The screening room was first added in 1942.

White House demolishes historic movie theater during East Wing construction

The screening room was first added in 1942.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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October 23, 2025 9:09 p.m. ET

Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan in the White House screening room in the 1980s. Credit:

Fotosearch/Getty

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 *Associated Press* and *The New York Times* revealed.

A representative for the White House did not immediately respond to **'s request for comment.

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*.

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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.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty

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.**

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Movies”