Shortly before demolition of the East Wing was set to begin, the White House Historical Association was scrambling behind the scenes to ensure the iconic structure was not entirely lost to history.

Stewart McLaurin, president of the private, non-partisan organization created by former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, secured 3D technology to scan the entire space, including a companion garden, in such detail that it could capture “a cobweb in the corner of the room.”

At the start of demolition, the association also embedded a photographer, who remains on site, to record the process even as the walls were breached to make way for President Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom.

“Amazingly, when they took up the flooring in the East Wing, the subfloor of the original floors were there from the 1940s,” McLaurin said. “No one living knew or remembered what they looked like. When they took down the wall coverings in the family theater, there were images behind those from the Eisenhower presidency that nobody knew or remembered were there. We have all of that now … that will become a treasure trove of resources for journalists, students, authors, historians and others who want to tell stories of those times.”

In a wide-ranging conversation with the National Press Foundation’s Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship program, McLaurin explained that the association’s mission is not to take a position on whether the contentious decision to raze the part of the mansion was appropriate, but to document the history of one of the country’s most treasured institutions.

A lawsuit aimed at halting the ballroom project until it clears a federal review process is pending.

“It’s a difficult topic because we know so many of the people who worked in that space,” McLaurin said, referring to the former location of the First Lady’s office, legislative affairs, calligraphers, social secretary and theater.

It also served as the traditional entrance to state dinners, some of the grandest events the White House hosts during each presidency.

“Even though I knew it was … going to happen, it was still jarring to see those (demolition) images in the paper on the news. And it was a difficult time.

“Now, having said that, if you go back to the second president to live in the White House, Thomas Jefferson, he had the colonnades (and) created the first fence that went around the White House,” he said adding that succeeding presidents, including James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman left their own major imprints on the mansion complex.

Most every major change to the mansion has drawn some public critique, McLaurin said.

“Now, we look at the White House and we can’t imagine it without those things … Does that make it easier for us to see a space so important to the construct and the work of the White House and now it’s gone? No. But that’s reality of where we are, and that’s the story that we now have to determine how to tell.”