When My Family Lived in the White House I Resented It. Now I Mourn It.

[elleng]

by Patti Davis

*Among certain jaded observers, there’s been a strain of chatter dismissing the damage, saying the East Wing was never all that architecturally distinguished. But it was not just a building made of brick and plaster; it was the people’s house, a building suffused with the spirit of the ideals that built it. It was a building that invited you to look beyond your own life, your own reality, to something bigger, a huge story we all inhabit. To stand in such a place makes you feel small, yet also larger than just yourself. It makes you aware of the continuum of history in a way that feels akin to sacredness.

And now the East Wing is gone. I’m grateful that I had that chance to re-enter the White House and see it through more open eyes, experience it without my own resentments getting in the way. Now no one else will get to walk across that threshold and feel the richness of that history brush past them. It was where Eleanor Roosevelt walked. It was where Jacqueline Kennedy planned the Rose Garden.

We silence so much when we tear down places that are there to teach us, inspire us, humble us. Ghosts and memories drift away in the dust, the wreckage, and we are all poorer as a result.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/opinion/east-wing-white-house-patti-davis-reagan.html