Earlier this week, a retired General Services Administration official accused the Trump administration of attempting to demolish four historic federal buildings in Washington, D.C., including the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Bloomberg Law reported.
The former official, Mydelle Wright, made the allegation in a supplemental declaration filed in a case brought by preservation groups seeking to stop President Trump from painting a stone federal building. Wright said the White House is soliciting bids for the demolition of the buildings without the involvement of the GSA, which she added has “sole authority over this process” when it comes to maintaining government buildings.
“For the first time of which I am aware, a President is personally involved in facilitating end-runs around the agency’s obligations to the buildings that are our national heritage, and who in the agency is going to tell him ‘no?’” she wrote. (A lawyer for the Justice Department refuted the allegation, calling it “hearsay and speculation.”)
The future of the Cohen building is of particular concern to cultural preservationists. Designed by Charles Zeller Klauder in the stripped Classical style of the 1930s, the building originally housed the Social Security Administration. Inside are several murals celebrating the Social Security Act of 1935, a landmark piece of New Deal legislation. Among them is a suite of murals by Ben Shahn titled The Meaning of Social Security, with three panels depicting the ills of society before the New Deal, followed by several panels illustrating an idealized New Deal vision. The building also contains a large mural by Philip Guston, Reconstruction and Well-Being of the Family, as well as two by Seymour Fogel, Wealth of the Nation and The Security of the People.
Gray Brechin, a historian and founder of Living New Deal, has described the Cohen building as “the Sistine Chapel of the New Deal,” citing the scale and significance of its murals.
The building has been designated a D.C. landmark and is listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and the D.C. Inventory of Historic Sites.
In recent years, however, the building—which until recently served as the headquarters of the Voice of America—has fallen into disrepair. As part of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the GSA conducted a feasibility study for a $1 billion green renovation of the building, with a proposed completion date of 2032.
This year, however, the Trump administration, as part of its cost-cutting measures, halted the study and put the Cohen building up for sale. The GSA listed the Cohen building, along with numerous other federal properties, for “accelerated disposition,” a process intended to expedite their sale.
Art historian Mary Okin told NPR in November that removing the artworks in the event of a sale would likely prove infeasible.
“It is possible to remove frescoes from the spaces in which they were painted, but it’s extraordinarily expensive,” she said. “And in the case of the Ben Shahn murals, but also Philip Guston and Seymour Fogel and others, you risk the potential for damage. And in the case of Shahn specifically, he painted in fresco-secco, which makes them particularly delicate. That means painting on dry plaster as opposed to painting on wet plaster that dries into the wall. There have been past efforts to conserve and strengthen those particular artworks because Shahn considered them to be, you know, among his most important works of art.”
Now, it appears the Trump administration is considering demolishing the building altogether and, likely, selling off the land.
