The State Dining Room of the White House seats only 120, in crowded but charming intimacy, the small size adding to the atmosphere of exclusivity. Still the idea that a larger banqueting hall would be a useful alternative to outdoor tents on the South Lawn strikes me as a sensible proposal. The challenge is to balance the need for seating capacity with the need for an appropriate size that suits its setting. Three times larger than the State Dining Room would be the capacity of Inigo Jones’s beautiful Banqueting House in London (above). The proposed White House ballroom (it is really a banqueting hall) was initially to have a capacity five times as large (600), but has grown to more than eight times as large (1,000). It is pretty obvious from the architect’s models that this is too big, and overwhelms the main residence in both height and footprint. My guess is that anything exceeding 600 seats would be too large for its setting. And what if rather than using the usual formula for calculating banquet seating in a hotel ballroom, the density were the same as the present State Dining Room? That would produce a hall with a footprint of approximately 65 feet by 130 feet. Even if this were slightly increased it would still be a manageable size, not much larger than the demolished East Wing.
