White House demolishes historic movie theater during East Wing construction Wesley StenzelOctober 24, 2025 at 3:09 AM 0 Fotosearch/Getty Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan in the White House screening room in the 1980s The White House's movie theater is no more.
- - White House demolishes historic movie theater during East Wing construction
Wesley StenzelOctober 24, 2025 at 3:09 AM
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Fotosearch/Getty
Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan in the White House screening room in the 1980s
The White House's movie theater is no more.
Construction on President Donald Trump's $300 million ballroom has led to demolition of the entire East Wing of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., which included the theater in which presidents have hosted film screenings since 1942, photos from the and The New York Times revealed.
A representative for the White House did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly's request for comment.
Eric Lee/Getty
Demolition at the East Wing of the White House on Oct. 23, 2025
Although the White House screening room is no longer standing, a source told THR that the theater will eventually "be modernized and renovated with the rest of the East Wing."
Trump's construction project will eventually yield a 90,000 square-foot ballroom capable of hosting some 900 guests.
The White House first added its storied screening room during the fourth term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942, when the East Terrace's cloakroom was converted into a theater. In subsequent years, numerous presidents screened dozens of movies each. Dwight D. Eisenhower installed plush armchairs in the theater's front row and watched High Noon there, while John F. Kennedy watched the James Bond flick From Russia With Love the night before his assassination in 1963.
Later, Richard Nixon screened movies like The Sound of Music, Citizen Kane, and The Sting during his tenure while Jimmy Carter played over 400 movies in his single term in office, kicking off his presidency with the anti-Nixon journalism thriller All the President's Men just two days after taking office in 1977. He went on to screen new release movies like Rocky, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well as classics like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Ronald Reagan, who oversaw a major remodel of the screening room, also watched a mix of new movies and classics, including Stagecoach, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and, bizarrely, Warren Beatty's communist biopic Reds. Bill Clinton preferred new releases, screening seminal '90s movies like Schindler's List, Groundhog Day, and Titanic. Independence Day director Roland Emmerich claimed that he screened the disaster film for Clinton, who rushed out of the theater when the White House was blown up by aliens onscreen.
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Donald Trump in New York City on Sept. 23, 2025
George W. Bush screened Seabiscuit and The Mexican (and oversaw a renovation on the theater), and Barack Obama requested numerous new releases, including Lincoln and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Trump's first movie selection was Finding Dory in 2017, and Biden hosted screenings of films like Flamin' Hot and Till.
The White House previously said that it expects Trump's ballroom project to be completed "long before the end" of his term in 2029. Fingers crossed that the new-and-improved movie theater will A) actually exist and B) have an ICEE machine.
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