First Lady Melania Trump Reveals New Tennis Pavilion At The White House

A month before the White House sees a new first family living there, First Lady Melania Trump unveiled a new tennis pavilion the the south grounds on Monday.

The pavilion replaced a smaller structure and cleaned up the existing tennis court and children’s garden. The new design is meant to reflect the look and feel of the White House’s architecture, especially the East and West Wings, said the office of the First Lady.

Melania broke ground for the project in October 2019 with a partnership in construction by the Trust for the National Mall and National Park Service. Private donations funded the new building and the White House did not disclose any details about the cost. Completion of the pavilion comes months after the First Lady unveiled the newly designed White House Rose Garden.

As the coronavirus pandemic began to take over day to day life earlier in the year, Melania tweeted photos of herself looking at the pavilion’s blueprints while wearing a hard hat. She received backlash from critics due to the insensitive photo posted while coronavirus cases continued to rise. “Everyone who chooses to be negative & question my work at the @WhiteHouse to take time and contribute something good & productive in their own communities,” the First Lady tweeted back to those critics.

“It is my hope that this private space will function as both a place or leisure and gathering for future First Families,” wrote Melania in a statement on Monday. She also thanked the “talented craftsmen” for the hard work they contributed to the project and she thanked the “generous supporters of the White House.”

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The Trump family is set to move out of the White House next month as President-Elect Joe Biden will be sworn into the White House as the nation’s 46th president on January 20.

President Donald Trump had been a regular attendee of the U.S. Open, an annual tennis tournament held in New York but the president has not attended since taking office in 2016.