The White House on Tuesday lashed out at critics complaining about the construction of a ballroom at the White House after photos and videos showing the facade of the East Wing being torn off by an excavator went viral.

“In the latest instance of manufactured outrage, unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies are clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House,” the White House said in a post on Tuesday. 

The post, a lengthy catalog of past White House construction projects, declared that the ballroom will be “a bold, necessary addition that echoes the storied history of improvements and additions from commanders-in-chief to keep the executive residence as a beacon of American excellence.”

The Department of the Treasury, which has a clear line of sight to the construction site, also reportedly ordered employees not to share photos of the demolition.

“As construction proceeds on the White House grounds, employees should refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs,” a Treasury official wrote on Monday evening in an email message to department employees, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal.

President Trump’s defensive stance came after a flurry of hysterical criticism hit social media on Monday. “First Trump’s mob attacked the Capitol for the first time since 1812. And now Trump is doing more damage to the White House than the British did in 1814,” legal writer Marcy Wheeler wrote on X.  

The company hired to build the new ballroom was also flooded with negative reviews. “Destroying ‘The People’s House’ with no regard for their permission,” said a one-star review on Google Maps. “Deplorable act no matter the reason.”

Secretary Hillary Clinton, whose husband added a jogging track to the South Lawn, jumped into the fray, writing on X: “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.”

And journalist Jim Acosta, a former CNN White House correspondent, wrote on X, “So any president can just start destroying portions of the White House? Is that how this works?” 

But perhaps Mr. Acosta, who often clashed with Mr. Trump during his first term, needs to study up on his White House history. 

One post on X offered a quick summary of the extensive renovations and additions to the White House since construction of the president’s home began in 1792. “Teddy Roosevelt built the West Wing. Taft made the Executive Office oval. FDR added the entire East Wing and included an indoor pool for himself. Truman gutted the entire White House. Nixon added a bowling alley. Obama added a basketball court. Trump is building a ballroom.”

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, commented on the post, saying: “And President Trump is not costing the taxpayers a dime!”

The new Trump Ballroom — estimated to cost $250 million — is being paid for entirely by donations. But more than that, the addition of the new event space will make the White House truly able to accommodate large crowds.

At the moment, the East Room — at just less than 3,000 square feet — is the largest room in the White House. It is used for dances, receptions, prime-time press conferences, ceremonies, concerts, and banquets. But the Trump Ballroom is said to be 90,000 square feet and will seat as many as 650 people — more than three times the capacity of the East Room.

Presidents throughout history have done extensive renovations to “The People’s House,” mainly because the building was built of brick and sandstone around a timber frame and, like any home, is constantly deteriorating.

One day in 1947, when the White House was nearly 150 years old, plaster fell from the ceiling of the East Room, exposing a 12-foot-long crack. Engineers quickly put up wooden braces to stabilize the ceiling. 

Things got so bad that President Truman declared the house was in imminent danger of collapse and ordered an evacuation. He shut the place down and had the insides stripped down to the studs, forcing him to live across the street at Blair House between 1949 and 1952.

There were also major renovations in 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing (which was expanded in 1934) and modernized the White House; and in 1817, when the house was rebuilt after the British burned it on August 24, 1814. There was also extensive work done in 1927 during the Calvin Coolidge administration.

There have also been major construction projects outdoors, according to the White House Historical Association. President Eisenhower added a putting green on the South Lawn near the West Wing in 1954; the White House Rose Garden was redesigned by Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962; Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson oversaw the redesign of the East Garden; President Ford installed an outdoor swimming pool in 1975; and Michelle Obama created the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn in 2009. 

As for the East Wing, where the current construction is going on, the first version was built in 1902, during the Theodore Roosevelt renovations, as an entrance for formal and public visitors. A second floor and offices for the first lady and social secretary were added in 1942, but that work was primarily to cover the construction of an underground bunker, now the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. 

Critics have made hay with Mr. Trump’s statement in July, when he said of the ballroom construction, “It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it, not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing structure.” The East Wing and its offices will remain intact; the facade was removed only to join the ballroom with the existing wing.

Mr. Trump appears to have skirted a lengthy list of regulations in jumping ahead with his ballroom project. Large projects at the White House are supposed to go through a four-step review, with each culminating with a public meeting before the National Capital Planning Commission. Throughout the process, commissioners weigh in on the projects, discussing aesthetics and environmental impacts.

Any major project is expected to get final authorization from the commission, the National Park Service, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Facilities Management Office. But Mr. Trump did not need to ask for funding, so he apparently decided to simply proceed with the project.

Scott Jennings, who served as special assistant to President George W. Bush, summed up the hubbub in an appearance on MSNBC.

“I don’t think it’s super unusual for the White House to undergo massive construction projects. All the way back to Thomas Jefferson putting in the colonnades, or Theodore Roosevelt putting in the West Wing, or FDR putting in the East Wing, Nixon putting in the press briefing room overtop the swimming pool, Clinton closing Pennsylvania Avenue,” he said.

“I mean, you can go on and on and on. The White House is typically under construction either in small ways or in large ways,” Mr. Jennings said. “I think this is another in a long line of improvements.”