor. A club formalises belonging through membership. When the two share an address, the invitation to enter carries several meanings at once. The house can shelter private life while its larger setting provides a place to gather an audience.

Chandeliers and elaborate ornamental ceiling inside Mar a Lago under coloured event lighting — Ceiling and chandelier detail inside the Mar a Lago Club, December 2019. The event lighting adds another layer to the room’s architectural display. Photograph: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0. Original photograph.

The White House: authority already in the walls

The White House changes the terms again. It is an official residence and workplace, occupied through the presidency. It is public property, with a history that extends far beyond any individual occupant.

The White House South Portico reflected in the polished bonnet of a presidential limousine at night — The White House reflected in the presidential limousine, 10 October 2009, during Barack Obama’s presidency. Photograph: Chuck Kennedy, official White House photograph, public domain US Government work. Source and rights information. An image of the institution, predating Trump’s terms.

James Hoban’s design and the building’s subsequent alterations have produced a residence whose exterior is recognised around the world. The White House Historical Association’s account also makes clear that this apparent continuity contains repeated rebuilding, changing interiors and the labour of many people, including the enslaved workers involved in its original construction.

Wide interior view of the Oval Office in 2017 showing the curved room, sofas, Resolute desk and gold drapery — The Oval Office in August 2017. This is the presidential workplace, separate from the family’s private living quarters. The curved room, formal seating and familiar desk make the architecture of office visible. Official White House photograph, public domain US Government work. Source and rights information.

Its architectural authority is accumulated. Columns, proportion and familiar rooms carry the memory of previous administrations. An occupant enters an image that already exists. Personal choices of furniture and decoration sit within a larger question of stewardship: how should someone live in a house whose meaning belongs to the public?

That tension makes the White House the most revealing address in this sequence. Trump Tower can connect a home to its owner’s name. At the White House, the institution lends its name and visual authority to the person living there. The occupant changes; the building must remain legible as more than their possession.

Who is the house for?

Across these residences, the architectural means change. In Queens, historical styles suggest establishment. In Manhattan, height turns the skyline into a backdrop. At Mar a Lago, an existing estate supplies an elaborate setting for both residence and reception. At the White House, public history gives the domestic address its significance.

These are different forms of power, and they raise a question that applies well beyond Trump. When we choose a house style, design an entrance or furnish a room for visitors, who are we addressing? The household that will live there each day? The people arriving at the door? An imagined audience somewhere beyond them?

This is the larger argument behind what our house styles say about us. Architecture provides shelter, but it also gives visible form to aspiration. The revealing part of Trump’s homes is the way that aspiration moves between domestic space and public image. A house becomes a statement of arrival. The question is whether, once the statement has been made, there is still somewhere simply to be at home.

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