Secret Service Dreams of a New (14-Foot) White House Picket Fence

Michael Jordan, the basketball star, was famous for being able to jump 48 inches into the air, putting the top of his head 10 and a half feet off the ground, well above the basket’s rim.

If the Secret Service has its way, the new security fence around the White House will be about three and a half feet higher than that.

Nearly two years after an armed man climbed over the existing seven-foot fence around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and ran through the front door of the White House, the Secret Service is moving aggressively to design and build a taller, stronger security perimeter. Visitors to Washington could soon see a 14-foot barrier ringing the president’s home.

Pressure to move quickly is intense; fence jumping at the White House has become a regular occurrence. Two people jumped the barrier last month, including one who had stolen a woman’s purse and was hoping for a clean getaway. There was a jumper the day after Thanksgiving last year. And in 2014, officers tackled a man who had scaled the fence and run onto the North Lawn.

But before a new fence can go up, the Secret Service needs to obtain approval from two federal boards in a process that is filled with sensitivities surrounding historical preservation, aesthetics and security. In a city used to delicate politicking, the question of what the new White House fence should look like is expected to be difficult.

“We’re trying to find that balance of security, but also keep the historic nature of the White House and keep it open for the public,” Joseph P. Clancy, the director of the Secret Service, said in an interview. “The public doesn’t want to come to the White House and see a wall where you can’t actually see it.”

In recent weeks, officials at the Secret Service have presented their thinking: a fence that looks similar to the existing one, with spear-tip finials atop vertical black iron pickets that are twice as thick, closer together and nearly twice as tall as the current ones.

During appearances before the United States Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, officials at the Secret Service and the National Park Service, which is also working on the fence project, said they had to find a way to keep people from penetrating the barriers to the 18-acre White House complex, where the president works and the first family lives.

“This is an immediate need,” Thomas Dougherty, the chief strategy officer for the Secret Service, told members of the planning commission at an informational meeting last month. “The current fence is currently deficient. It is not, now, a modern alternative to security. We want to move on to a stronger, higher fence.”

Mr. Dougherty told commission members that the new fence should have anticlimb and antiblast features as well as “early detection” abilities. Sketches provided to the commission by the Secret Service show security sensors at 30-foot intervals atop the fence.

But the images presented by the Secret Service raise questions: Will visitors still be able to see the White House clearly? Will the new fence make taking pictures difficult? Will the “people’s house” look like a stronghold, set apart from those that it serves?