The Brooklyn Rail

For over half a century, hobbyists of US architecture and politics could purchase pieces of the White House. The range of souvenirs was striking, from charred wood left behind after the British burned the building in 1814, to the nails and clay bricks produced by the enslaved workers who constructed the White House and other early public buildings in Washington.

This massive collection of materials was the result of President Harry S. Truman’s renovation of the Executive Mansion between 1948 and 1952. He established a commission to oversee the project and to determine what should happen to the demolished material. The Commission on Renovation of the Executive Mansion divided the debris into two categories, one for historically significant objects to be preserved and another for ordinary building materials to be sold off to the public as souvenirs. Bricks went for one dollar each, while smaller fragments cost twenty-five cents. More than 45,000 inquiries soon flooded the Commission, which hired eight full-time workers to package and ship the materials. The popularity of these souvenirs reflected more than mere nostalgia. Americans believed that the public building—along with its material components—belonged to the nation. Holding a fragment of the structure offered a material connection to the humble beginnings of this global power.

The question of who decides the fate of the White House has returned with new urgency following the October 2025 demolition of the East Wing under President Donald J. Trump. Originally constructed in 1902, and expanded during World War II, the East Wing housed the offices for the First Lady and Staff, visitor facilities, and ceremonial spaces. Trump argued that the structure was outdated, small, and moldy due to years of water leakage. His solution was a 400-million dollar, brand new addition, projected to be the size of nearly two football fields. Trump initially promised that the building would be funded through private donations, but in May 2026, Senate Republicans folded in an additional 1 billion dollars in security funding for the new East Wing.

The demolition proceeded without any meaningful consultation with local and national preservation advocacy groups, the National Park Service, or Congress itself. Legally, the White House occupies a unique position within US preservation law—the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 exempts the principal buildings of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches from many federal preservation requirements. Nonetheless, it also expects the president to serve as a role model of historical stewardship.

The White House is an important example of how architectural materiality itself can tell stories about historically overlooked people and places. Construction of the President’s House began in 1792, shortly after the federal government relocated the capital from Philadelphia to land carved out of Maryland and Virginia. Since the site was surrounded by slaveholding states, the federal government elected to deploy enslaved labor to build its public buildings, including the White House and the Capitol. More than two hundred known enslaved workers built these structures; many others labored in nearby presidential households. Their enslavers collected the contract payments while the workers themselves received little more than basic provisions.

Brick-making was physically demanding work that required significant skill. Workers dug raw clay from local pits and riverbanks, mixed it with different kinds of sand and ash, stomped it by foot to create the consistency of dough, and then stuffed the resulting material into wooden brick molds. Women and children were responsible for removing excess clay off the bricks; they also stacked the bricks, often tens of thousands of them, to provide air circulation during the drying process. The bricks were then fired in the kiln, which maintained temperatures close to two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. While moving the bricks through the production process, workers sometimes left impressions of their hands in the brick surface. These records of forced labor remain visible in many surviving building facades today.

Workers’ fingerprints have become important evidence for historians and preservationists seeking to make visible the lives of enslaved people. State and institutional archives often record enslaved people only as property that enslavers accumulated, disciplined, managed, bought and sold. However, bricks tell a different story. Fingermarks function as signatures, as individual DNA imprinted on the surface of the building itself. Through a close reading of this material record, Americans can better understand the unthinkable violence that enslaved people endured while building this nation. Even when slavery was outlawed in 1865, Black workers continued to make bricks without pay as part of the convict leasing system.

Knowing this history makes the demolition of the East Wing especially difficult to stomach—the rubble was not preserved or sold, but dumped in East Potomac Park to construct the grounds for a new private golf club. What histories did these materials carry within them, and which stories of labor have been lost alongside their demolition and discard?

The controversy over the demolition of the East Wing raises questions that extend beyond one building or one administration. Preservation is not simply about saving old buildings or their material artifacts. It is about deciding which histories matter for shaping national identity past, present, and future, and who is responsible for protecting them.